We had a brief intrusion by a few trolls over #gamergate: they were trying so hard to seem polite and rational while being obsessive and repetitive and tedious, clearly hiding their true goals under a veil of politeness. I’ve seen similar behavior from cultists, and it’s rather creepy.
Well, it turns out that that is actually a declared part of their strategy. When they aren’t trying to interface with normal people, they’re utterly nuts. Here’s an example: a document put together by some guy or group called @RogueStarGamez, to instruct people in how to talk to ordinary humans so the crazy doesn’t leak out. Sorry, too late, I’ve read your programming manual, and you people are scary freaky sick.
It’s a *chan psyops game, full of militaristic jargon and cartoons: they’re calling whatever they’re doing “#OperationVoxPopuli”, with other sections title “#OperationShillsOfShilliconValley”, “#OperationWolfBlitzerKrieg”, “#OperationGithubExodus”, and “#OperationDiggingDiGRA”. It’s all deeply ridiculous. These people are jokes struggling to put on a serious face to defend their precious man-boy lifestyle.
An example:
Be not crazy, Uncle Roguestar
Too late, man, too late. I hope someone at CNN sees this bullshit, and then they’ll know to dismiss the Children’s Crusade.
But recall that one of their messages was that no, they aren’t misogynists — they just care about ethical journalism. They’re lying. Here are their stated goals:
Purpose:
To more effectively dismantle sites like Kotaku, Polygon, and Gamasutra..etc. To let various companies know of the bad press and stop advertising there To further harm the images of these sites
Ethical journalism is not about silencing people who disagree with you — this is a censorship campaign, pure and simple. We can see through your mask…and boy, do you make it easy.
Right. Short form: If you’re going to treat women like they are people, we’re against you, Bros Unite!
PZ OP
Well, that confirms what I have surmised since this whole mess started. The misogynist fuckwits trying to hide behind an extremely thin veneer of respectability. And failing miserably, once one knows the dog whistles. It is extremely hard to not to let dog whistles leak out, as any misogynist posting here knows.
Hmmm, I wonder what ansatz has to say about this…
Tony:
I don’t. I already know – same shit, different day.
If you really wanted ethical video game journalism, wouldn’t the first step be to decouple the game manufacturers and the journalistic outlets? Go to any major video game review site, and the ads you’ll see are all from game manufacturers. The top video game magazine (Game Informer) is produced, published, and distributed by the top video game retailer (GameStop). Boycotts and blacklists have been threatened over less-than-stellar reviews, and studios paying off reviewers is not uncommon. Large video game news sites have to maintain good relationships with the studios and corporations, or they’ll lose their primary source of ad revenue. All this is largely true of any news/journalism that focuses on a particular industry (see also: comic book news sites). “News” consists primarily of reposted press releases, interviews with industry insiders, and positive reviews, because deviation means loss of access and ad revenue.
There’s plenty of corruption to root out in any industry journalism, but GamerGaters aren’t interested in that. Their definition of “corruption” is straight out of Nathaniel Hawthorne.
I don’t think there is much of a problem with the boycott (or with any boycott in general); to me, it underlies the general point of this very good Jacobin Mag article on the topic:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/10/in-defense-of-gamers/
The “gamers” that are reacting are basically the same old right-wingers, and therefore react how the patriarcal capitalist culture taught them to: by trying to cut off the financial resources so that their conservative culture can remain pristine.
As the article poignantly says:
” Gaming doesn’t have a problem; capitalism has a problem. Rather than seeing them simply as immoral assholes or deluded consumerists, we should take gaming’s advanced wing of hateful trolls seriously as representatives of the reactionary shock troops we will have to defeat to build a more egalitarian society in the games industry, or anywhere else. ”
The problem is not in the boycott, is that we have given the capitalist framework enough power to actually silence people who get boycotted.
I’m not a betting man, but I’d like to think the only significant effect this weapons-grade whinging will have on big advertisers like Kotaku etc., will be to highlight the hair-trigger sociopathy of the spoiled-rotten man-children who think gaming exists solely for their entertainment and validation.
Hopefully, the fact that this global grassroots geekbro dummy-spit was kicked off by the hateful lies perpetrated and publicised by one bitter ex-boyfriend will be far more interesting to these media organs than the petty obsessions and toxic attitudes being expressed.
There is also the problem of the direct harassment the women have been getting. This goes beyond a boycott, to actual threats of criminal behavior on the part of those sending those threats. Don’t ever forget that.
There is another MRA dog whistle in the first document.
So in the same document that goes on a length about not acting like a raging asshole, or being an asshole to people who do not want to boycott, idiot author just cant be bothered to hide his true belief that being an asshole about traumatizing people is the height of reasonable and ethical behavior.
I recognize some of the tactics in that document. They’re also to be found in CIA and KGB training materials. What horrid, horrid little people.
Being one of those socially awkward people that you hear about when people are using us to defend rampant misogyny, I’m a bit baffled by this. Who needs to be told to be polite and personable? (I assume that they meant personable rather than personal? It seems as though the only definitions of personal that would apply here would be obvious by the fact that they’re communicating with another human.) Who needs to be told to make legitimate arguments? I understand that not everybody does make legitimate arguments, but I’m pretty sure that most people at least intend to do so when they’re trying to make a real point. I sometimes need to be pushed to enter a room full of strange people, but I somehow managed to work out the value of engaging in normalish human ways and making legitimate arguments on my own.
…fucking hell, they’ve got a “recommended soundtrack.” I am completely failing to even.
Oh, wow, and they want college credit for this nonsense.
I suppose I could see that if they’re COLLEGE STUDENTs on some form of games design course, but not all COLLEGE STUDENTS, not even those who are gamers, are on that kind of course.
Tom Foss @ 5:
Well said. +8
:snort: It’s waaaaaaaaaaaay longer than a game, dudes!
I am reminded of Anne Jones’s
Sorry, I totally messed up the blockquote. I meant to quote Nerd of Redhead at #8.
Also among far-right activists.
Athywren @11:
Being advised to “make legitimate arguments” and to seek college credit for their whacktivism? These brosogynists smell more and more like creationist stooges every day. They even caps-lock their VERY IMPORTANT WORDS!
I don’t care if you do have some semblance of a valid point (and I don’t agree at all that these gits do), when your very detailed operations procedure (which you apparently need, because maybe you’ve never spoken to grownups before) looks like a cross between a cult pamphlet/evangelist tract and a psi-ops manual, surely you have to wonder if you’ve chosen the right side. Reminds me of the famous Mitchell and Webb sketch (which has come up more than once around here of late) where two SS officers are looking at their black uniforms with skulls on the collars and wondering “Hey – what if we’re actually the badguys?”
Why aren’t you talking about the threats of rape and other violence as “censorship”? Or, do you think they are appropriate?
From the article quoted at 6 by Alessandro Tavecchio
No, it’s pretty clear that gaming has a problem and it’s name is misogyny. This boycott is an act of misogyny, by and for misogynists in an effort to keep the ranks of gaming and game development as close to %100 male with a few token decoratve chill girls as possible. It has nothing to do with anything but misogyny so spare us any further red-herrings that blame the misogyny on capitalism.
Tom Foss (#5)
The first step would be to stop defining “gamers” as people who pride themselves on playing exactly the sort of shitty game franchises being pushed by the AAAs and their game reviewer shills. Like, if they were actually serious about the corruption thing, I’d expect them to be going to people like Quinn and Sarkeesian—people with a stake in changing the industry or who are already unafraid to criticize games—for help.
Slight censorship tangent (you’ve been warned).
The difference between PZ being accused of censorship and this crop of whining idiots being accused of censorship is this: PZ’s alleged “censorship” constitutes him blocking idiots from tweeting or contacting him or commenting on his blog, which is a right that anyone has. PZ knows he can’t shut people up on sites he doesn’t manage (i.e. 99.999r% of the internet), so the whiners’ cries of censorship ring empty; his attitude is “Don’t expect to say whatever you want in my house; watch my few simple rules or sod off and say it elsewhere.”
On the other hand, this boycott fiasco is a concerted effort to shut people up across the board, on multiple sites, to essentially prevent certain points of view or topics being expressed or written about. It is an attempt to silence certain voices and opinions across a wide range of locations, purely because the campaigners disagree with those opinions and want to shut down anyone who voices them.
When I am blocking incoming contact or commentary, I’m standing inside my house and shutting the door in your face.
It’s my house and I get to choose who comes in the door. That’s home defence.
When a group of people want to block outgoing contact or commentary of a certain kind from numerous sites, they are standing at the front doors of other peoples’ houses and threatening to board up the windows if they don’t comply.
It’s not their house but they’re trying to control who leaves. That’s a siege.
Why aren’t you talking about the threats of rape and other violence as “censorship”? Or, do you think they are appropriate?
They are censorship. I don’t think anyone here on pharyngula thinks they are appropiate or legitimate in any way.
They are harassment and this boycott is obviously motivated by unapologetic sexism.
However, I still find disagreeable the idea of comparing a boycott to censorship; even if it is, that’s a fault of the capitalistic system, not of the gamers in themselves (contrary to the harassement, which is obviously their fault).
This boycott is an act of misogyny, by and for misogynists in an effort to keep the ranks of gaming and game development as close to %100 male with a few token decoratve chill girls as possible. It has nothing to do with anything but misogyny so spare us any further red-herrings that blame the misogyny on capitalism.
Again, I disagree. The Jacobin article makes my point better than I ever could: gaming is a giant capitalistic mass phenomena, with revenues and mainstream attention that now often surpassess that of music. The mainstream culture is patriarchal and racist. Capitalism amplifies that by giving voice to those that have more economic power i.e. not females and minorities, but white cis dudebros.
It’s not a just a strange coincidence that Gamergate is supported by CHSommers, Breitbart, Alex Jones, that homophobic Baldwin brother, etc. It’s the effect of the right wing conservative state of mind on an insular community that is in the last 15 years being thrown in mainstream light.
It was not, in any way, supposed to be a red herring to move the conversation away from misogyny, which, again, I believe to be a problem that exists in “gamer culture”, just not a symptom of anything specific of that culture, but of western capitalistic culture as (As evidenced, for instance the recent happenings in the atheists and comic book communities). I apologize if I gave that impression. I was just put off by PZ use of the term “censorship”.
This whole mess wasn’t even on my radar until I heard about the harassment of women done over it. The idea that there are a lot of immature assholes playing games is not even remotely new to me or anyone else who has played much online. Trying to make well over a decade (just in my personal experience) of ubiquitous, pointless abuse un-happen so it can not exist sounds more like another take on a standard comedy plot than a social campaign. “Let’s take some characters, make them believe something completely ludicrous, and then watch as they try to fit this nonsense into the world around them.”
I think I wasted an hour or so at this point trying to figure out what the whole point was until I realized it was the same pathetic, immature nonsense from the same people. I don’t think I could have designed any better way to highlight the idiocy than what these people are doing to themselves.
A. Tavecchio,
You’ve got a good point about capitalism, but your argument reads to me like you’re taking the problem we’re talking about (misogyny, specifically in the gaming community) and trying to derail it to address a different problem (unfettered capitalism) because it’s closer to your interests. It seems to me that there is plenty of nasty misogyny to go around in non-capitalist cultures both historically and today. You’re absolutely right that capitalism is part of the vector here — the gamergate bros are using the tools of capitalism to damage feminist writers — but I have no doubt that if we lived in a non-capitalist society the gamergate bros would be using whatever tools they had at hand (the document linked to in the OP pretty much makes this explicit). If we were in Stalinist Russia, they’d be denouncing the feminist websites as anti-revolutionary. If we were in theocratic Iran, they would be condemning the feminist websites for promoting Western, anti-Koranic ideals. If we were in mediaeval England or Germany, they’d be accusing the feminists of witchcraft.
