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Please don't go calling people racist, misogynists, or any combination therein. Don't start throwing around words like "white Knight" or SJW, these words are at this point used in a derogatory manner regarding this debate. You can discuss that these terms exist, but do not attribute them to any individual user or group of users on this website. Try to have a serious discussion about the topic at hand without resorting to personal attacks and we will all be the better for it. Breaking this rule will result in an automatic temp ban the length of which will depend on the comment you make. This thread started not so bad. It is getting worse. If you want to have this discussion on TL be respectful of your fellow users, we all live in the same house. Effective now: Page 21 October 18th 08:31 KST | ||
KeksX
Germany3634 Posts
I don't want to jump into the discussion because I'm really not part of that whole Twitter thing and most stuff I read is from articles and sites like TL, so I have some catching up to do. One thing I do wanna point out though is this article which I find really interesting. I don't want to make a judgement here or a statement on what I do or don't agree, but I feel like it is one of the more worthy blog posts out there: http://seriouspony.com/trouble-at-the-koolaid-point/ | ||
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hummingbird23
Norway359 Posts
On October 15 2014 23:26 Ghostcom wrote: Seeing how you continously try to put words in my mouth this will be my last reply to you: None of what I have said can even remotely closely be equated to: To be 100% clear: I do not consider myself part of GamerGate, nor do I consider myself part of the anti-GamerGate. I am a bystander thoroughly sick of the entire ordeal. Leaking the SSN, adresses and contacting employers of people who disagree with you is deplorable and has been done by both sides. I also find it kinda funny that you decide to link to cracked.com in a thread discussing integrity of journalism... Not really a shining beacon (and the article has been discussed in plenty on Reddit and was debunked entirely). With regards to the hobbyist argument: I think most people would accept the biased reporting if the gaming sites would actually disclaim their vested interests. The issue arises when sites like IG try to pass a funded review off as an objective review. If they had a disclaimer stating that they were financially supported there would be little argument. From now on you can argue with yourself - you don't seem to actually need me anyway. Because of course the paragraph I quoted was too long to actually read. :p I did not reference any facts from Cracked, simply their words expressing that the whole claim of association of journalistic integrity and GG was bunk and that people who only wished to talk about journalistic integrity shouldn't associate themselves with GG. Regarding the revealing of personal addresses and SSN, that's deplorable. Contact of employers is less so, if you have made death threats on twitter to someone, I can see why that might make you less of an asset to your employer. There is a precedent that when people say really racist things, they get not-so-favourable treatment from people around them. There are of course other considerations, but in this case, this mere "disagreement" has resulted in people getting forced from their homes and universities getting bomb threats. Or for the sake of taking a more representative example, this. Being that abusive might make you less respected in your workplace, who would've thought? | ||
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Millitron
United States2611 Posts
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/10/09/the_gender_games_sex_lies_and_videogames_124244.html | ||
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Taf the Ghost
United States11751 Posts
This starts years ago with a rolling set of "themes" or "narratives" that popped up within Gaming. You see this in normal Media. It is the "topic of the year" journalism, where everyone feels a need to mention it. It's actually a sign of specific coordination and influence by activists, but it's so common no one really thinks much about it. (In politics, it's the Talking Point of the Day, which everyone seems to be talking about) But the real kicker is the "Cover Up is Worse than the Crime" scenario that played out. The "Zoe Quinn" story was something none of us would have heard about, given it's pretty much "TMZ, the obscure Developer" version. But someone went around crushing & removing any discussion of the topic at all. And that's what started the Firestorm. 