Setting aside all the hate, harassment, threats, and sexism for one brief moment…
I can’t think of anything in the history of video gaming that has hurt gamers and the game industry more, given gamers a worse image in the public eye, alienated gamers and media/journalism, alienated gamers and game developers, and divided the gamer community then this GamerGate groups actions have. If they stood for any of the things that they pretend to, they’d realize this and STOP.
Of course that isn’t and has never been what this group is about. If the harassing, death threat making, women attacking, bullying element were outliers that didn’t represent the group as a whole, then the group would be the MOST vocal about making sure the world knew that those individuals actions were unacceptable, and that they didn’t represent the group. They would be obligated to in order to protect the core values and image of the group they self identify with, and differentiate the good members from the offenders. That isn’t what has happened. Instead they’ve banded together to defend these outliersmajority (as analysis has shown). So yeah…there is that.
It is okay to want to be part of a group or club, but if a faction of that group or club acts in such a heinous reprehensible unacceptable way, it is your duty to protect your own group or club by removing the offending element from the group. If the group defends that element then that element likely represents the underlying core reasons/beliefs of that group. I think it has been quite clear which way the group leans.
As a gamer I can say that GamerGate doesn’t represent me or gamers as a whole. I do not identify with them or their core actions.
Nobody is born under a #Gamergate hashtag. There are so many causes in the world - some greater, some smaller, some better, some worse - and they chose that. Don’t you think that we can judge them by their choice?
You seem to presuppose a population that is naturally inclined towards Gamergate. Who are those people? Apparently they are angry, reactionary and quite possibly gamers. It would be interesting to know which patterns can be found in their backgrounds.
[quote=“Larch_Sama, post:217, topic:44755”]
It is really sad to see how anti-gamergate people are trying so hard to make this entire issue about anything other than journalism ethics that it actually just defies belief…[/quote]
They don’t have to try. Gamergate did that all by itself. If you look at the data about online discussions, both on twitter and elsewhere, you’ll see that the focus of gamergate is much more on cultural issues than on issues of journalistic ethics.
As long as gaters keep claiming this, I’m going to keep spamming this. It’s a simple copy-paste operation now. I know how to grind too, motherfuckers.
[quote=“Larch_Sama, post:234, topic:44755”]
Of course Nathan Grayson would deny everything because it would be a potential conflicts of interest if one of his reporters slept with Zoe Quinn.[/quote]
Another lie that never dies.
First off, you’re confusing Grayson (the reporter who slept with Quinn) with Stephen Totilo (the editor of Kotaku). Totilo is the one who denied the allegation that one of his reporters (Grayson) was in a relationship with Quinn when he wrote a story involving her.
Secondly, there was never a review, Grayson wrote an article for Rock Paper Shotgun about fifty games trying to get greenlit by Steam. One of those games was Depression Quest. According to Quinn’s ex-boyfriend, Grayson and Quinn didn’t start having sex until about three months after the article was written, at the earliest.
Thirdly, the article Grayson wrote for Kotaku, was not about Depression Quest but about a failed reality show called Game Jam that Quinn participated in.
You’ve got your facts wrong. Even the gaters have moved on from this argument (some of them anyway). The new argument is that Grayson was a tester on Depression Quest and that that is a conflict of interest.
Well, I think it’s fair to say that many of the people in the group might not actually hate women or support threats, but if we do that then I think the only analysis that makes sense in @shaddack’s - that they exist merely to exist. Even if they don’t actually think threatening women is a good thing, it is more important to them to belong to the group than for that to end. Whatever their motives are, the function of the group is to generate opposition to itself to provide an external enemy to maintain group cohesion.
On the other hand, this is exactly why I think ignoring it to hope it dissipates won’t really work. Feeling like they are ignored is a huge part of what probably motivates the members of the group behave this way in the first place. When being ignored, before the group goes away, it will escalate its actions to the point that they cannot be ignored (one would think that making a mass killing threat at a university would have already done this for most people, but apparently ignoring is still an option for some).