The “Operation” term comes from Anonymous/LulzSec jargon.
Adult women already buy more games than white cis dudebros. In total, they’re close to half of the video game buying public. The issue is not merely economic.
*I mean, in total, WOMEN are…
I promise this will be my last post then i won’t derail anything anymore ever. I even managed to use the preview button and not mangle the blockquote.
Your analogy is very good and I mostly agree with anything you say, but to me, it fails to actually underline the problem.
Why do these people have the power to actually go and seige houses? It’s because, simple by being the numerical majority of consumers, the capitalistic system, thru advertisers, actually gives them the power. They have the money, they control the platform, even when they are not supposed to.
I boycotted Ender’s Game, because of Orson Scott Card. The movie, thankfully, was a giant flop. Was I censoring Card? Not really: being a wealthy rich man with a giant number of followers, he is completely unscathed.
Now, this action, targeting advertiser, might actually impede some minorities from having sympatetic voices in games media. As I said in #14 with a mangled block quote:
It might become censorship in so far as the sexist assholes are the majority. But this is true of western capitalistic culture in general, and I feel that singling out gamegaters as “censors” is kinda like creationist accusing evilutionist of censoring “Intelligent Design”.
Now, in my country, Italy, creationist are thankfully a numerical minority (about 5% of people, mostly rich conservative catholics). Would my boycotting of a newspaper reviewing positively the latest Dembski book by complaining to the newspaper advertisers count as censorship?
I feel like most of the times boycotts are actually the only weapon you have in a system that is rigged to favour rich influential people, an don’t really count as censorship.
But I see how you might disagree.
Quit sounding like a morally bankrupt liberturd, an equivalent to a doctrinaire misogynist. The boycott is nothing but a side-show. The real action is shutting down the criticism from inferior humans like women. If you don’t see that, you have nothing cogent to say on the subject, as your post proves. Your trivial argument is dismissed as a strawperson argument….
The good news is that a document designed to affect a social effect using psychological principles probably tends to work better when the principles being used are laid out openly, and are not being used to hide deceptive behavior.
After all these companies are being manipulated by some really awful people and it would suck to be seen as allies of the sort that produced that huge 4chan info dump. Intel might not want to accidentally be an ally to people willing to harass and abuse women in gaming. If a psychological pressure point were to be pushed, a company looks much worse when associated with suffering than bad journalism.
Even on this front these misogynistic fools are likely to be outmaneuvered.
Aw geez. In one thread we have a denialist arguing that GamerGate is about corruption in the gaming industry.
In this one we have a denialist arguing that GamerGate is about capitalism.
This is already old.
Alessandro Tavecchio @22:
If GamerGate were about capitalism, why has so much effort centered on silencing and slut-shaming women? That’s not attacking the so-called capitalistic roots, it’s attacking women. It’s a misogynistic attack. If you’re going to try and argue otherwise, just stop and go away. It ain’t gonna work here.
Misogyny is not a problem limited to the gaming community, nor is it limited to western capitalistic cultures. Misogyny is a worldwide problem. It is found in cultures and countries big and small. Stop minimizing the harm of misogyny.
I wouldn’t use the word censorship here, because we’ve spent enough time over the last several years explaining that it’s not censorship to, for instance, ban someone from a blog or boycott an author or close comments on a YouTube video, because you’re not entitled to use those private platforms under some umbrella of freeze peach. The major difference between this and, say, contacting Facebook’s advertisers or Rush Limbaugh’s sponsors to tell them what they’re supporting, is that the tactic is being used dishonestly by a bunch of misogynist assholes. As ever, the forces of bigotry and kyriarchy adopt the language and tactics of social justice, because that language resonates and those tactics work (see also: ‘Pitters and Hoff Summers calling themselves “real/factual/equity feminists,” Republicans talking about the party of Lincoln, etc.).
But I also don’t know what a more accurate term would be. It’s a campaign to put pressure on advertisers in order to punish people for having dissenting opinions (or, more broadly, being uppity women) in public. It’s not so much censorship as bullying, which really shouldn’t be surprising.
I agree, Nerd @29, I think this “boycott to protect real journalism” or however they’re flogging it is a veneer to conceal the real goal of shutting women up – the fear behind it, presumably, being that gaming will suffer if feminist critiques of the industry are taken seriously*. I’m not sure the whining idiot man-children hold any realistic hopes of denying Kotaku etc. significant ad revenue or clicks and I’m also the opposite of convinced that the whole thing is about journalistic integrity. If they’re so into honest gaming journalism and legitimate reviews, they could’ve picked almost any point within the last two decades to tackle the problem of ad copy masquerading as a review (to name but one common gripe). But of course they’re not crusading to clean up gaming journalism or any such thing; if they were they wouldn’t have used a web of flat-out lies about a female game developer, spun by some ex-boyfriend in an adolescent rage, as a catalyst for their activism.
The situations with Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian are both proof positive that gaming has a serious misogyny problem and a hair-trigger for psychosis. With Quinn, a global offensive by outraged gamerbros was kicked off by a pile of steaming bullshit dropped by a butthurt ex; with Sarkeesian, all she had to do to attract death threats and graphic rape/torture fantasies (not to mention the spluttering incredulity of Phil Mason, aka Posterboy for Misogynist Stupidity) was calmly point out narrative tropes in games that aren’t even unique to the medium, and are in fact equally common in TV, movies, books. comics and other media.
_____________________
*Considering other critiques of the gaming industry have had little to no effect on, for example, the amount of violence portrayed in games, I’m struggling to understand their terror.
I agree, Nerd @29, I think this “boycott to protect real journalism” or however they’re flogging it is a veneer to conceal the real goal of shutting women up – the fear behind it, presumably, being that gaming will suffer if feminist critiques of the industry are taken seriously*. I’m not sure the whining idiot man-children hold any realistic hopes of denying Kotaku etc. significant ad revenue or clicks and I’m also the opposite of convinced that the whole thing is about journalistic integrity – if they’re so into honest gaming journalism and legitimate reviews, they could’ve picked almost any point within the last two decades to tackle the problem of ad copy masquerading as a review (to name but one common gripe).
But of course they’re not crusading to clean up gaming journalism or any such thing; if they were they wouldn’t have used a web of flat-out lies spun by some ex-boyfriend in an adolescent rage as a catalyst for their activism.
The situations with Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian are both proof positive that gaming has a serious misogyny problem and a hair-trigger for psychosis. With Quinn, a global offensive by outraged gamerbros was kicked off by a pile of steaming bullshit dropped by a butthurt ex; with Sarkeesian, all she had to do to attract death threats and graphic rape/torture fantasies (not to mention the spluttering incredulity of Phil Mason, aka Posterboy for Misogynist Stupidity) was calmly point out narrative tropes in games that aren’t even unique to the medium, and are in fact equally common in TV, movies, books. comics and other media.
_____________________
*Considering other critiques of the gaming industry have had little to no effect on, for example, the amount of violence portrayed in games, I’m struggling to understand their terror.
“I think we’re dealing with a mob of twelve year old boys”
Who on this site would use a headline: “I think we’re dealing with a mob of women or I think we’re dealing with a mob of blacks” or I think we’re dealing with a mob of lesbians”?
Can someone explain to me the “thinking” that makes it ok to abuse yet another relatively powerless group, twelve year old boys, in this way? A group that, make no mistake, is commonly abused this way in our culture.
Is it not true that this is not about women, blacks, gays, or boys. It is about the way we think, the habit of picking on some group that already suffers some prejudice to make a point….and…. which in doing so serves to reinforce that prejudice.
The more I read, the more I think I’ve fallen through into the mirror universe. Does anyone around here have a goatee that they didn’t have before?
I have to admit, though, that I love the way that people who have totally legitimate and honest issues keep leaving their wedge documents out in the open like this. I mean, if simply paying attention to what a group does is enough to expose their real intentions… well, there’s clearly not a tactical mastermind behind all that.
@A. Tavecchio
Is anyone singling them out? They are the group being discussed here, so obviously they’re going to get mentioned, but I would suggest that the people who consider these boycotts to be censorship would probably also consider things like the proposed boycott of (I think) Oreos for their rainbow coloured biscuits in support of gay rights that some “family” group tried to do as censorship as well. Was that Oreos? Not particularly relevant to the point, but I’m curious now.
Your points about boycotts being a tool of capitalism are true, but not really relevant – people who want to censor will use the tools available to them. In a capitalist society, that means organised boycotts. Their being tools of capitalism won’t change the fact that the motivation was misogynistic. It’s kind of like arguing that, using a jack to wreck somebody’s favourite… garden gnome (shut up, I’m grasping) because you’re upset that their garden isn’t arranged the way you’d like is the fault of the automotive industry. That industry certainly made the jack available to you, but the problem is the bizarre notion that you should control the way they lay out their own garden.
…That got a bit confused, but I think it makes sense?
Yeah, agreeing with Tom @32 here. I am PRO boycott when there’s a chance to shut down someone’s hate speech and send a message (like with Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke a slut). I was happy to see him have to deal with at least some consequence for constantly being such a royal misogynist jackass.
That said, it feels hypocritical to me to be angry that others are using boycotts in a similar way. Boycotts are supposed to be a form of corrective social pressure to “knock off (whatever legal thing is being done/said)” that is angering so many people. The fact that the gamergate dudebros are using this tactic dishonestly is the point that I think we should be distinguishing, not that they are boycotting at all.
Am I missing something here?
Such a shame there was not this much anger about corruption in journalism back in 2001-02 when Judith Miller was doing work for the US government in “justifying” the oncoming wars on Iraq and Afghanistan.
Feel nothing but contempt for people who whine about “journalistic ethics” over such a relatively trivial field like gaming.
Ludicrous:
The “twelve-year old boy” thing goes like this: adults shouldn’t behave like children. Children do – through not fault of their own, mind you – often behave resentfully, selfishly, thoughtlessly and even hatefully towards those who they perceive have wronged them.
In this case, a bunch of adults are doing exactly that – behaving like thoughtless children. I say that not just because of their unhinged hatred, but because they’re jumping on a bandwagon that was started off by a bald-faced lie, which is a clear case of bad judgement. That’s two reasons this whole campaign is childish: overly viseral reactions to a problem that was invented from whole cloth and pinned on an undeserving target.
“Twelve year-old boy” isn’t insulting young boys, it’s calling out childish behaviour in adults. You expect childish behaviour from children, even as you might try to halt, correct or modify it; adults, however, are held to a higher standard of self-awareness and introspection than a child (part of the definition of “adult” is being able to respond on more than an immediate emotional level), so to see an adult behave childishly demands a response.
@Tom Foss, 32
It certainly wouldn’t be censorship for you or me to boycott an author, nor even possibly for the readership of this entire site to do so, but this isn’t a case of people simply deciding not to give their business to various groups. It’s pretty clear that it’s intended to be an orchestrated campaign to utterly destroy (at least the public image of) their targets:
I really don’t think we should pretend that the fact that boycotts can be used reasonably means that using them in order to censor your targets can’t be called censorship.