4Chan, that hive of scum & villainy, was actively suppressing any discussion, eventually. You simply don't see anyone with that reach. If you know *ANYTHING* about the way Internet forums work, attempting to shut down discussion, by orders from on high, you're going to get a revolt. And that's mostly what was going on. But, that was pretty small peanuts until the "Gamer is Dead" articles all drop. 14? over 48 hours, across multiple media companies, all mostly saying the same thing. That's when the "#GamerGate" tag came about. Something very fishy was up, and the Zoe Quinn blow up gave a template to connect everything. But, from there, this very much isn't a movement; it's simply a response. If you want a better analogy, look at the Arab Spring. It started because a guy was prevented from selling apples, and, for whatever reason, decided to set himself on fire as a protest. In Tunisia. I doubt anyone in Egypt cared about his apples, but that government fell. Does the catalyst mean much to the resulting forest fire? No. It's what got it started. The forest is already set to burn, it just needs a trigger. The catch is, in this case, the "Media" is much of the story. So they lie, obstruct, ignore, beat Strawmen or otherwise belittle their audience. This is standard practice any time they are ever questioned. So what's going on today isn't that surprising. The only good thing to come out of this is the knowledge that the most influential name in Game Journalism is our own TotalBiscuit. Which always brings a large, British laugh to my mind. | ||
lichter
1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
is it because i'm not important enough | ||
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Spawkuring
United States755 Posts
It's almost identical to what's happening in the Ferguson riots. People are protesting for valid reasons, but because certain individuals use the protest as an excuse to loot, the bad parts get highlighted by its detractors and the valid messages get distorted. | ||
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Millitron
United States2611 Posts
On October 16 2014 00:15 Spawkuring wrote: The fact that GamerGate isn't an official organized group is what's hurting it more than anything. Since it's basically just a consumer riot, there's no accountability. Any random troll can send a death threat and claim that it's on behalf of the entire group when it's always just a very small minority that nobody else supports. The shooting threat against Anita appears to be done by a single individual, most responses I've seen from the GG-side is that they had no idea about it until it actually happened, and nobody supports the threat itself. But since the movement is leaderless and unorganized, any threat is going to be linked to them no matter what, especially since many people on the other side WANT GG to look as bad as possible. It's almost identical to what's happening in the Ferguson riots. People are protesting for valid reasons, but because certain individuals use the protest as an excuse to loot, the bad parts get highlighted by its detractors and the valid messages get distorted. People take internet threats too seriously. It seems like any time anyone does anything, they get death threats on twitter. I recall some baseball player getting death threats because he wasn't doing well in a fantasy league. The anonymity of the internet breeds hyperbole, which no one seems to realize. If you haven't gotten a death threat online, you must not have posted anything anywhere. | ||
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Ghostcom
Denmark4782 Posts
On October 16 2014 00:27 Millitron wrote: People take internet threats too seriously. It seems like any time anyone does anything, they get death threats on twitter. I recall some baseball player getting death threats because he wasn't doing well in a fantasy league. The anonymity of the internet breeds hyperbole, which no one seems to realize. If you haven't gotten a death threat online, you must not have posted anything anywhere. I have gotten death threats for canon-rushing (admittedly that is almost warranted). | ||
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Gowerly
United Kingdom916 Posts
We've also had: Which is interesting. It doesn't detail much on the subsequent treatment of these individuals, because it goes without saying that it's wrong. I'd forgotten about the many DMCA requests to take down even the most rational criticism of her critique. | ||
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aksfjh
United States4853 Posts
On October 16 2014 00:45 Ghostcom wrote: I have gotten death threats for canon-rushing (admittedly that is almost warranted). I was about to say that I had never received death threats, but then I remember all those years I played FPS and Strategy games...  I guess if they posted my address along with it, might be a bit more frightening though.As far as journalists go, it's rather annoying to see some of the blatant bias in reporting and defense of criticism that is seen from the consumer standpoint. | ||
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datscilly
United States529 Posts
On October 16 2014 00:15 Spawkuring wrote: The fact that GamerGate isn't an official organized group is what's hurting it more than anything. Since it's basically just a consumer riot, there's no accountability. Any random troll can send a death threat and claim that it's on behalf of the entire group when it's always just a very small minority that nobody else supports. The shooting threat against Anita appears to be done by a single individual, most responses I've seen from the GG-side is that they had no idea about it until it actually happened, and nobody supports the threat itself. But since the movement is leaderless and unorganized, any threat is going to be linked to them no matter what, especially since many people on the other side WANT GG to look as bad as possible. It's almost identical to what's happening in the Ferguson riots. People are protesting for valid reasons, but because certain individuals use the protest as an