This was a phenomenal example of what is going on inside gamergate. @Larch_Sama not only still believed that Quinn slept with someone for a good game review, but when I quoted from Gjoni himself clarifying that this never happened, what did he do? He linked me to the site I had quoted from. A site which he must have read awfully selectively. I mean, another explanation is that he simply didn’t read what I wrote. (I have to admit one possibility is that he’s just having a laugh)
But you’ve never considered that your approach to coming here to tell people to be less emotional is just another angle at the same thing? “I agree with what you say but I will fight to the death the way you say it,” is a bit of an odd twist on the old quotation.
I think you are conflating violence with anger. Was the civil rights movement built on the emotionlessness of MLK? Were the suffragettes reserved and stoic? Would any of us even know what happened in Ferguson if the people there hadn’t gotten so angry (there are a lot of young black men whose names I don’t know who have been killed by police in the US)?
Does it make sense for someone to be very angry that women are receiving threats? Does it makes sense for someone to be angry that people are coming in here and downplaying that?
Anger does, in fact, get things done. I’m quite convinced that there is nothing we could have said or done to bring @Larch_Sama around, but look at some of the other posters here. Some of come in saying one thing and gone through the thread and changed their opinion somewhat. You can credit my approach if you like, but I learn a lot by reading @marilove.
But all that aside, I think someone else above (not finding it) already made the point that by asking people to respond stoically, you are asking a gigantic, diverse group of people (everyone who is not in gamergate) to act a certain way to affect the behaviour of those who are in gamergate. Since we are asking the impossible, why not simply ask gamergate to stop doing what they are doing? Saying that hate groups are going to be hate groups is accepting reality, why not accept the reality that other people are going to be angry about hate groups?
I think The Riddler is a rape joke also. As is Hulk, She Hulk, about a hundred different breeds of flower, and the bird on the flag of Dominica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Dominica.
Just sounds like more Gawker’s shills trying desperately to earn their paycheck by grasping at whatever straws they can find.
Oh man, and don’t even get me started on my Champions Online character. She used green and purple (and black, but we’ll ignore that) as a color scheme to before I even knew 4chan was a thing.
In case you didn’t read the whole thread (which someone could hardly be blamed for at this point) the reason why I suspect gamergate is primarily about gamergate’s continued existence is because I keep honestly asking people what it is they would like to see come out of gamergate and they keep simply disappearing from the conversation. I’d really like to hear about it, I’d rather I had a better understanding of the people who are actually in gamergate, but I’ve failed to engage with any of them. Yes, I have a very different opinion, but that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to listen. I might seem disingenuous about that, but I can’t do much more on a web forum to show that I mean it. I keep being disappointed that, for the most part, the only thing I get to listen to is venting anger.
I don’t keep pointing at them. What seems to happen is that people who come in to defend gamergate (or even, in some cases, to say they are neutral about it) just can’t seem to help themselves from bringing them up. Look at @Larch_Sama above - he somehow still believes that Quinn slept with someone for a good game review and this is an important reason he is in gamergate. That’s the reality of at least some of the people in the movement.
That sounds ridiculously frustrating. I always choose female avatars in games when I have the choice, and I certainly have used games as places to basically play dress up. I don’t think that makes you or I misogynist at all. I’m sure Gawker, a site I have never visited and wouldn’t particularly care to visit, has published a lot of inflammatory pieces for the purpose of generating clicks. I’m frustrated by Sarkessian choosing the term “prostituted women” instead of “sex workers” when describing characters in video games because I feel that the best way to end the exploitation of women in sex work is to recognize it as work. I’ve definitely been in conversations with people who believe that there is one true version of feminism or some other -ism and who say things I vehemently disagree with.
I also think that gamergate, as it exists right now, functions in much the same way a hate group functions. That doesn’t mean all the people within it are hateful - I explained how I see a difference between the motivations of individuals and the outcome of the group. I’ve expressed (in other threads if not in this one) that I found the successful campaign to get Intel to remove their ads from gamasutra extremely infuriating. The gamasutra article was not hateful or bullying, but it was quite correctly pointing out that over the last few months, at a time when games are as popular and mainstream as they are ever likely to be, that the word “gamer” has somehow become re-associated with all the thing it was associated with when I was young - no social skills, misogyny, etc. This has been happening in the wake of gamergate. Even without the threats and intimidation, gamergate feel like a group of people trying to silence people who say things they disagree with about video games.
