[quote=“Humbabella, post:295, topic:44755”]
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)[/quote]
This reminds me of the Iraq war and the fact that 15% of Americans believe that Iraq was directly involved in carrying out the September 11 attacks. Misinformation is very hard to kill.
Are you aware that you’re talking to someone (me) who is also part of this group? I grew up in a small ass town in the hot, rural Arizona desert. I had almost no friends for most of my K thru 8th years (in one tiny little school) or high school. I did not fit in at all. I was a nerdy if not exaclty studious kid and I was kind of weird and quiet and liked to read. I connected IMMEDIATELY to the online world as soon as my dad got us on to some BBS boards. Then there was IRC, which was life changing for me. And livejournal, which was just as life changing for me (and there’s been nothing to compare for me since).
Do you think you’re talking to people who aren’t part of this world? Who are separate from this world? Most importantly, do you think the WOMAN IN THIS COMMUNITY (me being one of them, although not so much to the gaming community (I game but not a ton) as I am connected to the larger geek communities, and skeptic and atheist communities which have these same exact problems).
I think my biggest problem with your arguments is that you seem to be separating these “lonely” people from the woman who are also in these communities. Essentially, YOUR own default is that those lonely male geeks are the default and main community of gamers. You seem to be under the impression that women are new to this whole geek community thing. You’d be WRONG.
It’s yet MORE othering of women gamers (and geeks and atheists and skeptics).
Why do you think your attitude helps at all? Or that it’s even a valid opinion based on facts? This claim that women are somehow suddenly barging into this group is wrong. They’ve always been there!
Wanting blood instead of striving for peace is a typical maladaptive reaction.
I don’t want blood. NO one has claimed here to want blood. What, we don’t use enough pleases and thank you’s and why won’t you’s and oh poor bomb threat senders, why are you so upset? Is that what you mean by “wanting blood”?
You’re placing VIOLENCE on to me when I’m not at all being violent. I’ve not wished blood on ANYONE. You are here attacking my character by making shit up (and yes, I know it’s about me.). Hypocritical, much?
Not to mention the fact that there has been actual blood wished on women regarding this subject and the subject of sexism in gaming in general. Actual bomb and death threats. ACTUAL WANTING OF BLOOD, or at the very least the wanting to threaten for blood in the hopes of scaring people, which is exactly the same damn thing.
You are telling victims to stop speaking out, and comparing speaking out (in a sometimes not nice and fuzzy manner, oh no!) to “wanting blood” while weirdly not focusing AT ALL EVER EVEN A LITTLE FUCKING BIT on the group of people who have *actually wished blood on the group speaking out against the death threats (aka, wishing blood on someone – can I make this any more fucking clear?)/
Again, generally true but care has to be taken to hear some of the opposition voices. There may be parts of the whole thing where even “the enemy” can be right. The loudness of the yell is not any good indicator of truth of the argument. Listening to the adversary both builds bridges and provides better arguments.
And omg this is yet more word salad opinion! You sound like a more educated Sarah Palin. O_O You can’t back any of this shit up, either. Ugh. This is just your opinion. Why do you think your opinion is more valid on this subject? A subject you have no experience in? When was the last time you lost your job due to online sexual and emotionally abusive harassment?
And um, no, the enemy is NOT RIGHT in this situation AT ALL. No. NO. NO.
Yes, but less emotionally.
And oh, there it is. The Vulcan cry. You know what? Fuck that shit. Do you think Martin Luther King, Jr. wasn’t emotional? Listen to his speeches again? Listen to Harvey Milk! He was a powerful, emotional speaker.
And this whole “hey, women, stop being so emotional!” borders on cries of hysteria. Which, btw, someone recently accused us of being (hysterical).
Oh no! Humans have emotions! About the subject of their friends and loved ones receiving bomb threats and rape threats and death threats! Seriously?
Also, why does Kris Kluwe not get this same “stop being so emotional/mean/using so many curse words!”? People (including me, obviously) LOVE HIM. How is he not being emotional or aggressive? He’s my fucking hero! (For the record, I was here first, thank you very much.)
