Yes, this hits the nail exactly on the head.
So because people are outright dismissive of anything with the tag and people are not willing to listen to anyone using the tag⌠because of that people will keep using the tag. If thatâs the case then that says that people using it donât want to be heard except by one another - and at this point weâre mostly just happy to oblige.
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Yep, that sounds about right to me. âClick baitâ is a negative term that I believe is an adaptation of the term âbait and switchâ. It implies a title that doesnât accurately represent true content, but is instead just designed to drive traffic (which is how people profit on the internet).
âBait and switchâ is false advertising where one product is advertised, and another is provided.
Although titles may be hyperbolic, thatâs not really as much of an issue if they do reflect the actual article content. People on Boing Boing only get upset about words used when they are purely designed to drive traffic and donât correctly identify whatâs contained within. When strong words are used to drive traffic, but arenât correct for content, they disrupt discussion. A familiar example of this would be the âtank/not tankâ issue, where a title mentions a âtankâ, but the vehicle in the article is not a tank. The title containing the word tends to create a thread that is focused on discussing what is/is not a âtankâ - no matter what the rest of the article is about.
To be fair, thatâs just because weâre insufferable pedants.
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True, but weâre arguing a valid point.
The title is making a claim that is not only hyperbolic, it is also false in nature. Not all hyperbolic claims are false, theyâre just exaggerations. My point is that titles should avoid making false claims when attempting to make hyperbolic claims.
Anyone have evidence for the claim that âthe genesis of this controversy is rooted in misogyny and intolerance?â Considering that Iâve been involved since before that silly #gamergate (oh posh, a Nixon reference) tag came into use and watched as Quinn frantically tried to control the narrative and several videos came out, the claims in these comments seem incredibly unfounded and not in accordance with either chronology or verifiable events.
I decided to look back at all the posts, tweets, videos, etc. and the great majority of what I find are well-reasoned, calm, level-headed assessments, not the actions of a hateful âcyber mobâ or the works of a coordinated effort by the âCathedral of Misogyny.â
And just to make this clear: if youâre going to slander everyone as malicious misogynists, you better call out Quinn for her douchebaggery as well. I tried interacting with her on Twitter a few times and once she actually replied to my criticisms with a false accusation â I will not post the tweets for privacy concerns â upon calmly correcting her outright lie I found myself completely ignored (I suspect blocked, even) and itâs clear that she doesnât give a fuck about anything which doesnât bid well for her narrative.
Toodles, go ahead and invoke name-calling right away if you plan on it.
And by the way I can compile a list of sources from the beginning for anyone who requests them, though I think if you look for them yourself you will notice the calm, reasoned nature in which videos present themselves, and the civility of âmostâ conversations (remember that the nature of anonymous forums does garner unwanted behavior to a higher degree than other mediums but hostility is generally chastised and ridiculedâbecause morality exists, even in a crowd of online people).
Will it include the IRC chat logs from #burgersandfries? Theyâre a bit long, so maybe you could include the first part of We Hunted The Mammothâs summary:
If youâre looking for evidence of just how carefully â and how duplicitously â the campaign of vilification and harassment now known as #GamerGate was planned, from the very beginning, thereâs perhaps no better place to find it than in the chat log from the IRC channel #burgersandfries.
The channel, launched when the Zoe Quinn âscandalâ first erupted in August, has served as a virtual meeting place for hundreds of 4channers trying to dig up dirt on Quinn and her supporters and spread this information/disinformation as widely as possible.
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You can read the logs if you like. It helps to read from the full text rather than from the careful selection of the We Hunted the Mammoth website which provides a context which they intend to mold your opinion with and, from my browsing around their site, seem intent upon providing examples of pervasive misogyny even when to demonstrate it âexistsâ must involve every careful selection of quotes and even counting humor as legitimate proof.
You know what would be even better than cherrypicking around logs? You could just join the channel and see itâs really a den of misogyny as it is maligned as. Moles and other opportunists have been there from near the start so you certainly wouldnât be the first.
