Maybe it’s a problem of branding? Can we get all of these unfortunates who care about ethics in games journalism onto a different label like #GameEthics or something?
Nuanced and fairly rational, so sure, a good view.
I wonder how much benefit-of-the-doubt they’d continue to give Gaters if they knew the stats showing that it is overwhelmingly about harassing certain female game devs more than anything else, but allowing for the hypothetical possibility that not 100% of the people talking about ethics in games journalism are just white-washing and obfuscating, that’s a reasonable treatment of the issue.
Honestly, I think if people who cared about games journalism decided to start their own offshoot hashtag right now they would get a tremendous amount of hate and attacks from #gamergate - especially women among them. The best thing is to get some perspective, either of the “Oh yeah, ethics in game journalism isn’t really a big enough deal to continue this considering what it’s associated with right now,” or of the “I need to make a tactical retreat from this topic and come back another day because the longer this is about misogyny the longer it is until I can talk seriously about the most important of subjects - ethics in game journalism,” variety.
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People have tried, to no avail.
I looked at that one from Thursday and it was pretty wild. I would say after writing that Clark could become one of gamergate’s heroes. Being able to frame their little woman-hating, games-journalism conflict as part of a huge historical war against tyranny is probably the holy grail of gamergate.
The piece today, on the other hand, quite plainly puts gamergate in its place. It takes its share of swipes at a segment of those opposed to gamergate who are being irrational and tribalistic, but it’s quite clear which side it comes down on.
Still, I really don’t know what kind of traffic popehat normally gets, but it could easily be a lot less than BoingBoing (and when posting on twitter above they probably actually had some information about where the traffic was coming from). But it seems like there are people passing to-read and to-criticize lists out on twitter in gamergate’s name, so some traffic could be generated that way.
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I think he answers that in his last paragraph.
I’m still surprised (and mildly disappointed) there weren’t a bunch of tweets about the Shadows of Mordor review issue tagged #mordorgate.
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Why do you think it was a bad misstep?
#morannon
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Unfortunately, many of the apparent “useful idiots” who claim they really think it’s about journalistic ethics, when actually pressed on the matter, admit it’s really about not wanting women in gaming for them. So I can’t even give people the benefit of the doubt when they claim it’s about ethics. Especially since you’d have to be amazingly ignorant of gg, it’s history and actions to buy that lie in the first place.
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After Clark’s…what’s the word…oh yeah, santorum on GG, Ken’s writeup had its appeal. But what caught my eye was a comment Ken made, in response to a question about “claims that Quinn is currently abusing the courts to prevent him [Eron Gjoni, Quinn’s ex-BF] publicly talking about (what at least he feels was) her abuse of him.”
Ken’s reply: “There is a very specific reason I am not addressing those First Amendment issues. I’m sure they will be analyzed thoroughly by other lawbloggers, which is a good thing.” So I’m guessing that Ken is representing someone in this case (p’bly Gjoni?). Despite having near-toxic levels of GG in my system, I look forward to Ken’s after-action analysis of this aspect of the sordid affair.
(The question is posed in comment #72; Ken’s reply is comment #75. FWIW, the links provided in comment #72 regard a protective order hearing in Massachusetts, VanValkenburg v. Gjoni, where Gjoni was ordered to STFU about Quinn – depending on when you last ate, the passive-aggressive rage attached to this case is either disgusting or amusing.)
I’ve only encountered people who claim that there are some other people who are in it because of “ethics in game journalism”.
Never met them myself.
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“Rule of thumb: a reasoned rebuttal of wrong-headed cultural criticism mostly likely won’t require you to use the word “cunt.””
Unfortunate that it needs to by said, but that’s a nice recursive rule of thumb, there.
God damn what a stupid article. Although I guess props to popehat for allowing diverse views.
But really, what a stupid, stupid article. It’s amazing how the victim mentality works. Let’s find three, three cases of “social justice warriors” getting dumb sexist idiots fired, and let’s see that as them “winning” a war, and totally ignore the tens of thousands of times women have been fired or not hired because of their sex. Oh woe is me, a single poor brogrammer got fired, let’s attack the oppressors, the SJWs, for evermore.
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He mentones the word, he does;t use it.
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I recall someone I talked to about Sarkeesian way before gamergate who said they honestly disagreed with her position but somehow couldn’t stop bringing up the amount of money she made in her kickstarter as some kind of indictment of her. It was like he just couldn’t help but bring it up even though I repeatedly said I didn’t see how it was relevant and didn’t want to engage with that. Could not stop.
Well, that sounds like it goes into defamation which is not first amendment. I mean, at some point you can’t just keep telling damaging lies about someone… right? (Am I right?)
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Clickhole still has the best article on the whole clusterfeck… http://www.clickhole.com/article/summary-gamergate-movement-we-will-immediately-cha-1241
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Considering that in the post-Sokal world we know that these French poseurs were basically the Lysenkos of the humanities, I’m not sure what the point is. Anybody should be angry that anyone took Focault or Derrida seriously, just as they should be angry about Lysenko.
A lot of people forget why she made so much. She put up a video asking for, what was it, $6,000 to make 5 videos. That’s fine, perfectly reasonable money for someone’s time and effort.
Then the Internet Hate Machine (well, gamers, but you know) got wind and turned it into a living shithole. The 26 multiplier occurred not only because of the spotlight these ranting twits (who ironically wanted her silenced) gave her to folks who may have been unaware of the campaign, but also because a lot of people were rightfully appalled at the toxic blowback.
But no, clearly she fooled the world and stole all the monies and probably got her reptilian overlord companions to help as well.
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Oh yeah, I find the whole thing bizarre. Imagine I wanted to produce a thing and put up a kickstarter for $500 and got $1M. Would that mean I was a money-grubbing asshole or would it mean that people really, really liked my idea? When people point to how much money she made crowdfunding her videos as evidence that she’s doing a bad thing, rather than as evidence that a lot of people support what she is doing, it’s pretty clear evidence that they are driven entirely by ideology.
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