Ooooh, that’s right, because women should be nice and sweet and make sure we don’t rock the boat too much. And certainly don’t get emotional! Even when you’re having death and rape threats your wine, please remember to be polite and kind and don’t ever show your emotions. But wait, don’t be too distant, or you’ll come off as cold and uncaring. Then you’re just being rude!
Ugh stop telling women and people in general how to respond to really difficult, painful, scary shit.
Again, this shit is not theoretical. This is about real woman. And helloooo, I’ve been through similar shit. Do you think I shouldn’t be speaking out about this? Honest question.
Actually I’m pretty sincere. I know I mock gamergate too, I find the “actually it’s about ethics in games journalism” thing really funny (the images and whatnot, especially the Bad Dudes one… wow do I like Bad Dudes). But I really do empathize with people even when I think those people are doing bad things or are foolish. When I look at gamergate I see a huge amount of anger. Some of that is crazy bomb threat anger, but a lot of that is “games journalism” anger. I’d really like to know what the latter is all about. The theory we have going here - that it’s people protecting an in group seems very plausible. I actually did read a few hundred tweets on gamergate one day to see if I could figure anything out, but I had no luck making sense of it.
If there is someone out there who could actually express what they want out of the movement I’d love to hear what that is. I do understand, though, that this is unlikely to happen, and I also know that at least some of the accounts we are seeing here talking about gamergate are sock puppets. I’ll admit that offering to genuinely engage is in part a tactic to mess with sock puppet provocateurs who are just around to stir shit up and don’t actually care about anything. But even sock puppets are people (just not unique people), and probably not all sociopaths, so some of them might have things to say too. Plus, I have to actually be genuinely ready to listen or they could just call my bluff.
Oh good! I thought it was appropriate. It’s one of the logos for San Diego’s Stone Brewery. Which, btw, includes an actual beer called Aargant Bastard. Someone recently asked why I didn’t have an avatar (idk, lazy) and I figured, all things considered, this was appropriate (also they are one of my favorite breweries).
Okay, that makes sense, thank you. I still find it really great that you’re asking all of these questions and not getting any actual responses that are actually about ethics in journalism.
Hypothesis: a substitute narrative for the group to hold to. Which they believe because of cognitive dissonance that would happen if they would not. The anger is a generic anger in search of justification.
And that’s also why I think that heads-on confronting won’t do much more than justifying it for them and making it worse.
Should I expand it in simpler words?
There are major similarities with the group dynamics of terrorist groups, and with some of the Cold War discourses.
And that’s why you will miss the parts when they aren’t as wrong as you perceive, and prolong the conflict.
The only race in that universe that made sense.
It’s good for rallying your own people. It’s not so good for actual tactics/engagement. Us-vs-them approach only polarizes them. Even if you win you get a minor army of bitter potential adversaries, in way higher numbers than you could get with less polarizing approach. Handle the enemies of today like potential allies of tomorrow.
Harvey who? Emotional speeches do nothing to me. Don’t ask me why.
At some moments it looks that way. I did not want to say it.
That is EXACTLY the time to step back and think. Getting riled up about something is a hint that you are in a mistake-prone state. Whether it is anger or fear, you can be either its master or its slave.
Emotions are a so-so servant and a rather lousy master.
Speak whatever you want. But then don’t be surprised when you turn people away. You don’t need to convert the staunch allies, you won’t be able to do much with the staunch enemies, the weak ones or the undecided in the middle are a better target. If you want to have better impact, tailor your response to them. Basic rule of public relations.
My direct experiences with threats are limited (got a few years ago but generally avoiding conflicts), but I did a fair amount of consulting for friends who were more intensely affected. The handful of friends I have keep returning for help; guess the Vulcan way works.
Same here, with MUSH/MOO and such telnet-based systems. I don’t work well with face-to-face things, not recognizing people well enough, never managed to “belong”. And I don’t exactly like the web-based systems of today, the style does not fit me. I prefer smaller, tighter-knit groups but they always fall apart at the end…
There are gamer women. I am well-aware of it, saw enough. What is the actual proportion, however? And why there are so many lonely and disaffected males then?
Where did I say otherwise? This is something that is puzzling me on the whole affair too.
I used that as a figurative statement for what looks like aggressive pursuit/furthering of a conflict.
Not exactly the same. Empty threats have somewhat higher survival rate.