The Earthbound graphic doesn’t really look that bad to me, it’s just saying “boycott advertisers, be polite” etc. But the gamergate document you linked is pretty out there. For example,
Later, they list over 700 references from DiGRA, the Digital Games Research Association, and ask people to comb them to find every single inaccuracy. Sheesh!
Gamergate is about one whiney tech dudes inability to deal rationally with being rejected by a female gamer tech person. The boycott is to attempt to conceal that fact by making lots of noise in as many places as possible. I hope the official response of the tech companies to this action is to compile every official complainer and IP address into a public database of people who will not ever be offered work in the tech industry due to the desire to avoid HR nightmares.
My response to what I’ve read from these people is utter bafflement. Their screeds read like satire but they seem to think this is a serious “movement” rather than aimless harassment of anyone who wanders into their crosshairs. I suppose this is the internet equivalent of bored kids defacing property and lighting fires after school. Sorry kids, no one’s buying the sincerity of your outrage.
@Tony #3
That’s news to me. I was aware that a couple of 4chan members were posting things about psyops, especially on the board /pol/, during the early days, but anything recent? I’ve been too busy doing other things to follow. One of the things about GamerGate is that the lack of leadership and centralized organization gets you a lot of different groups putting forth whatever their version of goals and campaigns and operations. It’s a bit much for me to follow it all.
Of the several operations that PZ listed off, I’m only aware of #OperationVoxPopuli, and basically only about 20 minutes ago, from the last two pages on the Escapist thread. I didn’t actually read what it was about, something about a mass mailing campaign, twitlonger, or somesuch. It didn’t look like something I was interested in, so eh.
There’s also Operation: Disrespectful Nod, that I’m more familiar with. The name’s basically an in joke in reference to a meme, completely ridiculous, and that’s how a lot of these things are.
It’s less twelve years old boys and more twenty-some kids with a skewed sense of humor. Thankfully none of the names are terrible, but that’s not saying much.
Anyways, I believe that one of the troll that PZ is referring to is me, and it reconfirms my suspicion that disagreement on controversial matters here is taken on bad faith. I can say that I’ve been browsing FTB, particularly Pharyngula and HetPat, for several years now before this incident, so it’s not like I found this network through GamerGate or anything.
I think it was from watching several debates of PZ actually. Then I heard about his blog, searched it up and voila. Ally’s blog I browsed a bit after. He’s a good writer, and is usually detailed in his research.
I don’t always agree with everything PZ and Ally write, but I have a lot of respect for them and their work. PZ’s write-up on the nearly neutral theory of molecular evolution was especially enlightening. It wasn’t really taught when I was in college, so my knowledge of the ‘recent’ advances were terribly limited. And that theory was advanced some decades ago!
So yeah, I learned a lot just browsing. Anything else you wanted to know?
Ansatz, you have ignored lived experiences. You have ignored the enormous subset of gamers that are vile, racist, misogynistic assholes. You have handwaved away the misogynistic and false start of your ‘movement’.
You are NOT arguing in good faith. You are instead ignoring us and our experiences and trying to insist that your shitty movement has only a tiny bit of shit in it, and then do nothing about it. Unfortunately for you, it’s a giant pile of shit with a few sprinkles. If you were being honest, you’d admit that and then attempt, with other, to remove the shitstains from your ‘movement’, or you’d start a movement that doesn’t have roots in misogyny and take with you the other supposedly not shit people. Then you could have something other than shit-and-sprinkles.
For doing it so often, you guys are terrible at playing dumb.
Hank @ 39,
“The “twelve-year old boy” thing goes like this: adults shouldn’t behave like children. Children do – through not fault of their own, mind you – often behave resentfully, selfishly, thoughtlessly and even hatefully towards those who they perceive have wronged them. ”
Hank @35, thanks for your response
Of course children often do behave that way, Women, blacks and lesbians also often behave that way. Why then did the author of the headline choose children as his negative exemplar? Even if there is quantitative evidence that children as group behave more that way (and I wonder if there really is evidence or if it is just a prejudice) it is still not fair to stereotype all children.
My guess is that children are used because they have no lobby, no power to place against it, so we adults get away with it with impunity. People tend to behave less respectfully towards those with less power and no one has less power than children. I think the less power a group has the more it behooves us to take care to not gratuitously hang negative stereotypes on them
Or twenty something kids who never matured to realize women are their equals, and need to accept that fact. Your choice cricket, but anything other than women being equals to every male gamer is prima facie evidence of misogyny, and that goes for you too. Can you admit women are your equal, and deserve the same rights, privileges, and lack of death and rape threats you have? Or, by your tacit inability to do so, show us you are a misogynist fuckwit?
@ludicrous-
And white males very often behave that way as well. There are times when adults (ALL ADULTS) act with an immaturity that is excusable in a child and not in a person who has the sort of responsibilities an adult does. There is much that is tolerated in a child who is still learning, growing, changing and maturing that should NOT be tolerated in an actual adult.
Ansatz @44
The problem is that the few theoretical people who are genuinely concerned about journalistic ethics do themselves a real disservice by continuing to wave #GamerGate as their flag. As has been elaborated on for you repeatedly Ansatz, #GamerGate is born out of the angry reactionary misogyny which remains the public face and voice of #GamerGate. This is the same poisoning of the well that you see in the Men’s Right’s Movements, those who actually are concerned with societal rot inflicted on men smartly try to avoid associating the MRM/MRAs since those movements are stuffed with raging misogyny.
This seems to say some unkind things regarding how cognizant you are of the people who wave the banner of #GamerGate. Your point seems to have been that only a minority of people who identify as part of #GamerGate, but when you admit to not knowing much about the movement and deliberately skim over factions of it your knowledge comes into question. As though it wasn’t in question before.
Boys will be boys eh?
I have a tiny modicum of sympathy for you here, I don’t really line up in terms of culture, perspective, or manners with most of the regulars here. I sort of think people do have hair triggers here. However I only have a small amount of sympathy for you because I actually read your posts, and I can’t read said posts from the last thread without coming to believe you were either arguing in bad faith or from a position of profound ignorance. The way you argued over and over again that #GamerGate somehow wasn’t the eruption of toxic misogyny that it is came across as clueless or trollish.
Do you still believe #GamerGate is actually a grassroots protest against journalistic corruption in the Video Game Reporting?
Dog whistles, again:
Page 9 under the “Operation Preemptive Strike”
Thus, keep talking about capitalism, dudebro. Us SJWs will keep it focused on where the focus needs to be kept, misogynistic dudebros being dudebros, dude….
ludicrous
Stop right there with the derail into mythical anti-child oppression. It is a shameful thing for 12 year olds to act like whiney babies, and it is more shameful for grown ass adults to act as if its perfectly acceptable to behave like playground bullies. Calling a child childish is not an insult, it is an observation of fact. Calling an adult childish is an insult, because it is pointing out that they are failing to behave like a rational adult.
ludicrous
I realise this is something of an obsession with you, but please could you just for once, not attempt to derail a thread in which the child/adult analogy has been made. It’s been explained to you countless times that it is in no way an insult to children, because children are expected to act childishly. It’s an insult to adults who are supposed to have grown out of childish behaviour.
Please stick to the topic at hand.
</OT>
@ludicrous: Yes, the headline is ageist, in a way that we’d all easily recognize even if it were “I think we’re dealing with a mob of doddering old men.”
It’s been acknowledged. Are you done derailing?
I seem to recall (unable to find the quote), that Isaac Asimov found twelve-year-olds were the most obnoxious of his questioners. They were smart enough to know something, but not socialized enough to not try trick “gotcha” questions. The misogynist males remind me of that age. Loudmouthed and over opinionated, but in need of a lot of maturing to be responsible social adults.
ludicrous, are you ever going to post something of substance and on topic? Try it sometime, and stop fucking derailing this thread.
Me @3:
Keep your mouth shut next time.
@44
I must point out Games Journalist integrity was suspect during the infamous Kane and Lynch 2 review malarkey. It’s why Indie gaming and review systems like metacritic became famous. Because we stopped making reviews about large game sites and started doing it ourselves.
To suddenly get mad over a small free game that was designed to raise awareness about depression is quite laughable.
And we know games and the culture is misogynistic, racist and homophobic. No one is doubting that. I myself have pointed out that racism even in games like League of Legends is not punished if enough people report the person of colour being insulted. What we are saying is that we perhaps need to clean up that attitude so that people can enjoy games together rather than PoC, GLBT and Women being forced to pretend to be White, Straight and Male in order to not be specifically targeted by the bigots/trolls.
silverfeather @37:
This is a boycott with the purpose of silencing women and their allies.
You have to look past the boycott and look at the goals of those advocating a boycott. What is their end goal? If it is to correct immoral behavior (like people boycotting Chik-Fil-A because the late Dan Cathy’s company gave money to anti-gay organizations), then the motive is a just one. If the goal is to silence companies that speak out against misogyny and sexism in the gaming industry, then the motive is a not just.
I’m not sure that twelve year old boys deserve this reputation.
Hopefully this will give you some perspective.
While true, that really does not change anything about the criticism of gamergate. Toxic members engaging in abusive and discriminatory behavior still have effects that need to be dealt with. This makes group shaming more valuable as a tool as it pushes responsibility for behavior correction on everyone where it should be.
Humor is often meant to deal with fear and pain so that is not necessarily going to be a good thing depending on the specifics. Often appeals to humor meant to reduce real or possible outrage end up horrifying when one finds out the details.
Trolling describes the emotional effects of behavior, not the specific behavior in question so it is culturally specific in context. You are not a troll because of disagreement. You are a troll because you are distracting from things more important than gaming journalism. Things that this community cares about more than what you want to talk about. Things that are more relevant to the posts in which you have been commenting.
61 was addressing Ansatz
How about we ignore ludicrous’ comments? They aren’t terribly relevant to this thread and it’s a derail.
Ludicrous @47:
It isn’t about power at all; it’s about the different behavioural expectations of adults and children. I think you’re drawing a very long bow accusing people here of using children as a cudgel because they have less power than adults.
As I tried to explain clearly: children behave irrationally and selfishly as a matter of course, because their social skills and self-awareness are in the process of developing. It is not hanging a stereotype on children to say that, compared with adults, they display less social and self-awareness and a greater likelihood to act rashly. It is simply a fact.
Adults are expected to have higher levels of both of these traits, so when we see a bunch of adults behaving rashly and selfishly as they are regarding Gamergate, we say “You are acting like children.” We don’t say this to insult children or to use them to bash the adults in question (two very objectionable and meritless accusations), we are saying to the adults “As an adult, you have no excuse to behave like a child.”
It’s very, very simple and, frankly, I think you’re seeking arguments where there are none.
Tony! @63: agreed. That’ll be my last comment on the topic.
I don’t think it’s a derail. I think you reap what you sow. Lay that derision on those 12 year old boys and give them a couple years and guess what they think it’s just fine to toss it back except it gets aimed at girls and women.
(OK, fine, 65 wasn’t my last comment)
Ludicrous, it IS a derail when you refuse to acknowledge when you’ve been barking up the wrong tree. Harping on an issue when it’s already been explained that it’s (a) tangential to the subject of the OP and (b) not even a valid concern anyway is indeed derailing, because it focuses the thread’s attention on you and your hobby-horse, as opposed to the actual topic (and BTW I’m sure we’re all aware how some kids like to seek attention, even if it’s negative).
