every discussion i’ve seen that relates in any way to #gg has developed an excrescence of new members defending the motives of the harassers involved in that cesspool. many of those new accounts were described as sockpuppets by our friendly moderator falcor. your cognitive approach to this seems to me to be the concern troll version of the arguments they were making. the comment you were replying to in this case was mostly to point out to funkdaddy that you could not have made a first post on the issue before today because you weren’t a member before today.
as far as i’m concerned you should feel free to state your views but be aware that others here will also feel free to critique those views.
It’s interesting. I’m seeing people deny that GG was a directed hate campaign when I’ve also seen obvious astroturf being laid on very nearly site I’ve run across that has covered it. (Most of it seems to be in concern troll mode now: damage control through FUD.)
It’s also interesting that the focal point of the campaign, i.e., Zoe Quinn, was anything but a good example of “bedding your way into good coverage” - that accusation has proven to be quite indefensible just by the timing of what few events there were (as confirmed by lamentable ex- himself in some of the rolling retractions he’s been putting out as well as what articles were published about her games). That in itself should point out the nature of the GG campaign.
I’d point out that what she was accused of (as “plausible” cover for a full harassment campaign) is small potatoes compared to some of the majors actually buying good coverage (which GG quite ignored). And even this is small potatoes compared to the corporate cultures within the industry itself. (See Actual ethical issues in video-games as one of many articles on the matter. The title should have been “…in the video-game industry”, as that was the subject material covered by the article.)
As an aside on the ostensible problem GG was hiding behind, bought coverage is by no means unique to the games industry: it’s endemic to all trade journalism, and has been ever since I can remember (I speak here as someone who was a trade magazine editor in the '80s), so I am not going to get my knickers in a knot when it manifests itself in the games world. Caveat emptor.
When you want to discuss and try to ‘explain’ why something vile, disgusting, and hateful is actually ok - you look like an asshole.
The only people that get an exception to this rule are defense attorneys - because they are required to make our justice system work. And parents of monsters - they get a pass as well. Take a hint from the neighbors of serial killers - ‘OMG they seemed so normal and nice - I didn’t know they were a monster’ - then bow out.
There’s been one game artist who’s done some interviews in support of GamerGate in which he is outraged that people are trying to censor his art by asking him to draw women with clothes on.
However, despite the snarky comments you’re getting, people like that guy seem to be a small minority among actual devs. Developers on the whole seem much more inclined to be rational, or at least concerned enough with their image that they don’t want to be associated with GamerGate. GG is mostly a thing with users, not developers.
Regardless of the many circular arguments being made so far, the tweets sent, still seriously warrant the involvement of law enforcement.
In what conceivable universe would anyone consider multiple lines of violent threats just lolz. I read that, and as a gun toting redneck, would want LEO/someone looking for whomever sent them.
I’ll never be a SJW or whatever, too stuck in some of my ways, but goodness this pisses me off.
Imo Zoe Quinn mostly blew up because people want to believe it. Like you’ve said, the major gaming sites have been receiving all sorts of incentives for good reviews. Even game journalists from those major sites have commented on the incestuous relation between the game press and devs/publishers more than a couple times.
Throw in a woman who has allegedly cheated on her boyfriend with gaming journalists and indiecade staff (indie awards have had a lot of drama around them and more than a couple people (including Zoe Quinn prior to GG) that people love to hate) and you had a story that people wanted to believe regardless of how plausible it was.
I kind of wonder what would have happened if the gamejournopro list had leaked before the Zoe Quinn story blew up. People seemed equally willing to see that conspiracy, and I’m sure that even without quinn they could have dug up some discussion in that email list that would have started a conspiracy discussion. A different starting point for this could have sparked an entirely different kind of debate. Or an even bigger mess if Quinn’s story blew up in the middle of that.
I think that quite a lot of them have been duped by the guys on the IRC channel. It’s not at all hard for a small group to get a large group to repeat their talking points for them.
Please quote where I’ve done that. Accusing someone of wrong doing without providing evidence is something that most would consider “vile, disgusting, and hateful.” Is it really so hard to actually address the words that you’re responding to instead of rephrasing them to suit your own purposes?
Eh, the kind of coordination, narrative building and image control that people are implying is actually pretty hard to pull off.
A dozen guys on 4chan can’t force people how to think about something. Also, this is again, a problem of attributing the same qualities from a part to the whole; just because people are repeating the same lines doesn’t mean their intent is the same.
But even if you get beyond that, if you step back for a minute, rub the sleep out of your eyes and think about what you’re implying these guys have pulled off, it’s ridiculous. This is the kind of stuff that people accuse the government, corporations, major political parties, the illuminati and (lol) the gaming press of doing. And it was all allegedly planned in an IRC channel with no password.
