Mother Jones has a big story on #GamerGate. As it goes on it tells me some things I didn’t know.
Sarkeesian noted recently that she has been “subjected to the worst harassment I’ve ever faced” as part of a convoluted conflict known as #Gamergate, which has been roiling the gaming industry since August. Playing out primarily on social media, #Gamergate centers around several women who work in the industry and have criticized its dominant macho culture and frequent sexualization of women. Their critique has met with intense harassment and bullying. The FBI is currently investigating the threats against Sarkeesian and others, according to Vice.
Note, again, how familiar that is – their critique has met with intense harassment and bullying. Our critique always is. It’s become normal and routine – greeting feminist criticism of macho culture and frequent sexualization of women with organized campaigns of intense harassment and bullying. It’s almost as if we’re just plain not allowed to say some things should change.
Most of the viciousness comes from anonymous trolls. However, a couple of particular players have helped inflame the situation:
Adam Baldwin, perhaps best known for portraying paranoid mercenary Jayne Cobb in Firefly and for voicing strident political views on social media, chimed in:
Patterns of Failure: #GunGrabbers exploit dead children to advance their political agenda. Anti- #GamerGate’rs exploit anon-troll threats.
— Adam Baldwin (@AdamBaldwin) October 12, 2014
Hi @BoingBoing: What hard evidence do U have @Spacekatgal was “targeted [by #Gamergate] with credible threats after speaking out on sexism”?
— Adam Baldwin (@AdamBaldwin) October 12, 2014
Someone else who has helped inflame the situation is, shamingly, the former academic Christina Hoff Sommers.
Milo Yiannopoulos, associate editor at Breitbart.com, also helped fuel the haters with a blog post in which he declared “an army of sociopathic feminist programmers and campaigners, abetted by achingly politically correct American tech bloggers, are terrorising the entire community.”
Sociopathic???
Though #Gamergate first caught fire on 4chan, it exploded on more mainstream social media outlets such as Reddit and Twitter, which have been criticized for providing a platform for its worst elements. On Saturday, for example, developer Brianna Wu left her home after a Twitter user sent her a string of threats including a pledge to choke her to death with her husband’s penis. Though Twitter has suspended those accounts, critics argue it could do much more by, say, actively detecting hostile behavior, limiting fake accounts, and making it easier to block users. Twitter spokesman Nu Wexler referred Mother Jones to the company’s user rules banning targeted abuse. He declined to say how many accounts have been suspended in relation to #Gamergate or if any have been referred to law enforcement.
That’s insulting. The company’s “user rules banning targeted abuse” are a joke, because the company acts as if they’re not there. Targeted abuse is what many people use Twitter for. It’s full of targeted abuse; targeted abuse is the air it breathes. Spokesman Nu Wexler showing Mother Jones the rules is just a contemptuous evasion.
On Reddit, a group devoted to #Gamergate has more than 11,000 subscribers. Many of the comments in these threads are misogynistic, and Zoe Quinn has produced logs of Reddit chatrooms that show gamers planning to hack her personal accounts. Even so, Reddit’s moderators haven’t shut down its main #Gamergate page. (In contrast, a #Gamergate forum on Github has been disabledby the site’s staff.) “We received a number of contacts related to this issue,” Reddit spokeswoman Victoria Taylor wrote in response to questions from Mother Jones. “Anything that we found or that was reported to us that broke our rules was removed and the user banned.” But it seems that the fallout from #Gamergate hasn’t prompted much concern or soul searching at Reddit: “We do not plan on changing any site policies due to the occurrence of this event.”
Of course not. It’s just bullying of women; it doesn’t matter; nobody gives a shit.
Pushback on the nastiness from the world of gaming journalism has included comments from Stephen Totilo, the editor in chief of Kotaku (and #Gamergate’sjournalistic enemy No. 1), who published a piece criticizing the movement and its tactics:
“All of us at Kotaku condemn the sort of harassment that’s being carried out against critics, developers, journalists, and other members of the gaming community. If you’re someone who harasses people online, you’re not a part of the community we want to foster at Kotaku, and you’re actively hurting people and driving important voices away from the video game scene. Enough.”
But Christina Hoff Sommers is still cheering them on.
Baldwin doesn’t see the difference between pointing something out and exploiting it. Just exactly like right wingers claiming pointing out racism is racism. It takes a special kind of blindness to do that.
Github closes them down because its main function is a repository and connection place for programmers to share code. If they get a reputation as a drivel-filled mess of hate crimes, it’ll hurt them.
Twitter, Reddit, 4chan, Facebook for that matter, all benefit from storms of gossip / clicks / mobs. It’s all “engagement” and ad revenue. Hate gins up their business. It doesn’t damage it at all.
When are we going to start recognizing that these people are profiting off using women as bait? Formulaic denials are just a cost of doing business.
The solution is, of course, obvious, if paved with all sorts of practical objections and problems: hold “content providers” to a higher standard, and hold them directly liable if they fail to take reasonable steps to prevent active incitement.
If we can regulate intellectual property on the web, we can regulate death threats.
This Gawker article on the Baldwins and CH Sommers types who have latched onto Gamergate is a thing of beauty:
Terrorising????
@ Silentbob:
It’s always projection with these people, isn’t it?