Noone here is insulting children, they are calling out adults who are behaving like children. That’s not insulting children because we understand children have no choice but to occasionally act irresponsibly (it’s why we don’t let them drive cars or carry guns, after all); adults on the other hand are expected to behave with a little more forethought and awareness. When they don’t, we use “childish” as shorthand for any combination of irrational or thoughtless behaviours that the adult in question is displaying. And no, that’s not punching down at children because they’re some powerless group we can oppress, it’s expressing the opinion that adults should be sufficiently developed to be above such behaviour.
Ludicrous, how do you describe adults who never matured beyond a certain stage?
Either provide an acceptable alternative, or shut the fuck up.
@Brony #61
I didn’t write the blog post. I didn’t post comments on the topic of GamerGate anywhere other than posts where either PZ or Ally have made about GamerGate. Basically, where it belonged and where it didn’t derail discussion. It’s not like I jumped into a completely off-topic post to submit my views.
PZ wrote about this topic, so apparently this was something he wanted to talk about. I know for a fact that you’re not accusing PZ of being a troll, so to me this argument seems to be spurious.
Unless you’re saying that the mere existence of GamerGate is a distraction from things more important than gaming journalism. And that sounds to me like the Gaza Defense.
As for this:
This definition of trolling bothers me, in part because it takes the willful or deliberate aspect out of trolling and turns it into something that’s much too general. Based on this definition, any and all posts could be construed as trolling, just based on whether if even a single audience member reacts negatively to the post.
Look at how PZ construed my posts:
When essentially, the people I was responding to were just as repetitive and just as obsessive as I, while being much less polite about it. Then, the only difference between their posts and mine, was that I posted things that the majority of the users here disagree with, while theirs enjoy the approval of the community.
Trolling in your sense then just means whether or not you agree with the majority’s voice, so yes, it does appear that I am labeled a troll because of disagreement, because regardless of how I word my posts, and indeed the content of my post, as long as PZ and the rest of the users here disagree with my views, I would entice the emotional effects that would constitute my labeling as a troll.
At least, it seems that way to me. If you could posit a method for me to disagree with people here on the subject of GamerGate without being labeled a troll, then by all means, please tell me, I would love to know. I just don’t see it.
The only way out I see is just to be part of the community long enough so that people would be able to take me on good faith, such that the emotional effects evoked would go away. If that’s the method, then yes, I can do that.
Yes, we were telling you to shut the fuck up, same as PZ. You aren’t rational, if you can’t acknowledge you can be, and in this case, ARE WRONG.
Preaching is where you can’t be wrong. Discussing brings in the concept you are listening, and looking at where you are wrong. You have been preaching, which is trolling.
Answer this question, and only then, with the right answer, will we take you serious:
Are women your equal in every way, and they should not receive death threats and rape threats any more than you should for a difference of opinion?
From what I see, you don’t think women are your equals, as it doesn’t show up in your words and attitudes.
ansatz @69:
You could just remain quiet.
ansatz @69:
Why don’t you finally comment on what you’ve repeated ignored after it’s been pointed out to you several times? It’s intellectually dishonest to make a point, then ignore when I respond and ask why you ignore that, only to continue on bleating the same things.
Oh fuck off you idiot. Calling a twelve year old a twelve year old is not derision, and it absolutely is not a fucking justification to grow up to be a misogynist.
ansatz @69
You can start by demonstrating factually that #GamerGate was not founded on misogyny, is not loaded to the gills with misogyny, is not about endorsing and fomenting misogyny, and is not a tool of cover for misogynists. This is why you’re getting pushback, if you want to suggest there’s room to disagree about #GamerGate you need to first show there’s room to disagree. #GamerGate isn’t like gaming as a whole where the extremely vitriolic misogyny is a significant (But loud, vocal, influential, and endemic) minority, #GamerGate is made in majority from the gaming community’s significant, vicious minority.
I likes ♥ the word “posit”.
I think™ we should all use it moar.
I didn’t see ansatz’s contributions on the other thread, but considering GamerGate is the direct result of one man’s bitter, lie-riddled hate-blog about a female game developer he knew, is being popularised by misogynist drama-llamas both overt and covert, and is as much about the integrity of gaming journalism* as my arse is about producing rainbows, any defence of GG on those grounds is likely to be either a steaming pile of butt-nuggets or an exercise in purposeful and dedicated ignorance.
___________
*As I said in a previous comment, the kind of gamer mostly-bros running this scam and jumping on the bandwagon have let pass a multitude of opportunities and catalysts to get serious about the corruption and back-scratching in gaming and game journalism over the past two decades. It’s ever so convenient that this grassroots campaign to fix game journalism dovetails so neatly with the existing words and behaviour of a community already shot through so thoroughly with hatred for women that all you have to do is make a ‘tube video that points out rather obvious narrative tropes in games to earn yourself rape and death threats. Threats that are now, sadly, inevitable if you’re a woman online who dares to critique pretty much any establishment fixture, whether gaming, tech, STEM, organised skepticism or atheist “leaders”.
So ansatz, do forgive any skepticism or dissent or even labels of “troll”, because some of us here had been taking note of this exact kind of rank, spoiled-rotten man-child bullshit for years before Zoe Quinn got dropped in the meat grinder by some lackwitted pissing and moaning ex (or whatever he was).
Yo dudebros Ansatz etc… I am a white cis male age 31 who has slept with 5 (!!!) women, you must now respect what I have to say and listen to me (because I am not a woman writing about video games, and having had sex with 5 partners is good as long as you are a guy).
Wisdom Transmission:
Pretend that you are a decent human being a bit better (you are not achieving this part of the OPERATION GUIDE yet, work harder on it). Start by not posting for a month, then when everyone has forgotten who you are come back as Ztasna and try again, only be less obvious.
This may not be enough, though, so just to be safe maybe abstain from posting for 3 months to make sure the hive mind really has forgotten your failed attempts…
chigau @75:
Are you posit-ive?
@anatz, 69
While I can’t tell you how to manage it, other than simply being honest in your statements and actually listening to people’s responses, I can tell you that in practically all of my periods of commenting here, I have disagreed with at least a large minority, if not the majority view in at least one thread. Somehow, though, I don’t actually recall a single time when I’ve been called a troll here… and I doubt that’s because I’m an established name here, because my posting here is irregular and generally limited to brief periods of a few days or maybe weeks with very long gaps in between.
I guess it might help that I rarely accuse the local commentariat of being a biased and ignorant outgroup in my opening comments, but, y’know, it is possible that it’s the simple act of disagreement that’s got you labelled as a troll.
Sorry, that was at ansatz, not anatz – anatz is a terrible person and would have been executed on sight!
I’ve mainly been following this whole #gamergate thing from here, so this document is one of the first things I’ve seen from “the other side.” It’s starting to make a few things clear to me, though.
I remember when I first got an ad from Credo the “Progressive Cell Phone company.” I thought, “This is crazy. Is the political divide in this country getting to be so bad that we have to politicize our choice of cell phone coverage? What’s next?”
And what was next was that we began having liberal and conservative chicken sandwich stores. Craft suppliers. Wedding cake makers. So now I think that gamergate is simply the next phase, and we’ll have liberal and conservative game review sites, and next, games themselves. I can see it already: “Oh, Anita Sarkeesian likes this game, so I won’t buy it.”
The political divide in this country is slowly turning into an economic divide. We’re becoming two countries, and our founding fathers and mothers would have been appalled, but I don’t see any way to stop it.
@omnicrom #74
That’s what my posts were about. I pointed out that from the very beginning, GamerGate talked about corruption in game journalism. I pointed out that #GamerGate is made in majority from the same demographic as the gaming community, not its vicious minority.
And the evidence I used for that was to ask people to survey the tag itself to classify the various posts and posters, to point people to sources that archived the beginning of GamerGate which demonstrated that yes, concerns about corruption were present, along with the expected misogynistic elements, as well as a thread made up of the non-vicious minority wherein reasonable discussions are had.
And so, I got labeled a troll.
One of the ideas I had actually was to sample the tag myself and put it up in graph form. I’m not familiar enough with sampling theory to know how to go about it to get representative data, and indeed how to categorize things without splitting groups, and it seems like it would take more time than I have to quickly familiarize myself.
@JAL #72
I’m not sure if you think this or not, but I actually don’t have infinite time on my hand to respond to every post. I’ve done my best to reply to as many as I could, prioritizing more recent posts, grouping similar posts together, but chances are good that if I haven’t replied to yours, it’s because I haven’t read it yet, or felt that it’s already been answered in a another post of mine, and so would only be repeating myself. Given the charges of repetition I’ve faced, I feel it more prudent for me to not.
I would like to invite you to point out the post that you think I’m ignoring, but I’m heading off for the day, so likely I wouldn’t get to it until tomorrow if the week isn’t too busy, or basically next week-end if it’s still relevant. Is there a private message system or something? I can personally answer anything you think I’m ignoring there when I have some downtime. If not, or if you feel like I’m trying to dodge something here, I’m afraid I can’t make more time available than what I have.
It’s in part because your posts are some of the ones that take me the longest to respond to. For example, I think I wrote roughly 1000 responding to one of your post point by point, and it took a significant junk of my free time. That’s great, in that there’s a lot of information dense content in your posts, but it’s not so great, because like I said, I’m time limited.
@違う #75
Oh no, did I use that wrong (pun intended)? I don’t think I did!
Here is link to the cracked article that PZ blogged about earlier, that contains links to Zoe Quinns story and previous cracked reports. Here is what they had to say about the lackwit ex.
This is what you are fighting for by supporting the campaign of hate known as gamergate. It doesn’t have any basis in justice, or corruption, it’s an exercise in pure misogynistic assholery.
Ansatz-
Have you ever played an MMO? Have you ever read general or trade chat in an MMO? Are you aware that, for example, world-wide WOW has over 11 MILLION subscribers? Do you know how most women are treated in MMOs when it is discovered we are women?
(maybe if I ask simple questions, I’ll won’t be outright ignored by ansatz?)
I have to take slight exception to the title of this post. We don’t need to other these people. They’re acting like children. However, they are likely not children. I’d guess that the average age is probably somewhere in the 20s or 30s.
Avicenna wrote:
There was plenty of evidence of corruption within the industry well before that, too. That incident should’ve been the catalyst for something like this because it was so blatant and obvious, but the fact that Zoe Quinn was instead the catalyst says everything that needs to be said.
Shouting misogyny is a PR stunt and beyond disingenuous. This is not about hatred of women, only gender feminists would say thing that to obscure the real issue, or goof XYs trying to get l**d. This is at its core unethical, manipulative purposeful behavior designed to foster and promote gender (XX) politics, and at its core, money. The oldest motivation known.
Whenever I see people talking about gameghazi I start to wonder if this guy ever got any death / rape threats.
Probably not, because he looks like a white cis male even if he is the Dorito Pope.
Corruption is not and has never been the point. If it was, they would be talking about boycotting Mountain Dew and Doritos instead of scarfing them down and getting cheese dust on their keyboards while wheezing and writing rape threats.
@zx spectrum
Have you considered the joys that skepticism might bring you? It’s harder work that just parroting buzzwords, but it’s far more rewarding.
How dare we XX’s (because calling us women is hard) want things like… parental leave for BOTH parents, and for women to be paid the same wage for the same work so that the burden isn’t entirely on their spouse, and for fathers to be equally considered as care providers for their offspring should they so want in the case of a divorce. HOW DARE WE????
-10 points, by the way, for the tired trope of ‘doing it to get laid’.
P.S. Hey ANSATZ Look, one of your gamergate dudebro buddies crawled out of the woodworks! But nope, no sexism there, right? Not one iota. Nothing to see here. Move along. Ignore the misogyny behind the curtain.
