Corruption In Games Journalism, or "Five Guys Burgers and Fries"

[Tiffani]

I'm late to the party so anyone feel free to correct and explain things. What I've heard about Gamergate is

-Zoe Quinn slept with various men who likely gave her favorable reviews, publicity, etc. She was called out for it and exposed, as well as the places those men worked for.

However, Felicia Day was recently doxxed by Gamergate guys for saying she was afraid of speaking about Gamergate. She joins other women who have been harassed and doxxed by Gamergate guys, like Brianna Wu and I can't remember the others. I think there was another one, but I'm not sure. This creates a huge disconnect to me because I don't see the connection between Day and Quinn? Now, I would assume that those of you here who support Gamergate would disavow this type of behavior, at least publicly. This brings up 2 possibilities. The first is that there are people in the Gamergate movement who have done these things with or without the approval of the movement as a whole. The other is that this is a targeted attempt by outside forces to disable the Gamergate movement by associating it with such reprehensible behavior.

Anita Sarkeesian is related, but also not, to Gamergate. I'm not a fan of her cherry-picked stuff or just the whole "Women in Refrigerators" concept as a whole. I do believe the argument has merit, but isn't as pervasive as they would have you believe. However, I noticed up above a few posts that her Tweet about school shooters all being men and boys was being "disproven" by a few incidents where the shooter was female. The numbers of school shooters are about 97% male, so I think that number speaks for itself. That more than qualifies as "it's always men and boys". I think this is a case where the messenger stains the message. If this were someone else saying this exact same thing, you likely wouldn't feel as strongly about it.

Anyhow, there's a lot there for you guys to respond to, so I'll just leave with a question I wonder about. This is serious, by the way, it's not meant to be snarky or anything. The Gamergate name has been so drug through the shit and mud that wouldn't it be better to distance yourselves from the name and choose a different one? It's not fair, but the truth is that you'll never be taken seriously because of the actions of those who have committed these horrible things in the name of Gamergate. Even if those aren't really Gamergate members, the damage has been done. This is like a company using a swastika in their logo now, and that's really saying something considering that the swastika was around for thousands of years before the Nazi's corrupted its meaning. Gamergate doesn't have that history to fall back on.

 

[Tiffani]

A writer from Medium goes through 1500 tweets directed at Anita Sarkeesian and Brianna Wu, looking for rape and death threats. She finds none. The mental gymnastics that follows, trying to claim any criticism or negative language counts as "harassment," is definitely impressive.

Whether this is true or not (I'm guessing it is, but who has the time to look through a bunch of tweets), it becomes invalidated by this-

http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/...culinity-on-twitter-heres-what-happened-next/

This was about a week after the first story, when Sarkessian made those "shooters are always men" tweets. There's several rape threats in there.

 

[Gahars]

I should be sitting on the toilet because this is a huge dump. ANYWAY...

I'm late to the party so anyone feel free to correct and explain things. What I've heard about Gamergate is

-Zoe Quinn slept with various men who likely gave her favorable reviews, publicity, etc. She was called out for it and exposed, as well as the places those men worked for.

However, Felicia Day was recently doxxed by Gamergate guys for saying she was afraid of speaking about Gamergate. She joins other women who have been harassed and doxxed by Gamergate guys, like Brianna Wu and I can't remember the others. I think there was another one, but I'm not sure. This creates a huge disconnect to me because I don't see the connection between Day and Quinn? Now, I would assume that those of you here who support Gamergate would disavow this type of behavior, at least publicly. This brings up 2 possibilities. The first is that there are people in the Gamergate movement who have done these things with or without the approval of the movement as a whole. The other is that this is a targeted attempt by outside forces to disable the Gamergate movement by associating it with such reprehensible behavior.

This is forgetting those on the GamerGate who have been harassed, doxxed, and threatened. KingofPol had a knife sent to his house, Milo received threats and a syringe in the mail, Mike Cernovich was driven from his home thanks to false police reports, Boogie, JonTron, Christina Sommers, TotalBiscuit, and countless other personalities have been attacked, slandered, and harassed. Of course, the mainstream media has yet to report on any of these, so I understand how that's easy to miss, but this isn't coming from one side.

You are right, though, that GamerGate does not endorse or condone those threats in any way, shape, or form. Even on 8chan, the image board "too extreme for 4chan," calls for threats, violence, etc. are immediately reported, dismissed, and laughed out. The problem is twofold. The first is that anyone can use a hashtag and say they're "Gamergate," much the same way that anyone could claim to be a member of "Anonymous." (Remember lulzsec?) The GamerGate harassment patrol does its best to report these people (and it's pretty fast about it), but it's an inherent vulnerability in any campaign. The second issue is that GamerGate is prominent. This is big news, especially when certain individuals get threatened; it's the sort of stage that trolls are naturally drawn to.