There is an entire continuum of people, not a black-and-white duality. You won’t convert the extreme-end ones. The middle is where success can come.
That’s to be expected, given that their premises are not as much real ones as ex-post justifications/rationalizations.
Which is something they have to realize themselves. You won’t hammer that point to them by screaming at them. Asking patient questions is way more useful. A question mark is way more powerful than an exclamation.
I don’t fight. I won’t fight. I am too tired of everything to fight. I am merely advising what is likely to not work. You are free to do whatever you want - but be aware of the possible less-than-optimal outcomes.
Anger is not a solution. The shooting cops are the angry ones as well. Confronting anger with anger is a recipe for unintended consequences, albeit sometimes it is the least bad available option if things were let to go that far.
It makes sense but it also won’t help anything. Negotiations are what ultimately silences the weapons.
Most of the everyone-outside-gamergate don’t give much attention to it. The power law applies here.
If I was writing to their media, I would be saying the same. Alas, I am not there. If they read this, what I said applies to them as well.
Hence I am only hoping for getting people think and question the whole situation. I don’t think it will help to calm the things down. But I had to at least try.
And the external enemy happily obliges.
If they crave attention, they can be steered by denying it to the fringe but not to the less-extreme factions. Blanket denial of reaction would work less well.
Now they are there and judging them won’t make it any better.
There is a continuous spectrum. Most are indifferent, many are confused with the whole brouhaha, few are actively involved on either side.
I bet there will be paywalled papers about the whole thing. The background patterns may be answered or at least hinted to there.
Todo: ask a friend from uni research to proxy me some access.
Except they don’t really stand for that. The group identification is too strong factor for this. And that’s why you won’t get from them any answers to those questions, as shown and noted here.
Majority? I saw some numbers but the methodology of the counting did not look solid. OTOH, I did not really dig into that, too busy with other stuff, will wait for uni researchers to do the time-consuming work.
The question is if it is really a core value of the group or a result of the group adopting the beliefs as part of the circling-the-wagons response. The inconsistencies in the group’s behavior don’t suggest too high degree of their adherence to anything but the group itself.
You have good arguments, and holy FSM I hate to say this (cause it sounds, or is trying to constrain a message) but you may want to pick your fights. Even us mutants here can’t really take more than five BIG bullet points. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t.
The world is a better place with @marilove and @shaddack. But a gentle suggestion may be to wind down, and regroup on the harder ideas (embedded mysoginy, hate speech, bad grammar)?
Well, I don’t think this assertion is a good answer to me pointing out that groups full of angry people have accomplished a lot of things in history. I brought up the suffragettes, how is anger not a solution? They got the right to vote. As I said, you are equating anger with violence.
But it’s also impossible. We can’t control every reaction in the world, and it only takes a few. And that’s if denial of reaction would do anything but make them more angry. If someone actually did attack Quinn or Sarkeesian, what would we do, walk on as if it didn’t happen? There are clearly actions that can be taken that cannot be ignored, ignoring the problem could just as easily push people into those actions as defuse them.
Insisting on giving the same advice over and over and over again after people have told you they disagree is fighting. If you are tired, just go lie down.
@Humbabella and @shaddack, I think adversarial positions can be constructive, but I don’t want to see the two of you recreating a scene from Resovoir Dogs.
The timeline is reversed though, the group started as wagons circled around attacking some women, and the false flag of a cause which came later was “ethics in game journalism”…problem is that smoke screen position was also based on one of the lies that had spawned one of the original attacks, sex for a good game review, which never even happened.
If the group had existed previous to the attacks and had a history of confronting ethics in game journalism, then went astray with a series of attacks, then and only then, could I see your point. A good group being subverted and circling to defend itself. That isn’t what happened though is it? The timeline doesn’t support that. The analysis of the groups communication history and confrontations doesn’t support that.
If a group claiming to care about ethics, defends abhorrent non-ethical behavior, then I reasonably doubt they actually care about much less important ethical issues. If a group claiming to care about the gaming community, hurts the gaming community worse then anything in the history of gaming, then I reasonably doubt they actually care about the gaming community. Instead I’m letting their actions speak for themselves about their real reasons for grouping.