How does the “trying to get laid” motive work for homosexual feminists, I wonder.
Daz @91:
I’m still wondering that. If I ever find out, I’ll let you know.
zx74125800 @86:
Shouting misogyny is a public relations move? What kinda fool are you? Women received rape and death threats. Gamers have been trying to chase women out of games for a while now. All the “criticism” amounts to harassment, rape, and death threats directed at women. That’s misogyny. Pull you head out of your ass dudebro.
BTW I’m a feminst gay man.
What I like is that, even if we ignore the fact that it’s possible to simply want to live in a just world, the idea that we’re all in it for teh secks, is that it completely ignores the possibility that some of us may have already managed the astonishingly difficult task of getting laid and might now have daughters for whom we would like to make the world more hospitable, or, regardless of their success or failure in the most important of all pursuits – that of the pussay – might have nieces or female cousins, or sisters, or perhaps even mothers?
It’s kind of telling when the only reason someone can think of to justify caring about gender equality is that they might get sex out of it, isn’t it? A kind of bizarre fixation on a very small – though, admittedly, very pleasant – aspect of human interaction.
@ ansatz
From the very beginning you’ve disavowed knowledge that actor Adam Baldwin kicked off the Gamergate hashtag and he did it to shame women he disagreed with.
You’ve claimed that the central focus of Gamersgate at it’s creation was not on the Burgers and Fries fantasy which reads like the plot to a porno movie when this is demonstrably not true.
Gamergate’s central focus has been, and continues to be, telling women who they don’t like to shut up. They started by trying to shame Quinn and Sarkeesian into shutting up and now they’ve successfully gotten Intel to pull ads from Gamasutra because they want Leigh Alexander to shut up!
You won’t even mention by name the supposed scandal that led to GamerGate’s creation, Baldwin was more forthcoming. The “scandal” he was referencing was given in a link to a youtube video entitled “Quinnspiracy Theory: In-N-Out Edition”. Yet you refuse to acknowledge the direct link between the sordid gossip, intimidation and slutshaming of the “Quinnspiracy” and the GamerGate “cause”.
And this may be why some here assume that you are arguing in bad faith!
Daz @91: I’m wondering precisely how the “trying to get laid” angle works when you’re simply not in the market for co-op nudey time.
Entry Level Trolls like ZXfuckingnumbers never bother to explain precisely how the “fishing for sex” meme applies to men who aren’t looking for it under every nook and cranny or how they know that all men are shallow, stupid pickup artists who don’t have good reasons to give a fuck about how half the species is treated (not to mention how it’s escaped their attention that the classic MRA talking points, stereotypes and ridiculous gender expectations they CTRL+V at blogs at the drop of a hint are as damaging to men as they are to women and other genders).
I’m still trying to tease out why the would use xx and xy to denote women and men. Im thinking its designed to exclude transgender people since they would mostly still be xx and xy. Basically, ignoring their self identification and focusing on their genetics as a means to dismiss a challenge to their beliefs about gender categories. Ive seen that quite often on 4chan when discussions of transgender people come up (those discussions are always terrible and full of vitriol, harassment, and just plain evil).
You need to learn to display that you have read for comprehension. It’s not just “the topic of gamergate”. The topic of gamergate is being presented in a specific context of concern to this community. We care about social bias and suffering and like it or not gamergate is related. The OP is contextualized by a concern for social bias and suffering and for you to simply say “the topic of gamergate” reveals you have no idea.
You have so far presented us with a pattern that indicates that you want to steer things away from social bias and suffering. That is why you are trolling. We see people do this all the time. We talk about something related to social bias and suffering, people like you show up and try to change the subject because of your group sensitivities. It’s really pathetic.
People being harassed and abused in gendered ways is more important than gaming journalism. That you personally want to take the attention off of the suffering of women being so harassed means you care less about suffering than gaming journalism. That is pretty shitty behavior regardless of intentions.
That you don’t like the definition does not matter. Ultimately dictionaries record functional use and language is always evolving so you can be a little flexible. Functionally I see people refer to behavior as trolling no matter if it’s deliberate or not. I’ve seen people refer to men using purses as trolling. You can troll many Tea Party types by talking about academic level socialism/communism and things like externalities. Most of the time people describe trolling as a “feel about X” statement.
There is no “construing”. There is only “describing the results of”.
He’s talking about the effects of your comments regardless of your intent. some things are not worth being polite about. Some things make others upset no matter how you phrase it or order it. I think caring about gaming journalism more than suffering people is worth impoliteness. If you cared more about suffering it would not occur to you to distract others from pointing out suffering that needs dealt with.
So people reacted to that and will regardless of your intent and wording. I farther referred to you in the other thread as a “dense sexist asshole” because you are displaying more group-sensitivity to gamers writing about gaming badly than women getting treated in gendered and abusive ways, and you are profoundly unaware of this fact.
The proportion of gamergaters does not matter, the effective results of what they collectively do matters, especially if they are leaderless and decentralized as you say. This means you too. There is no other option than group shaming and you are part of the group. Individuals deciding to enforce behavior norms on one another out of fear of a corrupted sociopolitical symbol. I can even see it starting in the examples PZ posts in the OP. More pressure is required until the sexist abuse stops.
You don’t get it yet. You can’t disagree with the fact of misogynistic asshats involved in gamergate. I don’t give a fuck about proportion of people involved because that does nothing to change the results. Sexist, misogynistic, violent, assholes hurting people. You keep pushing that issue of “how many”, “core group”, yadadada. Whatever the number it’s significant enough to cause group-specific effects on people, women like Zoe Quinn.
That bolded bit is the important part. No matter how you word it, drawing attention away from the suffering caused by social bias like sexism bother people here, hence trolling. It is what it is because the gendered aspect exists and as long as it does your arguments of scale and proportion are utterly irrelavent.
That may be impossible depending on the means and effects of the disagreement. Since everything you have brought up so far does nothing to remove the fact of sexist abuse and harassment from gamergate, and since Zoe Quin still suffered all that harassment, and since you offer literally nothing to address what people here are ultimately concerned with (the gendered abuse and harassment), there may be no way. These people want real-world, functional solutions to suffering from bias. NOTHING else.
Then I am willing modify things some. I’ll provisionally keep the comments focused on shitty effects, content, real-world results, etc… (we are what we do however, regardless of intent). But you are totally on your own for everyone else and when you do something insulting you don’t get to control the language. I’ve been burned too and I will be again. We are tired of constant distractions that come from simple group-sensitivity and we have every right to be.
Addendum to my 97 (inspired by Tony! @93): low-level trolls like ZXwhatthefuck also don’t bother to explain how the “doing it for sex” accusation works with gay men (not to mention celibate men, or faithful men in relationships or anyone other than single straight guys [not that it works particularly well with them anyway] etc.).
It couldn’t possibly be that gay men and women in general have some shared experience of being shat on by heterobro society since time immemorial, right? Or it couldn’t just be that gay men can have as much human goddamned empathy as anyone else and know injustice when they see it, right? It isn’t that a gay guy can simply meet the minimum standard for a decent human being – so what’s the actual reason, according to ZXwannabe-alpha, that a gay man would care how women are treated by the society he lives in? Secret hetero desires?
And what about feminist lesbians? Does this groundbreaking social theory of “just doing it for vaginas” apply to them too? What about intersex and trans people? Bisexuals?
Christ almighty – do hetero feminist women know that anyone in their camp who isn’t one of them is just scoping for their bits? Quick ZX, tell the feminists! They are in dire need of manly insights like “they’re just pretending ‘coz they want to pants you!”
Dammit, my #98 was directed at Ansatz’s 69.
More tomorrow. I’m too distracted.
Ansatz @82
Try again. Because this? All of this? Is false. It has been demonstrated this is false to you over and over again. With links and explanations and testimony from the people who started #GamerGate. No sorry, #GamerGate began when an ex-boyfriend posted false and degrading content about Zoe Quinn and there was another eruption in the seething sea of shitty misogyny just under the surface of the gaming community. It was not, is not, has never been, and without an act providence never will be about journalistic integrity. As long as you continue to pretend otherwise you will be called for bearing false witness.
So people aren’t going to come out and admit that their actual reason for doing things is a seething hatred of Zoe Quinn and every other woman getting cooties in their secret clubhouse? I’m stunned, really. Perhaps it would be more telling to examine the actions of a group rather than its words? #GamerGate has spent quite a lot of time being awful to women, and not even a fraction of that talking about journalistic integrity (except, of course, when they can use that as a rallying cry to be awful to women).
You got labeled as a troll because you repeatedly argued in stark contrast to observable reality. I didn’t use “factually” for kicks in my last post at 74, the deliberate actions of #GamerGate are on full display. You’re going to have to dish up some impressive evidence to somehow spin #GamerGate into the movement you claim it is after the actions and words of those who created and promulgated it.
Feel free, but make sure to show your work. Considering that you’ve dismissed some of #GamerGate’s excesses with the tried and true “Just joking” defense I’d have to take such a graph with a pinch of salt.
Not even going to respond to zx’s post except to say that their dog whistles will get nothing but a dim view on this blog.
Hank_Says, @99:
HEALTH WARNING: THE FOLLOWING IS LOADED WITH TRANS-SARCASTIC THEMES, MEANING THOSE WHICH HAVE BEEN SOAKED IN SARCASM BEYOND THE NATURAL LOADING POINT, BY A TRANS PERSON. THIS IS A POTENTIALLY UNHEALTHY LEVEL OF SARCASM, AND CONSUMING THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH MAY INDUCE SARCASMOSIS, THE CLOGGING OF BRAIN PATHS WITH EXCESS SARCASMOTROPIN, THE HORMONE PRODUCED BY HEARING SARCASM. PLEASE CONSULT YOUR DOCTOR BEFORE READING THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH.
We are especially in need of those manly insights, because of their total freshness. No one has ever said that to any feminist ever before, it hasn’t been said a kajillion times to everyone who ever held the radical idea that women are people, so it’s particularly useful. I’m quite positive that the Suffragettes never heard it, and I know the first wave of ‘bra-burners’ (also not true) sure never heard any suggestion that men who agreed with them were doing it for the secks. And when I got involved in feminism, in the early 90s, no one ever said anything about how the men involved were all after sex, which is too bad, cause I could have gotten me some, if I’d only heard that gem of wisdom. The third wave’s riot grrls probably never even found this out on the Internet, because it’s such a new, fascinating observation from a truly first-class mind.
Good fucking Lord, CaitieCat, I read your warning but foolishly did not heed it. As a result I now have a stage over-nine-thousand SARCASMOMA growing in my man-brain.
Don’t let me die with this silly look in my eyes.
Hank_Says wrote:
It is rather amusing how the people who gnash their teeth about “misandry” are often the biggest and worst purveyors of it.
Somwhere on the Internet, thanks to CaitieCat’s sarcasm, a dudebros head went KABOOM! Scanners style.
As near as I can tell, the issues of ethics in game journalism* is little more than a motte and bailey. Not a true one; just a fall back: a semi-legitimate issue to through in peoples faces when they point out how shitty the whole thing is.
* There are quite a few, to be sure.
@CaitieCat, 102
<3
I think you just killed me, but it was worth it.
CaitieCat wins the thread.
I technically have problems with sarcasm and that smarted.
