Who is Gamergate? Analysis of 316K tweets

[IronEdithKidd]

Whoa, your reply to yourself shows up-thread.

{ed} so does my reply to you. Whoa!
{ed2} Weird, now things are showing up in order.

[anon73430903]

With great power comes great responsibility.

[jjsaul]

For a classic example, advocate gun sale restrictions in any public forum on the internet, then sit back and watch the shill-army of brand new accounts swarm.

[jerwin]

I especially like this little exchange.

[ghostly1]

I have mixed feelings about that cartoon now being used as an “annoying persistent debater” shorthand, because, when you look at it, it’s also kinda a story of somebody standing up against racism.

[anon68952647]

Which race deserves your attention?

[jerwin]

The Tribe has spoken. Those who meddle with the reification of the meme do so at their own peril.

[jerwin]

The Rohirrim. A race of fierce shieldmaidens, and … er… their male counterparts.

[ghostly1]

Is there a race that doesn’t?

[wazmo]

The worst thing about #GG is that they (1) fail to recognize that the trade press (like all other trade presses) have always been a questionable bunch when it comes to so-called ethical standards, and (2) ignore their own lack of ethical behavior by doxxing and death threats shows a movement that is leaderless and totally out of control.

GamerGate supporters are the cyberspace version of the worst parts of the Tea Party, the GOP and the KKK-but they’re too stupid to recognize that they’ve been co-opted by them as another set of useful idiots.

[MBD]

This is excellent. Now please do the same for KotakuInAction and YouTube comments so I don’t have to. Speaking of which…

A few days ago I analyzed the top 25 posts on KotakuInAction. A total of 1670 comments from the following posts: 1) The GamerGate Extra Life Charity Stream is live!, 2) Turns out it’s usual for Nathan Grayson to cover his friends’ work, including 5 mentions of his friend Robin Arnott’s game and coverage of GaymerX while going out with its president. No disclaimer in any of those articles, 3) Guys, we HAVEN’T won yet, 4) A certain Anti-Gamergate subreddit asks the following stupid question: “Has GG actually unearthed anything remotely corrupt/unethical in game journalism?”. Actually yes, it has, and it really highlights the disconnect anti-gamergaters have with reality, 5) Jim Norton likely knows very little about video games but still…, 6) Mike Cernovich pities his doxxer and offers her an easy and honorable way to avoid a lawsuit and criminal action: Apologize (first link). She responds by insulting him (second link, after the “?”), 7) Two info graphic pictures: Chris Kluwe and Taylor Wofford (Newsweek), 8) Shamelessly biased and agend-driven Wikipedia editors shutting down any discussion of GG and publicly showing their support for the anti-GG side, 9) Based Mom BTFO of Gawker and SJW’s on Columbia Journalism Reviews Website Comments, 10) Dear anti-#GamerGate: Want a dialogue? Admit that most of us oppose harassment and that GG was never a harassment campaign, 11) GNAA Trolls Admit GamerGate Sabotage, 12) Can we give Boogie’s Curator on Steam a big push? OVER 9000 NEEDED!, 13) Newsweek Reporter against GG advocates bullying, 14) Hello there. I’m an autistic person, and I’d like to discuss autism spectrum disorders and their (mis-)representation in MSM (also, fuck ‘Autism Speaks’), 15) @CaineJW: An actual statistical analysis of Gamergate. Excellent rebuttal against the recent Newsweek piece, 16) Jontron: " After some emails from concerned people, I’ll say whatever ‘good’ the people in gamergate are standing for, I stand for as well.", 17) A professor of statistics and specialist on qualitative/quantitative analysis on Newsweek’s statistics of #GamerGate, 18) More proof that the gaming press still wants to slander us: Jason Schreier links to the dishonest Newsweek article, tells people that care about ethics to leave GamerGate, 19) Lies, Damn lies, and #GamerGate: how the media manipulates statistics and draws bullshit conclusions, 20) Seems like TotalBiscuit is up to something… and it seems promising!, 21) Google+ Chief Architect comes out anti-gg. Seems unable to search for the #gamergate harassment patrol, 22) Jontron responds to gamergate criticism, 23) PewDiePie beats out LW2 in Golden Joystick Awards for Personality of the Year (ironically, the award was sponsored by Kotaku UK), 24) Just got a call from HTC…, This is NOT good, and 25) The Booming Victimhood Industry - A relevant look at how easy it is to monetize playing the victim. [Look at those titles. You wouldn’t see that much long-windedness if Faulkner fucked Proust.]

The LWs (excluding Alexander) get 109 mentions.
Feminism and social justice get 94 mentions.
Quinn gets 58 mentions.
Grayson gets 56 mentions.
The Hernandez-Anthropy allegations get 39 mentions.
Day gets 36 mentions.
Sarkeesian gets 26 mentions.
Wu gets 25 mentions.
The Sagal-Pinsof controversy gets 7 mentions.
Shadow of Mordor gets 2 mentions.
The gamejournopros mailing list gets 2 mentions.
DMCA abuse gets 1 mentions.
Australian games journalism gets 0 mentions.
The IGF/Indiecade allegations get 0 mentions.