Besides, iirc, Felicia Day wasn't even doxxed. I recall that someone had just posted the address to her talent agency, which was publicly available on their website. If she was, it's that publicity problem again; she's a celebrity to a certain extent, which makes her a target for trolls. It happens to any major personality. It's not a GamerGate problem or a gamer problem; at its essence, it's an anonymity problem, one that will exist as long as people can be anonymous online. Any freedom, unfortunately, comes with those who would abuse that freedom. As the Japanese say, "Shikata ga nai."

TotalBiscuit, someone who's been dealing with this for years now, has a very helpful post on the matter: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sd042v

Anita Sarkeesian is related, but also not, to Gamergate. I'm not a fan of her cherry-picked stuff or just the whole "Women in Refrigerators" concept as a whole. I do believe the argument has merit, but isn't as pervasive as they would have you believe. However, I noticed up above a few posts that her Tweet about school shooters all being men and boys was being "disproven" by a few incidents where the shooter was female. The numbers of school shooters are about 97% male, so I think that number speaks for itself. That more than qualifies as "it's always men and boys". I think this is a case where the messenger stains the message. If this were someone else saying this exact same thing, you likely wouldn't feel as strongly about it.

That's just wrong.

Anita Sarkeesian gets brought up mostly because she inserted herself in the conversation. The point was that saying these crimes are "always" by men is factually wrong, even if it is not the majority. The real issue, however, is that the very idea of pinning these crimes as something inherent to men because they are men is a bigoted, sexist statement. At it's core, it is little different than seeing that blacks are disproportionately more likely to commit robbery and arguing that it must be because of something inherent to their race.

The real problem is mental health and instability. Shamelessly ignoring that reality to score cheap political points on the eve of a tragedy (and acting oh so shocked, "Golly gee, I was just thinking out loud!" when people are understandably pissed) is beyond despicable, no matter who is saying it.

Anyhow, there's a lot there for you guys to respond to, so I'll just leave with a question I wonder about. This is serious, by the way, it's not meant to be snarky or anything. The Gamergate name has been so drug through the shit and mud that wouldn't it be better to distance yourselves from the name and choose a different one? It's not fair, but the truth is that you'll never be taken seriously because of the actions of those who have committed these horrible things in the name of Gamergate. Even if those aren't really Gamergate members, the damage has been done. This is like a company using a swastika in their logo now, and that's really saying something considering that the swastika was around for thousands of years before the Nazi's corrupted its meaning. Gamergate doesn't have that history to fall back on.

Get out, shill.

Seriously, though, that'd be an awful idea. GamerGate has recognition. The hashtag has been used millions of times. It's lasted since August, far longer than anyone could have imagined. Its supporters have had their names dragged through the mud, but we're gamers; we're used to that by now. Any new moniker would be similarly slandered; all it would do is divide people and make them easier to marginalize.

Besides, it's working. For all these people may bluster and scream, you better believe they're taking this seriously; how else could you explain all the coordinated pushbacks? Honestly, I think they're scared. Gawker, Gamasutra, and the rest of these publications are bleeding sponsors; a few of them have even had to turn to Google Adsense. The longer it lasts, the more damage it'll do, and the more people it'll encourage to speak out. The emperor has no clothes, and now everyone's getting a full frontal look.

And if we're going to go to strong analogies here (Nazis, really?), saying that GamerGate is invalidated because of a small handful of trolls would be like saying the civil rights movement was invalidated because of the Nation of Islam and the Black Panthers. It seems more like an excuse to dismiss it than anything else.

Whether this is true or not (I'm guessing it is, but who has the time to look through a bunch of tweets), it becomes invalidated by this-

http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/...culinity-on-twitter-heres-what-happened-next/

This was about a week after the first story, when Sarkessian made those "shooters are always men" tweets. There's several rape threats in there.

Cherrypicked examples from how many thousands upon thousands of tweets? Besides, a lot of those "horrible" tweets aren't even inaccurate - if you make disgustingly ignorant statements, no shit people are going to take offense and lash back. Racists receive an avalanche of hate, so is it any surprise that it happens to sexists, too?

Also, I love how "Eat a dick" is sexual harassment now... and that "cunt" is held as the worst slur imaginable; imagine if these people went to Australia. God, they're even shocked by "Fuck." Is the author that desperate for material or just that sheltered?

Anyway, here's some reading: https://medium.com/@cainejw/a-statistical-analysis-of-gamergate-utilizing-newsweek-data-e2bada31ea7e

 

[Foxi4]

I've lost interests. Both parties have crossed the line at this point and both have forgotten what they're fighting for. SJW's will spit poison at anyone anyways because vaginas are at stake (for some reason), #GamerGate supporters will support anything as long as they can cause some lulz and troll the SJW's. The number of people actually fighting for a cause is very limited, this is a problem with most kinds of activism. Lots of users participate on either side not because they honestly believe in the respective causes but because they just get to be a part of a group.