Jacob Schmidt wrote:
Of course. It’s exactly like the opposition to the contraception coverage mandate of the ACA. It certainly couldn’t be about slut shaming or misogyny, so it must be Religious Freedom! Sure, when people spoke about it, they couldn’t help but talk about loose women wanting to have lots and lots of sex, but it was entirely about Religious Freedom! Why do you hate Religious Freedom!???
This isn’t new. Stores and businesses of all kinds have had political affiliations for as long as their owners/controllers have spent any of their profits on politics. It’s just more in the open now, and I say it’s long past time that these things be completely open. With respect to phone companies, I’d like to see more like Credo. All of the major telecoms in the US, last I checked, donate to conservative extremists and fight good ideas like net neutrality and municipal broadband. Are they somehow not political companies just because they don’t boast about their donations?
We already have these too. Just compare different sites coverage of issues in gaming related to racism, sexism, or homophobia. Some are progressive on these issues, most are reactionary.
you know way up-thread there was talk about capitalism, while I do agree that there is sexism pretty much every where and its been like that for a very very long time. In this case I think it is being catered to by certain of the game companies because it pays to cater to the lowest instinks (that’s right). We are talking about big money here real big money bigger than Hollywood so I have read and just like Hollywood it ain’t art it is business what ever is easy or flash is what they will go for. In this case there is not much control on what is produced. What do the producers see in this controversy? They see some people do not like some of it and are complaining while at the same time some of their customers. their fan base. are going ape shit . They are going to do as little as they can get away with because they see the money. The journalism is following pretty much what is all to common in fashion publications and in the gun magazines it is just more hype to feed the customer base. I do not know what will come of any of it this time but their are businesses that thrive on maintaining the hunger that feeds them. In this case it appears to be for violence and sexual imagery any criticism of same brings out a depraved response from the fan base. I hope that the shear scope of the reaction will help to bring about a positive change but I also hoped we would avert a catastrophic war in the middle Islamic world so don’t go by me.
uncle frogy
@ansatz #82:
Yes, you’re right. GamerGate was talking about corruption in game journalism from the start. To be specific, they were talking from the start about using corruption in game journalism as a smokescreen to hide that this was a personal vendetta and a campaign of misogyny. Try to keep up>.
You keep trying to dodge the simple fact that said “vicious minority” are the founders and tone-setters of your stupid “movement”. Hell, it’s in the names! Both #burgersandfries and #gamergate are explicit jabs at Zoe Quinn. Why don’t you go read the fucking chat logs from the 4chan mob? Are you afraid of the truth?
ludicrous,
As a woman who actually provides full time care for children and is raising a teen I’d like you to stop minimizing the patience and work that goes into my day. I’m sick and tired of people acting like it is the worst thing in the world to admit that parenting is hard and that children act like *gasp* children and it isn’t always sweetness and light. Full time parenthood is like being pecked to death by chickens. Children are not tiny adults. They have emotional meltdowns over things like not getting to watch Curious George right this very minute and they hit each other over whose turn it is or who was or was not touching someone else. They interrupt. They whine. They lie. (Until they are around 17, kids lie in a pinch. They can’t help it.) They ask you 40 questions while you try to drive, no matter how many times you ask them to wait until you are home. They yell if they are in motion. They stand on the porch and have screaming contests with their friends. They break things on purpose and on accident. They draw on furniture and walls. They knock down ceiling fans trying to swing on them. They inexplicably lose cheese in their beds. They insist on wearing shorts in the snow and long sleeves in the summer heat. They hold cats to their sleeping brother’s face just to see it scratch him. They are not adults. Neither are teens. They do not act like adults and they cannot be expected to act like adults because they are literally new to this whole being a person thing and they’re brains need to mature and grow. Children cannot be left alone. They cannot enter into contracts or give consent because they are not capable of thinking or behaving like and adult. Saying so is not oppression. Please do not compare women to children on a thread about misogyny. Please do not compare misogyny and racism to acknowledging that kids require patience and special considerations because of their age. Do not pretend that immaturity isn’t a thing. If I say someone is behaving like a baby, I am not oppressing babies. Babies do actually cry, snot and and shit their pants. Taking care of one full time is exhausting.
If a met a little Stepford kid who did act just like an adult, it would be creepy. I don’t care to see children walking quietly, hand in hand like the kids from Village of the Damned. They should get to run and play, whoop and holler and climb things you didn’t think were climbable because they are kids.
Jackie @ 115
I can confirm, I love my almost 2 daughter, but she is absolutely starting to act like an almost 2 year old. She doesn’t care if I have to check out the books she wants me to read so we can take them home, she wants to go run down the 30~ step staircase back to the children’s section of the library. I have nothing but respect for my wife, who watches her by herself 3 days a week, and works the other 2 week days (the weekends I’m there to help during the day and the kid stays with grandma for the work days).
That being said, I love her acting out and expressing herself however she is doing it. It might be annoying sometimes, but she is just acting like a (very) little kid and that comes with lots of positives as well (she is really getting into her oversized legos now, it is so cute). She is also really getting into the books we read to her, and I love how she grabs them and runs up to me saying “DADA!!!” and just can’t wait to sit on my lap while I read them.
umm .. I guess this isn’t related to the topic at hand though >_> Screw the concern trolls, they are acting like 12 year olds.
Jackie, you make me nostalgic for childhood! I want to inexplicably lose cheese in my bed!
#cheesebed
Inexplicably Lost Cheese, opening for The White Stripes on Wensdy at the Hollywood Bowl.
Wait, does “#OperationGithubExodus” mean that they’re leaving GitHub? Or that they’re still using it to organize? Because I’ve never really used it, but always just thought of it as a shareable code repository and now I’ve got a work related project that I have to use some GitHub resources on, so if they’re leaving it behind, then I’m happier about that.
Ah, I’m just seeing the news elsewhere that GitHub has disabled their repository. So that at least makes me feel like GitHub wants to be taken seriously as a place for people to collaborate on code, rather than a home for harassers, misogynists, and the like.
Jacob @106:
I did a bit of Googling, but all I can turn up is something about castles. Help?
@Tony, 122
Motte & bailey = it’s just a flimsy wall to hide behind.
I mean, I’m guessing… but I’m fairly confident that it’s an accurate guess.
#22:
Misogyny is just a symptom of capitalism? Is that why, for example, the Soviet Union was free of misogyny? That what you’re saying?
When one retreats from a weak position (from the bailey) to a strong one (to within the motte), conflating the two. For example, there are some differences between men and women. Someone might be arguing about how men are just more rational, while women are more emotional. You would probably call bullshit, for a variety of reasons. That someone might then retreat, saying “Look, men and women obviously aren’t identical, and you’re being silly to argue against that”; they conflate an easily defended position (the motte: that men and women aren’t identical) with their previously argued position (the bailey: that men are rational and women are emotional).
I say it’s not a true motte and bailey since they aren’t conflating two stances, but substituting a defensible goal (fighting unethical journalism) when challenged on the widespread shitty behaviour (screaming bigotry over, at worst, petty grievances).
tl;dr:
Pretty much.
The tactic is pragmatic, if disingenuous: once someone re-frames the debate, it can be difficult to argue convincingly against a given idea, as to casual observers it looks like you’re attacking a strong position, rather than the weak one which was covered up. It plays well with everyday cognitive bias, while you’re left fighting against cognitive bias.
I came across the term recently, and upon reading about it realized I’d seen the tactic used often, just that I didn’t have a neat formal term for it.
My mother likes to tell this story:
We had just moved into a new house. My mother put me to sleep in another room, then stayed up until early morning getting my room ready and decorated. The wall paint, little painted designs along the wall, wallpaper, the furniture, etc. Once she was done, she moved me into my new room and, being exhausted by this point, went to bed herself.
When I awoke, I was greatly disappointed at the decorative state of my new room: it just wasn’t up to par. To fix this, I drew over the walls in black permanent marker. My mother was not pleased.
Kids are sometimes shitheads. By my mother’s description, I was the best behaved of her 3 kids. I still drove her to tears, occasionally.
I was so naively trusting that I regularly gave my mom ‘heart attacks’. One of her favorite stories to tell is how I used to go up to complete strangers, and typically men, and sit in their laps. I was 3 or 4 when she talked to me and said I shouldn’t do that because someone might want to steal me. So the next day I promptly placed myself in the lap of a strange man, looked up at him and asked “Do you want to steal me?” When he, of course, answered “No” I turned to Mom and went “Seeeeeeee?”
I was such a little snot sometimes. *grins*
Jacob Schmidt @125
Sounds like a cross between moving the goalposts and the good old strawman. You move the parameters of the argument and use that as a dishonest recourse to misrepresent who you are arguing with.
This whole “gater” situation is just the sort of thing that crops up now and again. Before, it was targets just about everyone sorta agreed deserved a campaign. When they decide to target an innocent person, their initial dumb tactics backfired tremendously, so they escalated and escalated, thinking maybe they just weren’t doing it hard enough I suppose. I think this is the first time they have received such pushback, and these “anonymous” types don’t know quite how to handle it. Some do eventually abandon these crusades, so the key I think is to get to a point where more are leaving it than are entering it. Also, to keep the real-world damage they can inflict to a minimum in the mean time. How do we do the second part?
Dark Jaguar @129:
This sounds so fucking familiar.
Oh. Right. The GOP. The Tea Party. Many sects of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism. Libertarians. Maoists. Marxist-Leninist Communists. Basically any authoritarian group whose actual existence depends on the suspension of reality in order to actually work. Supply-side economics and tax cuts haven’t worked because we didn’t do it enough. America would be a moral utopia if we just let kids pray in school and end all health care for women. Triple the output of each rice paddy by planting the seedlings closer. Etc.
Im a gamer, and Im proud. Im not a while geekbro CIS from the USA, dont fucking generalize what GG is all about. Funny how this article and the comments ignore all the harrasment, doxxing and threats that people, including women have been subjected to for expressing a different opinion to that of the SJWs crowd, on sites like 4chan, reddit, and elsewhere, and the borderline sociopathic behaviour of Leigh Alexander. Thankfully, we’ve convinced Intel to pull their advertisement from one of those SJW propaganda holes, and we’re going to take down more. Just wait, the neckbeards are a force not to be fucked with.
Care to provide to link to these unsubstantiated, and unbelievable claims.
Oh, in other words, the neckbeards are internet bullies who should be brought up on charges of conspiracy to intimidate…..
@131:
So lovely for you to wear your opposition to women’s rights, LGBT rights, and the rights of PoC on your sleeve. Opposition to social justice is opposing efforts to treat all people with equality. Thanks for letting us know you’re a grade-A misogynistic shitstain.
Toodles!
(btw if the door breaks after hitting you on the way out, you’re paying for it)
Yeah, I’m with Nerd @132: citation badly needed. Lots of citations, really.
Along with those citations, perhaps this fucking fool could recognize that even *if* advocates for social justice engaged in harassment, doxxing, etc, it still doesn’t justify the actions of the misogynistic gamers.
No, Leigh Alexander is a bully, and she is also racist and a sociopath.
And why should I believe, you an obviously bully, or anybody that you, an obvious bully, links to for pure opinion….
This is one your feminist SJW freedom fighters, Leigh Alexander:
http://i.imgur.com/hANJ5gA.png
I’m a gamer too, but I’m horribly ashamed to be associated with the people who rally around #GamerGate. It seems like I’m drawn to subcultures that drown themselves in irrationality and ill-defended hatreds, and I wish I knew why that was.