But beyond the fabrications about the IRC, one channel on the internet only makes one slice of the sum of conversation occurring on a topic. While #GamerGate threads were still permitted on 4chanâs video game board, the IRC was only ever commissioned because someone asked for one to be made. The IRC is by no means some behind-the-scenes puppet-master which has orchestrated #GamerGate. If anything, if one wanted to fabricate a message that everything about gamergate is simply made up and has no bearing on reality, they ought to look for thread archives (though this makes it much harder to craft a message of misogyny because of the difficulty of severing each reply from their context, including the post they reply to and replies to the post itself).
When myself and my peers need this much effort to be convinced that secretly, deep-down, we have some vile hatred or fear of women, or that we donât want to see women succeed in the hobbies and pastimes of our interests⌠perhaps the other side is deliberately attempting to create a narrative which favors their own ends.
A list by me would include videos, thread archives, tweets, whatever.
Nelsie, I wouldnât expect anything like that from this newest joiner of Boing Boing - theyâre just another martyr to the cause. 
They are totally here in good faith though. Totally.
Also,
is my new nuMetal-Polka fusion band name.
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Itâs quite presumptuous to say I want to be a martyr. And really if you think my comments are invalid because I mad my account today, so be it. I usually donât participate in site communities anyway; if I make an account itâs to leave feedback, even on sites I read the articles frequently (not boingboing). Iâd rather just have an account for the sole purpose of commenting, and I donât to so often⌠some how this is viewed by you as out of bad faith.
it might have been less problematic for you if there hadnât already been a couple of trollish individuals who wanted to defend the idea that running an individual out of their home in fear for their life was somehow either misunderstood or even laudable, a path you already seem to be edging towards. but please, defeat our expectations.
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The problem is that youâre making scathing accusations without reference to evidence. Donât be surprised that people would resent being conflated with people who represent them in no way.
Really, most people had no clue who Quinn was before the controversy emerged, and it was the inability for any news outlets to report the facts (instead of refraining from covering at all and then stifling people discussing suspicions and conversations of people then trying to find out themselves). This led to a massive snowball effect. The issue from the beginning wasnât so much about Quinn herself, but rather a confirmation for many people of a sneaking suspicion that relations among reporters and the reported in gaming, and the practices by which they operate werenât merely as they would like to be perceived by the public.
Quinn ultimately is a catalyst; to see the revelations for many people seemed to be the discovery of a flagrant example of journalists overstepping what they see as accepted bounds. And eventually once the initial fervor cooled down and people could focus on exactly what the target at hand is, a conscious effort to make it not about Quinn emerged. However, media outlets still see this entire issue as the giant internet shitstorm it was in mid August in which Quinn was dead-center, whereas the reaction to the revelations/gamergate moved on to an effort to make substantial changes. Even the Cracked article Doctorow quotes from has the false conception that everyone is still fucking worked up over Zoe Quinn. Zoe Quinn? Who? Iâm sick of reading that name!
Oh really? Itâs just that the flaming misogyny got in the way just at the beginning there? I see. Well, I for one am glad that the âinitial fervorâ has died down and everyone has moved on to dogpile on Nathan Grayson and Kotaku.
Except thatâs not what happened. Nothing even close to the magnitude of BS has been hurled at him (I even had to go look up his name, because itâs all about the âQuinnspiracyâ) and heâs not had to leave his home in fear of his life. Thereâs been no massive blowback against Kotaku either. Why do you think that is? Why is Quinn the focus? Surely, if Grayson had (and he didnât >.<) traded positive reviews for sexual favours, then he should be the one everyone is gunning for - that would be some massively bad journalistic ethics and one would expect him to be properly chastised.
But no one went after him. It was all about Quinn. Why do you think that is*? Seriously, Iâd love to know.