Yup. That part of the campaign was well thought out: there are a fair number of misogynists in the community. Quinn was already getting harassed on a regular basis for the sin of being a female games programmer (who also had regrettable taste in men, apparently - hopefully she’s doing better for herself now).
It didn’t, which is a tip-off as to what GG was actually about: a pure hate campaign, much like what this article is about. The timing of events and the documentary evidence puts lie to any other interpretation. It doesn’t take brains to organise a campaign of hate and harassment; it just takes having enough time on one’s hands and a desire to do someone else dirt.
I don’t understand what sort of monster would make these sort of public threats. Serious or not. I’ve been mad at people. I’ve flamed and attacked people online. I’ve never actually threatened bodily harm to anyone, IRL or online. Either I’ve never been that mad or someone has lost touch with how to behave in reality.
Gamersgate was started in 4chan - by the same people that are in those chat logs oddly enough - the fact that they use IRC to communicate is well known. Apparently you either are trying to cover that up or don’t know about it - I always assume the best in people so I’ll assume you just don’t know. That being the case you are throwing out arguments about things that have already been vetted as nonsense because they don’t make sense to you. Which is just defending evil.
No one said Adam Baldwin was in a conspiracy - that’s a strawman (as you so eloquently put it) and a redirect at trying to save face when you defend the undefendable.
Again when you make excuses for people who do this crap you shouldn’t expect people to treat your opinion with any respect. Anytime there are a group of people who are radicalized and do things like make death threats - there will always be an ‘us’ and ‘them’ - thankfully our society is still civilized enough to make the ‘us’ group the larger majority.
You say this - but you also said this:
So death threats - that you say have nothing to do with gamersgate - but then you say happened because it was her fault for attacking gamersgate - so you are rambling trying to find a solid ground to talk on because when you defend the vile, disgusting, and hateful - you end up finding no solid ground from which to do so. Then you go on…
This is what gamersgate is about - a woman - who cheated on her boyfriend. Game journalism is crap - and in fact not a single thing that came up over the allegations against her would even raise an eyebrow among the stories that are out there from the past.
Simple google search for you - type ‘corruption in game journalism’ and not only do you find worse stories (like the guy from eurogamer who was fired for not giving a good review to a game that paid for one a couple of years ago) - but you find stories about it going back to 1987! Computer Gaming world back in the day was the only rag that made a point about keeping the advertising and reviewing separate - good ole Johnny Wilson was the only one above board in a sea of crappola - so this isn’t some new thing - there are literally dozens of stories with huge real smoking guns to wrap the ‘movement’ around - yet it’s about a girl - who cheated on her boyfriend - but didn’t actually buy a review with the sex - oh and a woman who got paid by other people to make some videos that are critical of games.
That’s the point - if an article about gamersgate can get you death threats - then it is about gamersgate and it’s not the fault of people brave enough to post them.
[quote]Yup. That part of the campaign was well thought out: there are a fair
number of misogynists in the community. Quinn was already getting
harassed on a regular basis for the sin of being a female games
programmer (who also had regrettable taste in men, apparently -
hopefully she’s doing better for herself now). [/quote]
This is the kind willingness to believe in conspiracy that allowed people to believe the Quinspiracy nonsense imo. The idea that it had to be an organized campaign when people have been treating women in the games industry poorly for quite a while strains credibility.
[quote] didn’t, which is a tip-off as to what GG was actually about: a pure
hate campaign, much like what this article is about. The timing of
events and the documentary evidence puts lie to any other
interpretation. It doesn’t take brains to organise a campaign of hate
and harassment; it just takes having enough time on one’s hands and a
desire to do someone else dirt.[/quote]
I think that’s reading a bit too far into it. It didn’t leak because there wasn’t a right wing nut job with an agenda to do some digging. Pretty much all the info before that came from people involved in the stories.
Now you’re straining my credulity. I’ve been around long enough to see this sort of nonsense before. Pre-Internet, what was done to Quinn was done as whisper campaigns, or as the assertion of a Big Lie (à la McCarthy). McCarthyism wasn’t a vast conspiracy either, you know. There were enough people who wanted to believe old Joe.
It doesn’t take much to get things going: just a few spiders in the middle of a social web that has enough willing believers sitting on its periphery to take the ball and run with it. That describes this situation to a tee.
Michael, when you seem to be digging a hole, the best way out is not to keep digging.
Perhaps you can put it down to the fact that the Australian tech industry is less sexist than some others, but I doubt that’s true. In my time in the industry I simply came across very few women at any level. I was not in big companies, I didn’t tend to work with big companies. The only women I did tend to meet were sales people however and I think that’s saying something.
Are you paying any attention at all?! Or is this just all about you and your perceptions? Holy shit. This isn’t the first time this has been spoken about! Not by far. If you have no idea what it’s like, you’re not paying attention. Well you’re paying attention to what goes on in *your * little bubble, of course… but that’s it,
