[quote=“sunoxen, post:25, topic:43358”]I find this kind of article rather sad. Let me tell you why I have sympathy to Gamergate.
I once stood out in front of the Brooklyn Museum in 1999 with Susan Sarandon and a bunch of other people. What were we doing there? We were fighting Mayor Giuliani on the idea that he was threatening to cut funding to the museum due to the “moral outrage” of the Sensation exhibition from the UK.
I am a civil libertarian, not a right-winger, and I am thoroughly and completely against ninnies who want to blame any media for all the world’s ills. There is a side of the left wing, the left authoritarians, who believe that society must be controlled. They believe that people don’t need freedom, they need protection. They believe in “standards” and “guidelines” and ban lists. They believe in silencing voices that disagree with them, and they do this all for some vague greater good.
It seems to me that the people in the Gamergate movement don’t want these destructive propagandistic ideas and “standards” to infect their hobby. When a right wing shithead like Giuliani or Jack Thompson or Bill O’Reilly decries that media turns people into animals, it would seem that the audience of BoingBoing would fight back.[/quote]
Women are not in charge of the world, “shitheads” like Giuliani and Thompson and O’Reilly are. Feminists criticizing a society that oppresses women are not the same as the people who are actually in power using that power to oppress.
It’s digitally rendered imagery. Wouldn’t it be easier to provide a selector, or even merely provide software for making mods like some games already have, for user-generated tailoring to personal/subgroup tastes? (Later possibly with capability to 3d-scan oneself for better feeling of VR immersion?) Voila, everybody could be happy except those who want to not be.
Check e.g. the wide palette of Skyrim mods. (Disclaimer: I don’t play but I enjoy watching some of the reviews.)
Things could be way less heated if the solution to the complaints, from whichever side, was downloading a mod or changing a default in config.
Want male or female protagonist/sidekicks? Select. Want more or less boobs? Select to taste. Enough people want a certain difference that’s less trivial? Kickstart a mod and hire an artist/designer, and if successful, the corporations will maybe follow and incorporate the design changes to the default branch of the next version.
The whole mess has possible technical solutions where nobody is forcing anybody to accept just one version of “reality”, so nothing to push for (except more options) nor violently resist against (if the somebody’s cherished status quo even after a change is still only a click away).
It doesn’t seem very intellectually honest to make such broad-sweeping claims about those who are “pro-GG” and then point to the tweets of one or two people as all your evidence. Also, the facts are, and can’t be changed, that GG was a reaction to the mysterious and damning cohesion with which certain suspect individuals refused to cover one of the few stories that could actually fall under the category of “games journalism”.
To say all that because of this woman’s actions, all females use their sexuality to manipulate men is obviously wrong, why doesn’t that standard not apply to the people you don’t agree with?
@ogdredweary , @elite: Give up. If you stop seeing yourself as part of the group issuing the hate speech, you will no longer feel emotionally inclined to defend those issuing death threats. (Which is a horrible thing. If you cannot accept that axiom, then something else is wrong; in that case, disregard this advice.)
Come join the wonderful world of do what we say or we call you a misogynist bigot who personally relates to the worst example we can find of a non-organized movement.
I’m not part of any group. I’m not defending any death threats, just wondering if you have any sources to these claims. Knowledge is power, empower me!
Ever heard of a false flag?
Also, gaming journalism is a joke (the incentive is to do soft fluff pieces).
Kotaku will continue to publish shitty articles, Comcast (et. al) will continue to fuck everybody over, the wealthy will continue to make money on their investments and write the laws. Remember that change is possible, just not yet. Give it time.
Do you believe the wave of criticism and threats coming in at the same time are separate things?
Yeah, I do. There will always be crazies in any group (left,right,etc.). They should be weeded out as they are found (the guy in this slideshow “article”). That doesn’t invalidate the rest of the voices.
You couldn’t possible be another GG troll could you?
There is no winning with you guys. If you want citations about the credible threats it’s easy enough to find news stories about them, you know basically everywhere. Especially here on BoingBoing.
The only way you could need one at this point is willful denial. Troll me not troll.
And when it turns out the group is predominantly crazies? If you need more than the tweets of one or two people:
I saw a number of the posters involved reviewed here.
MBD’s brilliant post here looks at what terms have actually been associated with #gamergate, and how very little shows up beyond the harassment of women and critics.
To pick only from BB, death threats have been noted places like here, here, and here, with all sorts of citations in the articles and discussions. You can argue they aren’t credible, but it’s only going to reinforce your ability to ignore evidence.
That’s all it takes for something to be a disgusting hate movement, and yes, if you know that and still associate with it you’re endorsing that disgusting hate. If you care about corruption in video games journalism and don’t want to be a part of that, it’s really simple not to be:
Use a different name. Even #realgamergate might do it, although you’d be better off using something entirely, given its history.
Actually go after some examples of corruption in games journalism, and if anyone tries to make things about silencing women instead, don’t let them.
Really simple, and something it seems nobody can be bothered to do. That instead we get an endless parade of new accounts telling us to ignore the death threats and not paint everyone who is willing to stand with the people who sent them as bad guys is very, very telling.