O noes! we haz been skooled by the impeccable logic of neckbeards who are proud to be sociopaths. Now tremble in fear as the neckbeards of the world demostrate their fearsome skills at lying and being complete assholes. (really tony and nerd your attempts at education are admirable, but anyone who has misogynist misspelled in their nym is not here for a reasoned discussion)
Intel pulled their ads from GM, and now the university of advanced technology did the same. Two for the neckbeards, nvidia is next.
vs.
We totally believe you, Gater Number Eleventythousand.
As for Leigh Alexander: Apparently “I am a megaphone” is a threat now? Also, the “Ruining careers” and “Doxxing” doesn’t make sense without context. The “hood men” and insulting blue collar professions is bad, but it also isn’t “ignore all the harrasment, doxxing and threats that people,”
Great job at failing. You are serving as a great example to confirm exactly what we’ve been complaining about! Though I’m sure you never cared about that. You intentionally chose your ridiculous nym to ensure that even if you did so, you can just fall back on your strategy of actually trying to prove shit and just revert to saying that you meant to be a clown the whole time! Pathetic.
And how the hell could DiGRA “cause the end of gamers”? Come the fuck on, and learn to think like a rational grown up, would ya? I know, I know you’re scared that the indie devs will “win” and that this will somehow stop all the Call of Duty clones from ever being developed again – because of how there can only ever be one type of game in production in the world at any one time – but that’s not actually a threat to you… because more than one type of game can be in production in the world at the same time. So hush up, and have fun with your console button mashing, ‘kay?
Tethys sorry for misspelling my nym.
And why should I believe a misogynic liar and bullshitter like yourself, who is nothing but an internet bully?
You want me believe you, drop the attitude and acknowledge women are you equals, and never, ever, deserve rape/death threats for not agreeing your bigoted opinions…..
Man, if that screenshot of Leigh Alexander tweets is the best these twits have to prove that the other side is just as bad or worse, that is the weakest of sauces. For the counterpoint, here’s the Twitter search for #gamergate and the c-slur (TW: obviously). And again, the smoking gun.
I don’t know anything about Leigh Alexander. What I do know is that this campaign started clearly with misogynist impulses, and grew out of the same campaign of misogynist hate that’s been fuming since Anita Sarkeesian took to Kickstarter. I also know that the 4Channers and their ilk are not above blatantly lying to sling mud and obfuscate their real purpose, silencing women and maintaining the “No Gurlz Allowed (unless they bring sammiches)” sign on their odious clubhouse.
It’s possible that Leigh Alexander is a meanie pants and a racist. It’s at least equally plausible that she’s the newest target of a dishonest smear campaign that’s already libeled Sarkeesian, Quinn, and others with lies and falsified quotes. In neither case does the tu quoque actually justify the behavior of GamerGaters, in neither case does it support their delusions of being the good guys against end-level enemy bosses, and in neither case does it actually do anything about the purported goal to fight corrupt journalism.
Tethys:
Oh I know this fuckstain isn’t here to discuss things with any intellectual honesty. Xe is clearly here to stir up shit and try to find any reason (real or imagined) to justify the hateful misogyny directed towards women.
anteprepro @141:
And even if Alexander did all of this, and was a big meanie, racist, doxxer, it still doesn’t justify the rape and death threats that many gamers have directed at women (which I note that our new Gamer fuckface has not condemned).
Also, even if Alexander is guilty of all of that, her actions are a drop in the bucket compared to what the misogynistic gamers have done.
I think my comment got eaten for using a bad word in a link.
Man, if that screenshot of Leigh Alexander tweets is the best these twits have to prove that the other side is just as bad or worse, that is the weakest of sauces. For the counterpoint, do a Twitter search for #gamergate and the c-slur. And again, the smoking gun.
I don’t know anything about Leigh Alexander. What I do know is that this campaign started clearly with misogynist impulses, and grew out of the same campaign of misogynist hate that’s been fuming since Anita Sarkeesian took to Kickstarter. I also know that the 4Channers and their ilk are not above blatantly lying to sling mud and obfuscate their real purpose, silencing women and maintaining the “No Gurlz Allowed (unless they bring sammiches)” sign on their odious clubhouse.
It’s possible that Leigh Alexander is a meanie pants and a racist. It’s at least equally plausible that she’s the newest target of a dishonest smear campaign that’s already libeled Sarkeesian, Quinn, and others with lies and falsified quotes. In neither case does the tu quoque actually justify the behavior of GamerGaters, in neither case does it support their delusions of being the good guys against end-level enemy bosses, and in neither case does it actually do anything about the purported goal to fight corrupt journalism.
Soooo… I just read through 2+ weeks worth of tweets from this Leigh Alexander person and I’ve yet to see anything racist? In fact, haven’t even seen anything derogatory of men as a group, either. Trying to figure out what the fuss about this person is regarding, unless it’s that she views people like our lovely neckbearded fellow to be rather pathetic and is vocal about that. Hurt feelings on the part of neckbeard, maybe?
30-year-old gamer (of 25 years) here. I’ve never heard of Leigh Alexander, and I don’t know why I should give a shit about anything she says. Some of what’s quoted in that screenshot seems classist and racist and sexist, though I’ll note that “just killed another career, it’s a mild day” is a Nicki Minaj lyric from a Kanye West song. As I have been known to quote* Nicki Minaj frequently and without context, I’m willing to excuse that particular tweet.
I still don’t know what your point is, neckbeardmysoginisticgamer. One person said mean things? And some companies moved their advertisements? Ok, how does any of that address the point at hand– that #gamergate grew out of a campaign of hatred directly targeting women in gaming.
*and when I say “quote” I mean “perform an entire song in its entirety at the slightest provocation.” I REALLY LIKE NICKI MINAJ OK.
Leigh Alexander was the shooter on the grassy knoll!
Even if the neck beard did believe that about Leigh Alexander, why is he objecting? He doesn’t strike me as someone who thinks being a racist or a bully is a bad thing. What is he? A social justice warrior or something?
Ariaflame @151:
::gasp:: Are you trying to make the poor widdle misogynistic gamer cry?
If so, I just emptied out the Bigot Bucket, so we have somewhere to collect the tears.
Leigh Alexander faked the moon landings? Knows where the Roswell UFO is hidden and won’t tell? Stole his ice cream?
@152, Tony: CRAP! Is that what the Bigot Bucket is for?
Maybe we should give it a good washing out before people cry into it, then. I thought it was for catching our vomit when the bigots spew their racist shite into the air, and…other reactions. May want to…air it out a bit. And maybe label it “bigot tears only” or something, perhaps a WHMIS label.
I’m just going to point out that while internalized racism is absolutely a thing, there is very different baggage in a woman with a black father talking about “hood men” versus a white woman doing so. Leigh Alexander could have internalized racist sentiments (I’d be shocked if anyone avoids that) and she admits herself she has tons of privilege because of her lighter skin, but she’s mixed race.
The Mellow Monkey: Huh, I didn’t know enough about Leigh Alexander apparently (I have no idea who she is, so that was probably a given).
So even the “she said hood ergo racism” angle was complete and utter context-stripped bullshit. Imagine that. Dishonest, bullshitting, petty smears from a Gater. Who would have thought?
Thank you for bringing that to light. I almost gave the slyme from another pit a tiny shred of credit that they are most certainly not due. Now I can say without a doubt that the dissembling shitmonger should fuck off.
I’m… slightly whelmed, I guess.
“hood men” is an issue; it’s got the racist vibe.
I’m not entirely against doxxing, depending on the behaviour of the individual, and given the matter at hand, I place good odds on said individual having made threats against people.
“I am a megaphone” and “I am much less kind than [other unknown person]” isn’t much of a a threat, or any kind of meaningful threat for that matter.
“Insulting the creators of Child’s Play charity” is blatantly disingenuous: Gabe’s good deeds do not erase the fact that he acts like an ass hat.
The classism is grating, as is using female gendered terms (sweetheart, babydoll, bitch); the latter isn’t even mentioned, strangely enough. I probably shouldn’t be better at finding the flaws of your enemies than you are.
“Ruining Careers” doesn’t bother me, unless some context is provide for why I should care. The first of the two reads like a blatant joke, and you idiots ran with it anyways. Reminds me of the Toronto lawsuit mentioned about a week ago (I think), where a woman sarcastically jokes about ruining the career of man who’s career is clearly not ruined.
Quite frankly, I’m not fond of her, based on that poster. But, given the contents of that poster, and assuming they’re representative, I’ll take 100 of her over many of the gaters.
—
More telling is that classism, sexism, and racism are all hugely common in the communities heavily participating in gamer’s gate. They’re capitalizing on the fact that classism, sexism, and racism are now widely (if inconsistently) recognized as shitty things. It brings two things to mind:
a) Remove the log from your own eye, etc.
b) Groups who tend to be ideologically opposed to fighting bigotry are using fighting bigotry as a cudgel. against people they don’t like. That says very good things about the public opinion on bigotry.
Got caught in the trap; appropriately censored now.
—
I’m… slightly whelmed, I guess.
“hood men” is an issue; it’s got the racist vibe.
I’m not entirely against doxxing, depending on the behaviour of the individual, and given the matter at hand, I place good odds on said individual having made threats against people.
“I am a megaphone” and “I am much less kind than [other unknown person]” isn’t much of a a threat, or any kind of meaningful threat for that matter.
“Insulting the creators of Child’s Play charity” is blatantly disingenuous: Gabe’s good deeds do not erase the fact that he acts like an ass hat.
The classism is grating, as is using female gendered terms (sweetheart, babydoll, b—h) as insults; the latter isn’t even mentioned, strangely enough. I probably shouldn’t be better at finding the flaws of your enemies than you are.
“Ruining Careers” doesn’t bother me, unless some context is provide for why I should care. The first of the two reads like a blatant joke, and you idiots ran with it anyways. Reminds me of the Toronto lawsuit mentioned about a week ago (I think), where a woman sarcastically jokes about ruining the career of man who’s career is clearly not ruined.
Quite frankly, I’m not fond of her, based on that poster. But, given the contents of that poster, and assuming they’re representative, I’ll take 100 of her over many of the gaters.
—
More telling is that classism, sexism, and racism are all hugely common in the communities heavily participating in gamer’s gate. They’re capitalizing on the fact that classism, sexism, and racism are now widely (if inconsistently) recognized as shitty things. It brings two things to mind:
a) Remove the log from your own eye, etc.
b) Groups who tend to be ideologically opposed to fighting bigotry are using fighting bigotry as a cudgel. against people they don’t like. That says very good things about the public opinion on bigotry.
Also ansatz, take a look, another of your gater friends showed up. Is it still about corruption or is it about tearing down women who dare insult the poor manchildren.
Gotta say, when the response to pages upon pages of fantasising about rape and hopes for another person’s suicide being made public is to scrounge around and find almost* ten whole instances of someone being kinda shitty over the space of four years. Yep, it’s clear, us dirty SJWs are JUST AS BAD!
Even if we assume that she hasn’t changed for the better at all in the 2-4 years since posting most of those tweets, this is kind of like making a business that sells hot dogs made of people’s pet dogs, and then pointing out that one of your critics once kicked a dog a couple of years back. I mean, sure, kicking dogs is bad and shouldn’t happen, and we can certainly have words with that person, but you’re still selling hot dogs made of real dogs who will be missed, so don’t try to distract from the subject here.
*Because criticising Gabe’s mentality is hardly a crime, that “threat” really isn’t a threat, and those “ruining careers” examples are indistinguishable from delusions of grandeur without some actual details – especially when we consider that half (one) of those career ruining tweets wasn’t even hers. So that brings it down to six, and from the little context I’m able to get easily, maybe only three mean anything close to what’s being implied in that ugly little infographic. So, hooray, team rational argument is clearly in full force on their side.