I also analyzed Boogie2988’s videos related to this topic. I was able to get 28% of the comments (10738 of 38170). The breakdown is Opinion on Zoe Quinn and the Quinnspiracy: 1124 of 3411, Are “Gamers” a dying breed? Is Gaming DYING?: 1115 of 4640, We Game - Sims 4, New 3ds, "End the Hate’: 802 of 1164, I am NOT A bigot. Are You?: 1188 of 10,804, Rambling About: Retropalooza, Destiny, Gamergate, Health: 1065 of 2309, Rambling: Destiny First Thoughts, Gamergate, Gamestop and MORE! :): 509 of 2662, Dear Gamers: A Call For Kindness and Common Sense: 1199 of 2453, Let’s Talk About Online Harassment: 1178 of 3361, The Truth about Youtube Brand Deals: 1082 of 1626, and Help me #EndTheHate: 1476 of 5740.

Feminism and social justice get 499 mentions.
The LWs (excluding Alexander) get 474 mentions.
Day gets 469 mentions.
Quinn gets 363 mentions.
Sarkeesian gets 106 mentions.
The Sagal-Pinsof controversy gets 103 mentions.
The Hernandez-Anthropy allegations get 76 mentions.
Australian games journalism gets 36 mentions.
Grayson gets 30 mentions.
Shadow of Mordor gets 26 mentions.
Wu gets 5 mentions.
DMCA abuse gets 3 mentions.
The IGF/Indiecade allegations get 0 mentions.
The gamejournopros mailing list gets 0 mentions.

[MBD]

Okay so John Bain (aka Total Biscuit) is back with another blogpost. Unfortunately, this one is really disappointing because he engages in the exact same cherry-picking as Sarkeesian.

“5) GAMERGATE DIDNT TALK ABOUT IT. Oh no wait, KiA was full of posts about it, my bad.”

1. This is a strawman. Ironically, Bain himself provides the exact quote from Salon.com: “Which highlights a core problem with the movement: When a legitimate corruption scandal not involving women, or feminism, or any real misogynist angle arises, it’s more or less ignored.” “More or less ignored” does not mean the same thing as “didn’t talk about.” It seems pretty clear to me that “more or less ignored” is a statement about relative focus, hence the “more or less” qualifier.

2. If I say KotakuInAction is full of posts about Shadow of Mordor and then proceed to point to a number of them, if I say that the damsel in distress trope quickly became the go-to motivational device for developers and then proceed to point to a number of games that use it, if I say that buying lottery tickets is a surefire way to get rich and then proceed to point to a bunch of lottery winners, it doesn’t prove my point at all because it doesn’t show how many KotakuInAction posts don’t talk about Shadow of Mordor, because it doesn’t show how many games don’t use the damsel in distress trope, because it doesn’t show how many lottery ticket purchasers didn’t win. This is classic survivor bias. This is the exact same cherry-picking Bain, rightly, accuses Sarkeesian of. The irony is damning.

So let’s do what both Bain and Sarkeesian fail to do. I will use Bain’s methodology and use reddit’s search feature to find the number of threads in the KotakuInAction subreddit that contain various terms.

Bain’s search:
mordor = 33

Also relevant to this scandal:
wb = 1
warner = 4

How about grayson:
grayson = 45

How about Australian games journalism:
bethesda = 4
mcv = 2
ausgamers = 1
“ea australia” = 1
arena = 10
gameplanet = 1
gilroy = 0

How about the Hernandez-Anthropy allegations:
hernandez = 93
anthropy = 10

How about the IGF/Indiecade allegations:
igf = 49
indiecade = 20

How about the gamejournopros mailing list:
gamejournopros = 76
gjp = 17
“mailing list” = 32

How about DMCA abuse:
dmca = 11
takedown = 7

How about the Sagal-Pinsof controversy:
sagal = 1
pinsof = 21
niero = 4
dahlen = 0
deesing = 0
riendeau = 4
green = 15

How about Liana Kerzner
kerzner = 6

How about Anthony Burch
burch = 20

Now let’s look at the non-journalist Zoe Quinn:
quinn = 267
quinnspiracy = 31
zq = 95
lw1 = 49
valkenburg = 1

Just looking at the results for “quinn” alone, she gets 8 times as many threads as “mordor.” She also gets nearly three times as many as the most popular scandal search term “hernandez,” who just so happens to be a chick as well.

How about non-journalist Anita Sarkeesian:
sarkeesian = 293
femfreq = 19
“feminist frequency” = 17
lw2 = 79

Just looking at “sarkeesian” alone, she gets 9 times as many threads as “mordor” and 3 times more than “hernandez.”

How about non-journalist Brianna Wu:
wu = 147
bw = 3
lw3 = 38
lwu = 49

Just looking at “wu” alone, she gets 4 times as many threads as “mordor” and 58% more than “hernandez.”

How about some of the permutations of “lw”:
lw = 167
literallywho = 1
“literally who” = 9

“lw” gets 5 times as many threads as “mordor” and 80% more than “hernandez.”

How about Felicia Day:
felicia = 44

How about feminism:
feminism = 18
feminist = 403
feminazi = 15

Just looking at “feminist” alone, it gets 12 times as many threads as “mordor” and 4 times as many threads as “hernandez.”

How about social justice warriors:
sjw = 646

“sjw” gets more than 19 times as many threads as “mordor” and nearly 7 times as many threads as “hernandez.”

As has been the case everywhere I’ve looked at it and every way I’ve looked at it, the data suggests the focus of gamergate is disproportionately cultural and the issues of journalistic ethics get significantly less attention. This is what “more or less ignored” means.