The big problem with GamerGate is that yes, advertisers retreat from certain outlets, but the consistent flow of GamerGate news amounts to tons upon tons of clickbait articles that both parties will visit either to support them or to find hooks against the other party - that's an effect opposite to the one GamerGate wants, thus their strategy is counter-effective. The whole argument has become a fight between two snow forts, much to the benefit of the media. The narrative has been effectively spun to their advantage, the best thing you can do is to stop visiting outlets that are somehow entangled in the corruption web.

Of course it goes without saying that I decry threatening any individual, be it by GamerGaters or by Anti-GamerGaters - that's just immature and it would be great if both parties shunned their members for stooping to that level, the argument of force is inferior to the force of an argument.

 

[TripleSMoon]

Gahars being Gahars

Once again, your signature is in full swing.

 

[Gahars]

Spoiler: Lest we forget...

So playable female characters are sexist, and not having playable female characters is sexist. Gee, Jon, it's almost as if you have no actual interest in accomplishing anything and instead waste your time trying to turn everything into some sort of hidden misogynistic, patriarchal conspiracy.

Oh, you!

I've lost interests. Both parties have crossed the line at this point and both have forgotten what they're fighting for. SJW's will spit poison at anyone anyways because vaginas are at stake (for some reason), #GamerGate supporters will support anything as long as they can cause some lulz and troll the SJW's. The number of people actually fighting for a cause is very limited, this is a problem with most kinds of activism. Lots of users participate on either side not because they honestly believe in the respective causes but because they just get to be a part of a group.

I understand where you're coming from, but I guess I'm just a bit more optimistic. There's people in it for the laughs (and boy, there are tons of them), but the fact that it's lasted for so long and shows no sign of losing momentum is a good indication that it's not just some flash in the pan. It would've expired a while ago if it was solely driven by people looking for a cheap laugh, but the level of output (from the ongoing boycotts and letter campaigns to the charity drives and ongoing investigations) persists. Enough of an actual, legitimate interest exists to drive people.

You have to remember, too, that gamers are the sort of people that will grind endlessly for a single raid; it's a group practically groomed for a campaign of attrition.

*le trashyman hates recycling*

It's a good point from a decent episode, and that no doubt happens. That's why it's crucial that people keep getting the info out, provide reliable sources, etc. so that people can be well-informed and come to their own conclusions.

The big problem with GamerGate is that yes, advertisers retreat from certain outlets, but the consistent flow of GamerGate news amounts to tons upon tons of clickbait articles that both parties will visit either to support them or to find hooks against the other party - that's an effect opposite to the one GamerGate wants, thus their strategy is counter-effective. The whole argument has become a fight between two snow forts, much to the benefit of the media. The narrative has been effectively spun to their advantage, the best thing you can do is to stop visiting outlets that are somehow entangled in the corruption web.

Of course it goes without saying that I decry threatening any individual, be it by GamerGaters or by Anti-GamerGaters - that's just immature and it would be great if both parties shunned their members for stooping to that level - the argument of force is inferior to the force of an argument.

All the traffic in the world doesn't mean a thing without ad money to keep things afloat. Some people may go to those sites out of curiosity, sure, but I think the total net effect is that readers will see the publications for what they are and take their viewership elsewhere. This is the sort of thing that does long term damage to credibility and reader trust, and the longer GamerGate goes on, the more is going to come to light and the more it's going to stick.

Besides, I'd argue that the responses we're seeing do not reflect advantage; they reek of desperation. You don't attack companies for leaving you and call them "craven idiots" if you're all snug and cozy. They've lost control of the narrative because they're dealing with people that won't back down no matter how many smear pieces they put out.

Worry not, brother. The fire rises.

 

[Tiffani]

Gahars, you're being pedantic, and it takes away from valid points you make. Do you really want to argue over the use of "always" when it comes to 97% vs. 100%. Is that what you really want the discussion to be about? This is like the smokescreens that FOX News uses in their neverending effort to undermine President Obama. The fact that you put up so much resistance to the word "always" is a giveaway that your argument isn't as strong as you would like it to be. In this case you're fighting a losing battle. The facts are, men are responsible for the vast majority of violent crime. That's because women are responsible for the vast majority of emotional crime, ie emotional abuse. We can't use physicality like men can, so we have to do everything we can in other areas to fight dirty.