That is what I’ve observed. It isn’t everything I’ve observed, I know that at least a few charity fundraisers have been held under the banner of gamergate and that people have met friends through it and that not everything that has come of it is bad.
What I keep asking, and hoping to find out, is what people would like to come out of their efforts in gamergate. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, so I won’t speculate. I read what sounded like a lot of anger in your post about ‘SJWs’ and the ‘ultra-left’, but I still feel like other than just venting anger, the only place an actual dialogue can start is with people saying what they want. Without that, all I can say is, “You seem very angry” and all I can walk away with is that people are very angry.
e.g. @Larch_Sama suddenly went quiet upthread when we asked about journalistic ethics.
The GamerGate instigators inside the bubble tell them that everyone who’s anti-GamerGate is trying to prevent discussion of journalistic ethics, and apparently some of them actually believe that.
Well, he hadn’t even caught up with the narrative of gamergate itself to know that Quinn didn’t do the things Gjoni said she did. He was pretty much making up his own stories.
Eh, I did the weird and unexpected. And I know it’s probably hard for you to believe, but this is not the first time someone has come around after we’ve spent some time going back and forth.
Last night, a really good friend of mine who still lives in AZ just went out on a date with a gal* who is totally pro-gamer gate. And she actually said it’s about gaming in journalism. Oh, she thought women are too sensitive and shouldn’t be so upset at street harassment. Also, she is a fan of the RedPill on reddit. AAAH!!!
He, thankfully, is a great feminist man and was totally horrified. And so was I! On his behalf, and the behalf of all woman kind.
But it’s not just men. Which makes it even shittier. Women believes this crap, too.
And so yeah, I get angry. But wouldn’t you? If something like this were affecting you, wouldn’t you get angry? That’s the thing some people just can’t understand. (I also have a very low tolerance for clear willful ignorance and an willful refusal to educate oneself).
People I know and love very much have received death and rape threats. I had to resign from a good job because some asshole harassed me using the internet and it was in 2007 so there was no recourse for me and no one important enough gave a shit. Of course it angers me. And I’m so tired of having to rehash these same fucking conversations and still, so many people don’t get it. Ugh. Which means they are very important to continue to have.
Okay. Sorry. Rant over. I promise I’m in a good mood! I am drinking wine and my housemate made home made pork roast or something in the crock pot and it SMELLS DELICIOUS.
I see you linked to the same John Bain interview that I did. This is, ironically, classic cherry-picking (how very Sarkeesian of you). You’re linking to the only prominent member of gamergate who urges the movement to focus on ethics and stop talking about SJWs. Bain is not representative of the movement, he is an outlier. If he was representative of the movement, keyword analyses of the movement would be yielding different results. If you look at the data about online discussions, both on twitter and elsewhere, you’ll see that the focus of gamergate is much more on cultural issues than on issues of journalistic ethics.
If anyone bothers to look on Steam, Depression Quest is free. At some point early on, Quinn was promising to donate any proceeds to charity, but decided to simply give it away instead, to spread awareness of the experience of chronic depression.
Honestly while I find @anon50609448 patient in a way, I don’t know that I find her NICE. She’s kind of doing another form of “Just Asking Questions” – turning it on its head. Subverting it. She’s actually said that she is mostly just curious what the responses will be, and that she generally doesn’t expect much sincerity in response (this is extreme paraphrasing). Sure, she’s not quite as blunt as me and she certainly doesn’t love fuck as much as me (most people don’t lol), but I wouldn’t really call her nice. She’s totally doing that whole “acting polite buy Just Asking Questions but not being fully sincere” thing. But in a subversive way. And that’s kind of why she’s awesome.
And it’s not like it’s working. With the people who truly don’t want to understand, they aren’t changeling their tunes. But that wasn’t the point. The point was to see if they’d actually respond even a little decently to pointed and VERY direct, well-thought, well-communicated questions. They didn’t.