(*Hint: Itâs because she doesnât have a penis)
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iâm sure you are. that puts a human face on the misery caused by the behavior you, apparently, wish to gloss over.
you havenât done much to defeat those expectations yet. a clear and convincing denunciation of the tactics used against ms. quinn would go a long way towards doing so but so far you seem to be pursuing any course but that.
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If youâve been involved since before â#gamergateâ and think it is silly, then why are you on here to defend it? Why not just accept that particular hashtag seems to been too closely associated with an asshole ex-boyfriend siccing a small mob of awful people on his ex-girlfriend? This is an article about how the #gamergate tag is bullshit and is corrupted. You think itâs a silly tag anyway, why not continue to have the conversation without the tag?
We all know there is corruption in, well, almost everything. How could that possibly be avoided in media or art reviews where we have someone who is basically be paid to tell us their opinion? If you find a reviewerâs opinions to be unaligned with yours, you just donât take the advice of that reviewer. If reviewers are taking heaps of money or accepting trips or fancy dinners or other incentives to give good reviews, publicize that if you care about the cause, but basically this has been the norm in movie reviews for decades and all you can do is realize that whenever you read a review (or fight for a society where there arenât people with fantastically outsized influence due to their money).
This is something I feel you really need some perspective on: Suppose you were getting hundreds of people tweeting at you a day, some of whom were just there to insult you, some of whom were there to threaten you, and some of whom had a genuine disagreement with you that they expressed reasonably about the same topic that the threats and insults were connected to. Could you be reasonably forgiven for mistaking the third for one of the first two? Unless you are a good friend of hers, there is no reason for her to engage you, and no reason for her to put the time and effort into your messages required to tell whether they are reasonable or awful.
One might even suggest that messaging someone you donât have any connection with to tell them that you think they are doing it wrong when they are receiving death and rape threats is unreasonable and kind of awful.
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iâm sure you are. that puts a human face on the misery caused by the behavior you, apparently, wish to gloss over.
you havenât done much to defeat those expectations yet. a clear and convincing denunciation of the tactics used against ms. quinn would go a long way towards doing so but so far you seem to be pursuing any course but that.
Abuse is always abhorrent. I am more than willing to denounce the abuse targeted at Zoe by a select few. Hmm, but thatâs not the only abuse going on here. I mean, if a woman had gone public with evidence of abuse by her partner, Iâm sure weâd all be denouncing him. Perhaps youâll join me in denouncing the abuse that Zoe Quinn dealt to her boyfriend? But⌠you lot arenât⌠youâre blaming the victim? Oh, wait, thatâs right. Itâs ok if itâs a guy being abused? Or maybe youâll go with âemotional abuse isnât real abuseâ? Or perhaps your angle is âThe evidence shows nothing!â in an obvious display of not reviewing the evidence. Or maybe youâll just ignore the thing as a âprivate affairâ, completely disregarding an abuse survivors struggle and warning to others.
Obviously your perspective is bullet proof, and youâll ignore this entirely with a careless shrug, but I donât expect much more. After all, a woman was abused on twitter, as a result of his publicly revealing her abuse. Itâs HIS FAULT! Humbabella just called an abuse survivor an âassholeâ. He went public with all the horrendous shit that happened to him, and people that donât know him and havenât read what he said are insulting him. Who are the real abusers?
Lets not let logic get in the way of a good argument shield. It doesnât matter what else has been said or done⌠thereâs a woman, that we all like, thatâs had some nasty stuff said to her. So now everything that she says is right and true, and everyone that disagrees with her is wrong and an arsehole. Good job, you truly do deserve each others company.
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Mainly the ones sending someone death threats, Iâd say.
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you forgot the careless shrug. It never ceases to amaze me how resistant people can be to reason.
Iâll just repeat my last paragraph:
Lets not let logic get in the way of a good argument shield. It doesnât matter what else has been said or done⌠thereâs a woman, that we all like, thatâs had some nasty stuff said to her. So now everything that she says is right and true, and everyone that disagrees with her is wrong and an arsehole. Good job, you truly do deserve each others company.
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