And you are absolutely dead wrong about Sarkeesian coloring the message for you. You know how I know that? Because you completely misunderstood what she was saying. She was calling out the culture that boys grow up in, this is something that has been said countless times before by many different people. Did they get rape threats? No. What did she say that was so sexist? She stated facts that men are responsible for school shootings? Is that cherry-picked? Hell yeah, it is, but any outrage from that is mitigated by the fact that she was wrong by 3%. Election polls get a higher margin of error than that. What she said is no different than when people call out the gun culture in this country.

And please get off your high horse with this "strong analogies" shit. You know damn well that I wasn't equating Gamergate with the Nazi's, you're just trying to prop yourself up with that strawman argument. I brought up the swastika because it's the most well-known symbol that's been misused and corrupted by outside forces. This is the equivalent to the Gamergate name being misused and corrupted by outside forces. This is more of that smokescreen shit that takes away from your argument. Yes, Gamergate has recognition, but it has more negative recognition than positive.

Gamergate has already been marginalized in the eyes of many. Public perception is such that you guys are just a bunch of doxxing thugs who pick on defenseless women. Is that accurate? No. Is it fair? No. But that's perception, and a reddit circle-jerk isn't going to help that. Hey, I wish you guys could bankrupt Gawker and all their shitty sites, but that's not going to happen. The best you guys can do is to make Gawker actually try to be better at what they do. Sponsers might leave Gawker, but that's because companies are so afraid of any negative publicity that they distance themselves from it as quickly as they can.

One last thing. I'm glad you brought up The Black Panthers. They're a perfect example of what I'm talking about here, though on a much larger scale. The Black Panthers were a good group in the beginning, and they brought about a lot of needed changes. But then things changed, and now the Panthers are thought of negatively. The Black Panthers were for a good cause, just as Gamergate is. The Panthers are thought of negatively by a loot of people now, just as Gamergate is. There's a direct correlation here. One of the biggest problems facing you guys right now is that you lack a public leader. That's why your message has gone so astray.

 

[Veho]

 

[Gahars]

Gahars, you're being pedantic, and it takes away from valid points you make. Do you really want to argue over the use of "always" when it comes to 97% vs. 100%. Is that what you really want the discussion to be about? This is like the smokescreens that FOX News uses in their neverending effort to undermine President Obama. The fact that you put up so much resistance to the word "always" is a giveaway that your argument isn't as strong as you would like it to be. In this case you're fighting a losing battle. The facts are, men are responsible for the vast majority of violent crime. That's because women are responsible for the vast majority of emotional crime, ie emotional abuse. We can't use physicality like men can, so we have to do everything we can in other areas to fight dirty.

It's not being pedantic to say that it doesn't solely happen by men especially when her argument is that it's something inherent to men that causes shootings. Besides, that wasn't even the main argument, more of a side note; you seem to be putting more emphasis on it than I did.

It's also worth pointing out that the number of school shootings over the past few decades is incredibly small, comparatively speaking. One is one too many, of course, but those committing these crimes represent only a percent of a percent of a percent of men. Considering the fact that the vast majority of men never once commit a school shooting, let alone a shooting of any kind, arguing that "masculinity" is inherently tied to shootings is an obviously spurious, baseless claim.

And you are absolutely dead wrong about Sarkeesian coloring the message for you. You know how I know that? Because you completely misunderstood what she was saying. She was calling out the culture that boys grow up in, this is something that has been said countless times before by many different people. Did they get rape threats? No. What did she say that was so sexist? She stated facts that men are responsible for school shootings? Is that cherry-picked? Hell yeah, it is, but any outrage from that is mitigated by the fact that she was wrong by 3%. Election polls get a higher margin of error than that. What she said is no different than when people call out the gun culture in this country.

It's a repugnant claim no matter who makes it. Do you think I nodded along when others have said it, but only took offense when Sarkeesian made a tweet? "Wait, Anita Sarkeesian thinks that! Damn, I hate it now! Down with this sort of thing!"

You're forgetting that she didn't just say "Men are responsible for most school shootings." She was arguing that the root cause of these shootings was the fact that they were men, and that something had to be done to stop men from being, well, men. If you want to say that poor access to metal health services is a problem, that we need to make men with mental issues more willing to seek treatment rather than shrug it off, or anything like that, you'd better believe I'd be the first in line to support that, because it's a reasonable approach to a serious problem.

You seem to be focusing on the numbers when it's what the posts were actually suggesting, explicitly and implicitly, that people find so offensive.

And please get off your high horse with this "strong analogies" shit. You know damn well that I wasn't equating Gamergate with the Nazi's, you're just trying to prop yourself up with that strawman argument. I brought up the swastika because it's the most well-known symbol that's been misused and corrupted by outside forces. This is the equivalent to the Gamergate name being misused and corrupted by outside forces. This is more of that smokescreen shit that takes away from your argument. Yes, Gamergate has recognition, but it has more negative recognition than positive.

