Popehat's #Gamergate rants

Looks like an interesting rabbithole. If I don’t come up for air in three days, please notify my next of kin.

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Always remembering of course, it is the most ludicrous strand of journalism in the observable universe the ethics of which to be alarmed by compared to the cavalcade of bullshit and fuckery we are exposed to every fucking day.

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This Engineering Which Is Not One: Encountering Irigaray in Heat and Mass Transfer

(Yes, it’s post-Sokal)

Its also possible to disagree with someone without disliking them.
(I was tempted to write that a misogynist could easily confuse the two, but I didn’t want you to think I’m referring to you, so here it is, as an aside)

But really, one of several points of the article was precisely that anybody who is for “gaming journalism” is clearly doing his cause a disservice by continuing to use the GG tag. I don’t know on which side you fall here but it seems to me that anybody who is against violence, is pro “ethics” and silently following a mob that is vocally doing something else is… well… not the smartest person ever.
Hopefully these silent people will be vocal about what they believe soon, I mean, if they already realize they are not being heard, then what are they really achieving? Just propping up the bigots.
Textbook “useful idiot”

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I haven’t had any interactions with the vocal misogynistic supporters - I’ve only had interactions with people who claim they’re only interested in the ethics in journalism issue. And yet, when I pressed them on exactly what ethical issues they were interested in, the truth was revealed. The whole “it’s about ethics in journalism” line has became an internet joke because it is. Gamergate is a hate group. It was never interested in ethics, they’ve ignored the actual ethical issues (and even attacked those who are actually concerned with the real ethical issues) and invented bogus issues in order to attack women. Even if we leave aside the harassment and threats, there’s no legit ethical issues at the heart of gg. Anyone claiming support for gg because of “ethics” is like someone claiming support for the KKK because of civil rights. If one is actually interested in journalistic ethics, you don’t ride under the gg banner.

And, ding, ding, ding, we have a winner. Because the “conduct” Anita and Zoe and the other female targets of gg is fucking blameless - at least on any matter that’s anyone else’s damn business, and certainly in relation to journalistic ethics. The targets are being picked because of reactionary/misogynistic agendas of the attackers, not because of the “conduct” of the women in question. Given the facts, to even bring up the idea of “ethics in journalism” in relation to these women indicates someone with a severe problem with women. So, #yesallgamergaters

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The data suggests otherwise. Not only on Twitter but elsewhere. The data suggests that gamergate focuses more on cultural issues than on issues of journalistic ethics.

What I hate the most about responding to this endlessly repeated claim is the more I link to my own shit, the more I look like a shameless self-promoter.

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But you are actually contributing to, rather than profiteering from, the discussion. For example, unlike t-shirt promoters who shall remain nameless. :smiley:

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The inability for people to be critical of their own work is amazing.
While I don’t doubt your findings about twitter or youtube comments, I don’t feel the conclusions you’ve reached are infalliable. It sounds similar to those presidential polls conducted by telephone around the 1940s. The polls reported one president to be the popular vote, but really that presidential candidate was the popular vote of those citizens with a phone line.
Again, while an uncountable number of supporters may be unvocal, of the ones that are vocal we could roughly split them into those two camps, those concerned with “cultural issues” and “journalistic issues.” Those vocal “cultural issue” supporters are inciting an awful lot of earned backlash. I would imagine this might perpetuate them continuing the misogynistic rhetorical conversation. Meanwhile, the supporters of the “journalistic issues” are being grouped in with the misogynists and are not being addressed and are not receiving any screen time. They might want to continue the conversation, but everyone else is in the next room watching the antics of immature misogynists flexing their big ole internet muscles, 140 characters at a time.
This is all hypothetical and first hinges on the assumption that the mediums of Twitter and Youtube comments to be one of the best places to have that type of ethical conversation. From what I’ve seen, Twitter almost seems like the most appropriate place to fling short quippy slurs back and forth. Let alone that YouTube comments are infamously known for their difficult and low level of discourse.

While I will believe that the majority of twitter users talking about Gamersgate are brutes, I won’t pin that sort of ad hominem attack on the whole group, discrediting every idea it might create. Even if it isn’t actually about ethics in journalism, and the questions being brought about ethics in journalism are really so thin, outdated, malinformed, and rude, it still might be worth considering what other ethical questions might be worth asking if someone really did use sex to gain publicity for their game.
It might even be more productive than the current alternative of bashing immature and ignorant twitterians. While 4chan hasn’t figured everything out, they do have a mantra about the shitposting they want to discourage. Report, Sage, Hide. This is to not bump up a spam thread so that it will age until the point it is auto-pruned for inactivity. These trolls and loudmouths want attention and want screen time, when they are ignored, they tend to go away.

I’m really not trying to pick any side, but I am tired of hearing about the virtues of only one side, while the other side is mocked.
It’d seem Anita might be ripe for being mocked once in a while, too. When I saw her comment about toxic masculinity last week, I laughed outright. That kind of political ambulance chasing alone is really pretty funny in a dark sad sort of way.

That one, of course. Seems rather unlikely that Kickstarter would let her return any “overage” given the fact that they take 5%. I guess one could make the argument that Kickstarter is the money-grubbing asshole.

Small correction…

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Giving someone a positive review of their product in exchange for sex is transparently unethical and everyone knows that. WHAT QUESTIONS?!? There is absolutely noting to discuss and the only reason to talk about it is to cast aspersions on Zoe Quinn. If you actually do need to genuinely ask questions about the ethics of that, then you have never encountered ethics of any sort in your entire life and you are in a poor position to discuss them. Read a few books about ethics so that you understand the basic ideas that 99.9% of the rest of the population got by just being socialized and then maybe start a conversation.

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Name one. Just one idea created by they ‘rational middle’ you claim exists.

Just. One.

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So this is a new tactic I haven’t seen before. What you’re suggesting is that a majority of gaters are not talking about this issue on twitter, youtube, or in the KotakuInAction subreddit, that they’re talking about this, what, face-to-face, over the phone, through various non-public channels? What you’re in essence saying is that we can’t really know what the composition of gamergate is, without, I guess, getting Gallup to do a poll over the phone in order to reach this alleged silent majority. At the same time, however, you suggest that you know what the composition of gamergate is:

How do you know there’s a silent majority? Have you conducted such a poll yourself? Has someone else? We know that there are tens of thousands of accounts involved in the discussion, just on twitter alone, so either you have talked to thousands of people face-to-face, conducted a phone poll, etc. about this issue or you can’t know what the composition of gamergate is yourself. You can’t say that it’s impossible to determine the composition of gamergate and at the same time claim that you have determined the composition of gamergate.

Where’s your data? Where are the numbers? Or is this another one of those anti-science “my anecdotal experience carries more weight than any objective numbers ever possibly could” assertions?

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It’s also possible to dislike some black people without being racist- But if you dislike that person because they’re known to speak about race, that whole “without being racist” part kind of goes out the window.

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Complete derailing tangent here, but…

Does that pot…have an…audio input jack?

I just… I think it does, and I can’t stop obsessing over it. Just… What?

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It’s a vent hole Mike :wink:

Which is kinda on topic. heh

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I’m sorry. You appear to have lost sight of the original meaning of the phase. If the cookware was never designed to be anything but “black”. there’s hardly any shame to it. No, we are speaking of cookware that needs a good cleaning.

This is a black pot

And this is a black kettle

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Mea culpa. Google search of “black pot” and laziness. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I’d guess that it’s actually a pressure valve, or something of that nature.

That’s a nice kettle, I like it. That pot’s an asshole though. LIKE ALL POTS!

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