You know what Gamergate alleges to be about? Well “social justice warrior” Jim Sterling has been all about that for fucking years now. And he is back in the saddle again: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/9782-Shadow-of-Morodrs-Promotion-Deals-with-Plaid-Social
Why do I bring this up? Well I think a commenter on that page put it better than I could:
In-fucking-deed.
From the image at the top of the original post:
No one noticed this one? This suggests to me that the boycott campaign is retaliation for articles such as the following:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/224400/Gamers_dont_have_to_be_your_audience_Gamers_are_over.php
http://kotaku.com/we-might-be-witnessing-the-death-of-an-identity-1628203079
http://www.polygon.com/2014/8/28/6078391/video-games-awful-week [And thank you, Redditors, for pointing me to this round-up article. I probably wouldn’t have found it without you.]
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/09/08/videogames-are-for-everybody/
Really? You want to de-fund these sites because of articles like this? You know, you could just decide not to read those sites, and stick with those that don’t want to change with the times. No one is stopping you.
If these are the “attacks” perceived by the boycotters, I suggest they (1) ask themselves if they honestly want their identities as human beings debased into a mere consumer niche, and (2) think long and hard about what they have been doing to invite such criticism from their peers. I ask them, is this really the kind of person you want to continue to be?
Having looked at the full text of the dox,* I’m not seeing much reason for it. The guy was a douche, to be sure, but it didn’t warrant putting his name online. So that brings us to 4 (3.5?) things I don’t like.
* Why do they preserve that if they’re against doxxing? Leigh Alexander isn’t super famous; a doxxing on her twitter account isn’t going to go as far as spreading it deliberately.
@neckbeardmysoginisticgamer
So, how is all that supposed to combat corruption in the video game press?
Scr…Archivist: It’s their tell again.
Those articles are all about two key things: sexism in the entrencher “hardcore” straight white male gamer Community, and the broadness and ever-expanding definitions and demographics of Gamer as a label. And of course Gamergate, which is all totally just about corruption and not about anything, has led its loyal disciples into doing battle about any who dare say such blasphemous things! Such terrible things as…..there are some sexist gamers harassing women and gaming is becoming so popular that the definition of “gamer” is radically changing as we speak?
Again, that’s the evidence that Gamergate is exactly what we expected. Of course they are going to continue to send Spin Merchants in to lie to our faces and tell us our understanding isn’t sufficiently Sophisticated, and assure us how all the evidence we can muster is just the work of No True Gatesmen. But inevitably, they all let the mask fucking slip.
Jacob Schmidt:
Because they have no principles. They don’t actually care about doxxing. They just know that other people might care, so they are going to continue spreading it, basically doxxing the person in question themselves, in the name of making sure they can continue a potentially beneficial smear campaign against Teh Enemy.
That’s gater morality for ya.
Dang, Renée Fleming must be good. She sang a lullaby in the opera. Some “baby bird” fell asleep as a result.
Now for the opera to end so Nerd can get some sleep.
It’s ok – they balance out their moral compass by eating shitloads of tofu.
Sorry for #166, wrong thread.
And they will battle these people by… being sexist and harassing women.
vaiyt: You know what they say. You gotta fight arson charges with fire.
As for why the revanchists hate Leigh Alexander, I think it is because of the first article I linked to in comment #161.
By the way, she also writes this in that piece:
Doesn’t that sound familiar.
Ex-fucking-zactly.
Yesterday my 8 year old son took a stick, sharpened it on the sidewalk and then used it to scratch a line in the paint all the way around my van. He then tried to pin the deed on his little sister, even though he was caught with the stick in his hand.
Lest you wonder if the poor child had nothing else to play with: He had muffins and Kool Aid, a bike, skates, hula hoops, a chess set, matchbox cars, sidewalk chalk and siblings to play with. He wasn’t angry or trying to be mean. He knew better, but he’s 8 and there was a stick, a sidewalk and a van. As soon as it occurred to him that he could scratch the paint off of the van with the stick if he sharpened it enough it was only a matter of time.
Jackie @ 114,
I am sorry you took my comments as minimizing the difficulties of raising children. That was far from my intention. My intention simply put was to suggest that this thread about misogyny should not be about 12 year old boys. I am sure the writer of the headline did not intend the piece to be about 12 year old boys. Never the less the headline is: “I think we’re dealing with a mob of twelve year old boys”. To those who claim my comments are a distraction I suggest they reread the headline. My objection is that since gaming misogyny is not about 12 year olds, they should not be gratuitously dragged into the discussion.
Why do I think this is important? Because the purpose of the headline is to engage the reader by citing a highly emotionally loaded concept to cajole the reader towards his point….and may I say not in a rational manner. The author reassures us; “Hey guys, we are not like those 12 year old boys”. The author is making an appeal to our inner child of the past, the child who suffered all the stings and arrows of growing up, the child who struggled mightely to grow up and out of being a 12 year old and who failed at times and still carries some scars of that struggle. That’s why we are alternately hard on and forgiving of children who misbehave. We choose a feeling to fit the point we wish to support. Citing behaviors of children when they are lovely and charming, appeals to those other sentiments/memories, those where we succeeded and are/were pleased with ourselves.
The intended thrust of my comments is simply. Leave the behavior of children out of it. Don’t muddy the highly emotionally loaded issue of misogyny with another emotionally loaded aspect of our lives. Our arguments can be reasonable and persuasive without using our mixed feelings about children for emotional impact.
We understand that you personally find the 12 year old boy reference objectionable. However, what this paragraph shows is an enormous amount of projection. Any parent knows that their children are capable of acting like right shitty little terrorists, who do things like make frog launchers for fun, or drown hamsters because it was so funny to watch them swim in terror. There is no choosing a feeling to fit the point we wish to support. That type of behavior is a normal teaching moment when it comes from an actual 12 year old, it is unacceptable for grown adults to pretend that they are 12 and don’t know better. TLDR: Stop pretending that being told to grow-up and behave is a bad thing, or justifies poor behavior.
Jacob Schimdt,
&
I believe PZ in his αEP series has coined the phrase “dignified retreat”, referring to this kind of behaviour.
Oh, and zx74125800-Nice transphobia you got there.
Perfect match with your misogyny.
I find Leigh Alexander’s article insulting. I identify myself as a gamer and this is how she describes me.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/224400/Gamers_dont_have_to_be_your_audience_Gamers_are_over.php
“They don’t know how to dress or behave.
‘Games culture’ is a petri dish of people who know so little about how human social interaction and professional life works…
…a generation of lonely basement kids…
These obtuse shitslingers, these wailing hyper-consumers, these childish internet-arguers…”
If someone is going to insult me, I won’t support them. I also won’t support the companies that support them. But if I do this under the title of #gamergate I’m a misogynist. If I do it under another title am I still a misogynist or just someone who is pissed off about being insulted?
Your choice cricket, but if the net effect of your actions is that you display disdain for women and any company that listens to their voices, you are a misogynist no matter what caused you to be pissed off.
Wait, you mean, you don’t like being stereotyped and pigeonholed because of a part of your identity? You don’t like one small facet of your character being used to say that you must be bad at certain things, regardless of your actual skill? You don’t like having your motivations and personal qualities questioned because you participate in a particular culture and hold particular viewpoints? You don’t like corporations and people involved in that culture telling you, implicitly or explicitly, that you’re not welcome?
Huh. Funny how that works.
Here’s the other half of things: let’s say you’re right. “NotAllGamerGaters” are like the stereotype Leigh Alexander has laid out. Here’s the thing: she’s not working from some absurd caricature, she’s working from the actual behaviors and statements by people who claim to be speaking for gamer culture. The people who say girl gamers are all either teases or sluts or Candy Crush-addicted dilettantes. The people who think it’s corrupt journalism to have a relationship with someone in your professional field, but not to accept money and benefits in exchange for positive reviews. The people who gleefully participate in and enable a jilted ex-boyfriend’s twisted revenge scheme because he feels like he’s been wronged. The people who make explicit threats, and the people who dismiss those threats as trolling or false-flag attention whoring. The people who are slinging shit, wailing, arguing on the Internet, and behaving childishly. If that’s not you, then guess what: You’re complaining to the wrong fucking department. Until you clean up your house, you can’t blame others from observing that you live in filth, even if you’re not actually responsible for the mess.
@mattuleman
So, you think that joining a mob of screeching haters because one person insulted you is a reasonable position? Nice of you to lay #gamergate’s objectives open though, sucker. Ethics my ass.
mattuleman @ 179
Well let’s add it up. Gamergate has accomplished what exactly? They’ve managed to put several people in fear for their lives and livelihoods and convinced Intel to pull advertising from a publication because they didn’t like the contents of an opinion piece. If you’re OK with marching shoulder to shoulder with those people under the same banner then it’s pretty obvious that you care less about the harm done to those real people than you do about whatever you think you’re standing up for. Otherwise you’d want no part of their movement.
With regard to being pissed off at being insulted, Leigh Alexander isn’t the first gaming journalist to say those kinds of things about gamers. Do you boycott all of the various publications those people write for or just her/Gamasutra? If it’s just her, you’ll have to forgive me if I doubt your claims of not being a misogynist. It’s kind of like people who go “Why feminism? Why not just humanism?” but don’t make the same criticism of LGBT advocacy or anti-racism advocacy. It’s only feminism they have a problem with but people are supposed to believe they’re not sexist. Nope. Sorry. Doesn’t work for them, won’t work for you.
@mattuleman, 179
I’m also a gamer, yet I don’t feel the least bit offended by her description. I think it’s mostly because I realise that the people she’s talking about exist and are excessively vocal in the gaming community. I recognise those descriptions as the people I’m forced to associate with if I want to find out the latest news about the development of a thankfully small number of the games I’m looking forward to. They are the people who you cannot avoid if you want any kind of social interaction within gaming. Have you somehow missed them?
There’s a saying that sort of drifts around the internet that goes something like this: if my words don’t describe you, I’m not talking about you.
If her article doesn’t describe you, why are you offended by it? Bear in mind that, no matter how you go about picking the cherries, her article doesn’t claim that all gamers are this way, but that it is the public face of games culture that is perceived, to be this way, and that it’s something we, as gamers and as games industry workers, should reject.
I don’t see how anyone could’ve actually read the article and missed that part. She’s pointing at a part of our culture that makes us ridiculous, and saying that we should be better than that. That’s not insulting. What’s insulting is that those people drown out the rational voices. What’s insulting is that they’re acting as representatives of gamers – of me – when they do things like hurling death threats at people like Anita Sarkeesian for criticising legitimate cultural issues within games.
Well… if you do it under the title of #gamergate, you’re clearly not very smart. #Gamergate is supposed to be all about the corruptions! You’re just whining because you don’t understand the difference between cultural criticism and personal insults – that’s neither their PR motivation or their apparent motivation, so I don’t see why you’d use their tag?
Seriously, it’s ridiculous. Her article is critical of a specific subset of gamers who have somehow managed to become our public face. If that’s not you, then she’s not talking about you. And, well, if it is then shut the fuck up and stop whining, because there’s nothing inaccurate in what she said.
Just to prove that these people are an intellectual force with which to be reckoned, a valid sociopolitical movement with reasonable–nay, laudable!–goals and that these smears of immaturity are unwarranted, some of them have been prank calling Zoe Quinn. To obliquely call her a slut.