Gamergate has already been marginalized in the eyes of many. Public perception is such that you guys are just a bunch of doxxing thugs who pick on defenseless women. Is that accurate? No. Is it fair? No. But that's perception, and a reddit circle-jerk isn't going to help that. Hey, I wish you guys could bankrupt Gawker and all their shitty sites, but that's not going to happen. The best you guys can do is to make Gawker actually try to be better at what they do. Sponsers might leave Gawker, but that's because companies are so afraid of any negative publicity that they distance themselves from it as quickly as they can.

Godwin's Law is a thing for a reason.

Besides, of course GamerGate has a bad reputation; it's up against a press that will slander it at every available opportunity. Do you think that if everyone abandoned the hashtag and changed the name to "GamerGroupHug" that the notoriety would end? That the hit pieces would stop? That those trolling both sides would move on to greener pastures?

I'll let you decide, but the answer is no.

For whatever notoriety it may have, GamerGate is a brand that people recognize and one that only continues to grow. You don't retreat when you're winning.

Do some people get initial bad impressions? Sure, but that's why it's so crucial to collect as much information as possible and make it freely available so that others may decide for themselves. Of course, it also helps that GamerGate communities tend to skew towards free speech (compare r/KotakuInAction, where anti-GG posts are welcomed for discussion, to r/GamerGhazi, where anything less than abject hate for GamerGate, including ambivalence, is a banworthy offense).

One last thing. I'm glad you brought up The Black Panthers. They're a perfect example of what I'm talking about here, though on a much larger scale. The Black Panthers were a good group in the beginning, and they brought about a lot of needed changes. But then things changed, and now the Panthers are thought of negatively. The Black Panthers were for a good cause, just as Gamergate is. The Panthers are thought of negatively by a loot of people now, just as Gamergate is. There's a direct correlation here. One of the biggest problems facing you guys right now is that you lack a public leader. That's why your message has gone so astray.

Except that's not the case here at all. The Black Panthers weren't a movement in and of themselves; they were a radical sect that split from the Civil Rights Movement their trappings in the pursuit of extreme, militaristic action. If anyone's the Black Panthers here, it's the trolls, though I doubt many of them look nearly as stylish as the Black Panthers.

Now, has the message gone astray? The focus may have expanded a bit from ethics in games journalism to some other journalism sources, but people have been laying into that pretty thick. Without a singular leader, it's risen and lasted longer than anyone could have ever expected. Sure, there's downsides; distractions happen, and it's easy for people to get too caught up in the happenings. However, by staying in the collective, it helps protect against the sort of coopting that destroyed the Occupy Wall Street movement, and it gives the press no easy target for character assassination. If a prominent figure in GamerGate does something stupid or goes extreme, they can easily be discarded and ignored as everyone else presses on.

The reason the press demands GamerGate choose a leader is because they want someone specifically they can go after. For once, they don't have that, and their old tactics aren't working for them. Why make it easy for them?

 

[Tiffani]

No, you're missing the point. Sarkeesian said that it's the toxic culture of masculinity that causes these shootings. It's what also causes domestic abuse, rapes, etc. It's the whole "Be a man!" mentality that too many people have. When a young boy hurts himself on the playground, too many people say "You're all right, stop crying." or "What's wrong with you? Why are you crying?"This leads to too many men internalizing their feelings and not learning to deal with them. The way we raise our boys directly leads to this kind of stuff. This is inherent to boys because we (as parents) make it inherent to them. Girls can cry but boys can't. Girls can play with dolls or trucks, but boys can only play with trucks. And on and on and on.

And obviously you don't know anything about The Black Panthers. They weren't violent, they worked hard to establish community programs for poor kids and health clinics and such. The murder and arrests of members led to a more violent group, but still nowhere near what some people think.

And please spare me the "free speech" stuff. From what I've seen, both sides engage in rigorous censorship. I've been to the KotakuInAction reddit and there are exactly zero anti-Gamergate posts there. Anyone who expressed even the slightest hint of being against the movement is downvoted to hell. It's the same on GamerGhazi. Both sides are so fully dug in that they refuse to have anything to do with the other side.

And what's this about winning? Neither side is winning. And your quote here is very telling, " If a prominent figure in GamerGate does something stupid or goes extreme, they can easily be discarded and ignored as everyone else presses on." This isn't true at all. If someone you are associated with does something crazy, that reflects on you. If you refer someone to a job, and they do a shitty job and get fired, you better believe that reflects poorly on you. Part of your reputation comes from who you associate with.

You're also forgetting that when you can't put a human face on something, it's harder to get attached to it and drum up support. It's why when they make those "feed starving kids in Africa" commercials they show the kids. The anti-Gamergate people can point to Felicia Day (who was really doxxed, btw) and use that against you guys, to try to paint you all as thuggish brutes who pick on defenseless women. Is that manipulative and dirty? Absolutely, but so is sending mass, form letter complaints in to Gawker advertisers in order to hurt them. Both sides have gotten their hands very dirty here.

 

[Foxi4]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1854883/

Apparently women are responsible for 70% of demestic violence in nonreciprocally violent relationships - good to know.

Tiffani, if we start segregating people by gender when it comes to violence, we might as well lock up all black males preemptively - after all, most offenders are black, right? Oh, wait... That's racism, we shouldn't do that, huh...

I don't like the idea that a lump of flesh between someone's legs is blamed for that person's poor life choices. Crime is a socio-cultural issue, gender has little biological impact on it.

 

[Kalker3]

And please spare me the "free speech" stuff. From what I've seen, both sides engage in rigorous censorship. I've been to the KotakuInAction reddit and there are exactly zero anti-Gamergate posts there. Anyone who expressed even the slightest hint of being against the movement is downvoted to hell. It's the same on GamerGhazi. Both sides are so fully dug in that they refuse to have anything to do with the other side.

Sorry but no, that's wrong. There have been several AMAs (Ask Me Anything) by anti-gamergate redditors in r/KiA who are well received. On the other hand, any neutral statement in r/GamerGhazi and r/GirlGamers gets the user banned from the subreddit. Moreover, any post related to GamerGate submitted to r/Gaming and r/Games gets deleted.

I won't deny that anti-gamergate comments often get downvoted, however it's only that. They're downvoted, not banned from the sub.

 

[TripleSMoon]

I won't deny that anti-gamergate comments often get downvoted, however it's only that. They're downvoted, not banned from the sub.

Not to mention that this isn't a GamerGate-exclusive issue by any means. The general population of Reddit as a whole seems unable to grasp that downvotes aren't meant to express disagreement (speaking as an avid Redditor). Spend just a day in subreddits like /r/wiiu and /r/360, and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

 

[Kalker3]

Not to mention that this isn't a GamerGate-exclusive issue by any means. The general population of Reddit as a whole seems unable to grasp that downvotes aren't meant to express disagreement (speaking as an avid Redditor). Spend just a day in subreddits like /r/wiiu and /r/360, and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

Indeed, downvotes are only used, or rather, supposed to be used when the comment is irrelevant to the discussion. You even get a warning when downvoting stuff on /r/PCGaming telling you that.

 

[TripleSMoon]

You even get a warning when downvoting stuff on /r/PCGaming telling you that.

Tons of subreddits do that (including /r/wiiu), and it doesn't seem to mean anything to people.

 

[Gahars]

No, you're missing the point. Sarkeesian said that it's the toxic culture of masculinity that causes these shootings. It's what also causes domestic abuse, rapes, etc. It's the whole "Be a man!" mentality that too many people have. When a young boy hurts himself on the playground, too many people say "You're all right, stop crying." or "What's wrong with you? Why are you crying?"This leads to too many men internalizing their feelings and not learning to deal with them. The way we raise our boys directly leads to this kind of stuff. This is inherent to boys because we (as parents) make it inherent to them. Girls can cry but boys can't. Girls can play with dolls or trucks, but boys can only play with trucks. And on and on and on.

Yeah, when you call the very idea of being a man and being masculine toxic, there's the problem. When you're conflating "being masculine" with "being an asshole," there's the problem. This viewpoint is inherently wrongheaded because it views (general) male behavior through the lens of (general) female behavior, and assumes that men are suffering because they aren't like women. Men just express themselves in different ways from women (again, generally speaking), and to dismiss that as somehow inferior to the female standard is, frankly, pretty sexist.

Plus, I love how "being masculine" is so casually conflated with "being an asshole" now, as if we all look up to douchebags and think, "Damn, now that's how you be a man." Assumptions, assumptions...

And obviously you don't know anything about The Black Panthers. They weren't violent, they worked hard to establish community programs for poor kids and health clinics and such. The murder and arrests of members led to a more violent group, but still nowhere near what some people think.

Attacks, robberies, shoot outs, etc. Many members were well-intentioned, sure, but let's not beat around the bush here.

And please spare me the "free speech" stuff. From what I've seen, both sides engage in rigorous censorship. I've been to the KotakuInAction reddit and there are exactly zero anti-Gamergate posts there. Anyone who expressed even the slightest hint of being against the movement is downvoted to hell. It's the same on GamerGhazi. Both sides are so fully dug in that they refuse to have anything to do with the other side.

http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2jykfj/hiya_im_an_antigg_ama/
http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2kiwyl/i_am_jesse_singal_a_journalist_who_has_been/
http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2jd1e0/hey_georgina_young_here_talking_about_why_im/ (On the fence, but such an AMA would've been banned on r/GamerGhazi)

There's downvotes from individual users, sure, but as others have said, that's an endemic problem to Reddit culture as a whole. The fact is, r/KotakuInAction will still host these discussions and allow them to go on while opposing subs will not.

And what's this about winning? Neither side is winning. And your quote here is very telling, " If a prominent figure in GamerGate does something stupid or goes extreme, they can easily be discarded and ignored as everyone else presses on." This isn't true at all. If someone you are associated with does something crazy, that reflects on you. If you refer someone to a job, and they do a shitty job and get fired, you better believe that reflects poorly on you. Part of your reputation comes from who you associate with.

Neither side is winning? Gamasutra, Gawker, and other such publications are bleeding sponsors. They're having to resort to Google Adsense. The Fine Young Capitalists got their project funded and will help a female game developer get a footing in the industry. More and more stories of corruption and collusion, from the GameJournoPros list to the blackmailing of Allistair Pinsof, come out every day. Similarly, more and more devs and other crucial figures are speaking out. Hell, worthwhile charities are getting a helping hand. It's not a clean, decisive victory by any stretch of the imagination, but no one imagined there would be such a thing. It is steady, ongoing progress, though, despite all the setbacks and whatever else may come, and I've gotta be honest, it feels preeeeety nice.

Onto the other point... That is very true. These people might support GamerGate, these people might become notable within GamerGate, but the crucial difference is, they aren't GamerGate. They're individuals in a large, faceless collective of people that have all managed to coalesce on this one particular matter. In a movement as fluid and freeform as this one, where anyone could pick up the mantle at any point and then discard it just as quickly (same with Anonymous, as mentioned previously), you can't really define it by cherrypicking individual members, and your analogy doesn't really reflect that fact at all. These are two entirely different situations and contexts.

You're also forgetting that when you can't put a human face on something, it's harder to get attached to it and drum up support.

That certainly hasn't stopped GamerGate so far. Why change now?

It's why when they make those "feed starving kids in Africa" commercials they show the kids. The anti-Gamergate people can point to Felicia Day (who was really doxxed, btw) and use that against you guys, to try to paint you all as thuggish brutes who pick on defenseless women. Is that manipulative and dirty? Absolutely, but so is sending mass, form letter complaints in to Gawker advertisers in order to hurt them. Both sides have gotten their hands very dirty here.

And that sort of defamation wouldn't stop if GamerGate elected a central figurehead. It'd only increase, and now have a specific person to target.

Besides, how is the letter writing campaign dirty or manipulative in any way? These messages just quote Gawker (or the other targeted sites) and its employees on what they've said. As far as consumer action goes, it's as direct and honest as it gets. If you show contempt for your audience and insult your readers, among other things, this is a natural, rational consequence.

If people were DDOSing the sites or using other means to take them down, those would be dirty targets. Here, the publications made their own grave and keep digging themselves in deeper. They're free to write and publish whatever they like, but they aren't entitled to sponsorship.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1854883/

Apparently women are responsible for 70% of demestic violence in nonreciprocally violent relationships - good to know.

Tiffani, if we start segregating people by gender when it comes to violence, we might as well lock up all black males preemptively - after all, most offenders are black, right? Oh, wait... That's racism, we shouldn't do that, huh...

I don't like the idea that a lump of flesh between someone's legs is blamed for that person's poor life choices. Crime is a socio-cultural issue, gender has little biological impact on it.

WON'T SOMEBODY STOP THIS TOXIC FEMININITY? inb4 #NotAllWomen

 

[Foxi4]

WON'T SOMEBODY STOP THIS TOXIC FEMININITY? inb4 #NotAllWomen

This whole third-wave feminism shtick hangs on a thin thread claiming that "men" despise women and imposed gender roles specifically to spite them wheras in reality that's obviously not the case - the entire society accepted gender roles as mutually beneficial in the initial stages of human civilization and those rules spring not from a fleeting fancy of men, but from the biological order pre-ordained for us by nature.

I've recently read an interesting comment specifically about the issue and I have to say, it made perfect sense. In a completely theoretical scenario, one man can impregnate a hundred women, but no woman can birth a hundred children, that's just biologically impossible. As such, men are actually the expendable element of our society wheras women were, and in many cases still are, enveloped by a protective umbrella. Over the course of thousands of years men were responsible for one thing and one thing only - protecting and providing for their women, who are indispensable in order to survive as a species. This order was orchestrated not by men, but by our genetics. Century after century it was the men that fought territorial wars while women were revered for their fertility and, in certain cultures, wisdom, safe within human settlements. Men were the external force, women were the force of internal influence, the axis around which the whole mechanism revolved.

This order of things shifted in the recent centuries - men no longer fight territorial wars nor do they hunt for sustenance, those times are simply over. This opened up a world of opportunities for women, hence the feminist movement and the motion to give both genders equal rights - I'm all for that, the times have indeed changed. In a lot of ways, men as a sex have outlived their original purpose, evolution can't quite catch up with the rapid pace of human development, which is a sad prospect come to think of it.

The point I'm driving at here is that believing in the mantra that men and women are the same other than the reproductive organs is a load of croak. We should all have equal rights and equal duties, but we should also embrace the fact that we're different and as such we have different natural predispositions and talents. This is not me being sexist, this is me being observant - thousands of years of survival have shaped our species in this way or another and that's just a fact.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...hy-men-are-better-at-map-reading-8978248.html

That's not to say that both men and women operate solely on the level of natural instincts - that's a preposterous and sexist claim, we're creatures of reason and we're better than that. With that in mind though, we're "wired" differently, so yes - we'll think along different lines, we'll reach different conclusions and we'll often clash on many levels - that's what makes the two sexes perfect compliments of each other in the first place, that's the idea.

The answer to all of world's problems and more doesn't lay in feminism - to (somewhat inaccurately) quote Thunderf00t, you can't fix problems of both sexes by focusing exclusively on one of them, social rules and standards should be set by means of compromise. The golden mean is usually somewhere in the middle.

[/tirade]

 

[Gahars]

I've recently read an interesting comment specifically about the issue and I have to say, it made perfect sense. In a completely theoretical scenario, one man can impregnate a hundred women, but no woman can birth 100 children, that's just biologically impossible. As such, men are actually the expendable element of our society wheras women were, and in many cases still are, enveloped by a protective umbrella. Over the course of thousands of years men were responsible for one thing and one thing only - protecting and providing for their women, who are indispensable in order to survive as a species. This order was orchestrated not by men, but by our genetics. Century after century it was the men that fought territorial wars while women were revered for their fertility and, in certain cultures, wisdom. Men were the external force, women were the force of internal influence.

I'm going to go off on tangent here myself, but this is a good point. I know we're getting off topic here, but this is EoF, we can roll with it.

Sort of on this note... look at the oft-despised "Damsel in Distress" trope. A woman is captured and needs to be saved; the archetypical example is of a knight riding off to save a woman from the clutches from the dragon. On the one hand, one might argue that it "enforces" the idea that women are helpless and need to be saved by men... on the other hand, though, it also seems to be driven by a notion that men are expendable and have a duty to drop everything and protect women, even at the expense of their own lives.

When "tropes" get brought up and discussed in the context of stories or old video games, I see a lot of people mistakenly assume that they're used to perpetuate gender roles or disenfranchise people, when instead they're used because they are basic storytelling traditions that have resonated with audiences for hundreds and hundreds of years. The damsel in distress is a cliche, sure, but it became a cliche because it's an easy device to weave a story around. Sometimes, simple is good, especially when the story isn't even the focus (like Double Dragon, where the establishing cutscene is 8 seconds long, give or take).

That's not to say it's always good, either. It can be lazy or hackneyed like anything. It all depends on the execution and the context. If we could talk about stories from this perspective, and also recognize that bad writing is more often to blame than any deliberate malice, we could probably have better, more enlightening discussions.

I mean, I know that doesn't get the clicks or the headlines, but it's nice to dream.

 

[Foxi4]

That's the problem many people have with the damsel in distress trope. Everybody feels for the poor woman, nobody says "well, that's a nice bloke!" anymore. Let's face it, if a f*cking dragon wants to kidnap you, it's gonna kidnap you regardless of what junk you have and you gotta to be either brave or stupid to go out of your way to save a person kidnapped by a dragon... the issue of dragons being mythical creatures aside. Huh... It's almost as if we're designed to feel compassion towards the woman, but I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

 

[Gahars]

That's the problem many people have with the damsel in distress trope. Everybody feels for the poor woman, nobody says "well, that's a nice bloke!" anymore. Let's face it, if a f*cking dragon wants to kidnap you, it's gonna kidnap you regardless of what junk you have and you gotta to be either brave or stupid to go out of your way to save a person kidnapped by a dragon... the issue of dragons being mythical creatures aside. Huh... It's almost as if we're designed to feel compassion towards the woman, but I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

Beyond that, it's not just what device or trope is used; what matters most is how it's used. Even a character in the "damsel" archetype can still be engaging, powerful, and compelling in her own right, while a "strong female protagonist" that effortlessly slaughters her enemies can be a rote, boring character.

When you look to certain arbitrary characteristics of writing (or art in general) to match a predetermined conclusion or to fit a checklist, you ignore the texture and nuances that matter most. And that's terrible.