excuse to loot, the bad parts get highlighted by its detractors and the valid messages get distorted. I was going to comment with a comparison to the Ferguson riot also. In both there's an initial spark, that sets off a longstanding discontent. Then in one view, the facts of the intial spark don't really matter, the fact remains that there is a systemic problem to be solved. In another view, the details of the initial incident come to be at the heart of a controversy, because detractors of the movement make accusations that "the riots are just an excuse to loot" or "this is just an excuse to harass women" and support their claim by citing that the initial incident did not in fact happen as the movement says it did. In other words, their argument is that the story of the initial spark was fabricated by the rioters, and therefore the intentions of the rioters must be different from what they claim. I do not find this argument compelling. All this does is obfuscate an already complicated matter, twisting the debate into one that is inconsequential. + Show Spoiler + This post partially responds to these posts as well, of whose posters generally get at the same thing: + Show Spoiler + On October 15 2014 23:16 Geisterkarle wrote: I don't know if it got better or worse. Because most "irregularities" in journalism standards on my "radar" for the last years were about politics, economy, maybe travel, ... but gaming was not in the "mainstream press". You hear bits and pieces, but it never "got out" like gamergate now. Which woman? Zoe? Quinngate (which was waaaaaay before gamergate) was exactly about journalism standards. "Too bad" she was a woman, so that sexist accusations also found their way into the discussion. Which is the same as now: YOU (and many others) say, that gamergate is NOT about journalism standards but about sexism and misogyny and females in the gaming industry. OTHERS (and there are also many) say, that gamergate is EXACTLY about journalism standards, especially in the gaming industry and NOT about sexism! So, tell me: You all are talking about different things with the same hashtag! Which "side" is right? And if you answer please add a "why" that is above "because I say so!" + Show Spoiler + On October 15 2014 22:58 Gowerly wrote: So, yes, some people under the GamerGate tag have been harassing, sending death threats, etc, to women via the medium of the internet. People have been doing this ANYWAY. ALL THE TIME. FOR YEARS. Suddenly "Gamers" are involved and now we can puff our chests and say that we're against a group called GamerGate! Hooray! An emeny with a name! Now we can go to war! Except you can't. Because in this group you've got a whole bunch of people that want different things. Yes, a lot of games journalists are hobbyists that are getting paid not much at all to review and preview games. Still, if there's underhanded-ness going on in there, it should be brought out where possible. Saying that all of GamerGate now is out to fire women into the Sun or whatever, to use the above neo-nazi analogy (huehue Godwin's law!) is like saying all of Islam is part of ISIS. There's nothing more a lot of people that are part of GamerGate (and especially #NotYourShield, who have been exploited by those very news sites when they were claiming that it's a bunch of privileged white dudes whining about them) want to do other than distance themselves from the heinousness that has been going on. Say GamerGate dies and that all goes from twitter and whatever. WOMEN WILL BE SAFE FOREVER! Except they won't. Still. Because harassment and death threats are sent all the time and will still be sent all the time. Suggesting that GamerGate is all about this is ridiculous. This treatment of others on the internet will continue by the same people until something, if anything can be, is done about the people themselves. Not about some twitter tag, not about ideas about games journalism. Not about news sites, about the people doing this. You can #StopGamerGate2014 all you like. What you need to do is #StopBeingAwfulToEachOther Edit: For clarity this is still an argument about the use of labels/tags for these kinds of things, rather than a criticism of stopping harassment. | ||
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Godwrath
Spain10131 Posts
The whole problem with this crap is that never had been any kind of real journalism on gaming, and internet only made it worse with shit ton of white noise that prevented anyone who tries to stay objective. About the rest, mysoginy or however it is spelled, i don't even want to comment, the same crap can be said about basically anything, from music to movies, calling it a "gamer" thing is just stupid. | ||
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Ben...
Canada3485 Posts
On October 16 2014 01:35 Godwrath wrote: I just have to facepalm at this crap. That's all you can do, really. I've done my best to avoid all this stuff but every time I see something about it, it seems to get more and more insane. | ||
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-Doji-
Belgium127 Posts
What I gather so far is: So basically, everyone here seems to be in agreement that there is a serious problem in (gaming) journalism that needs to be addressed. There may or may not be an undefined group called GamerGate that wants to address this problem. There are women involved. Some people, that may or may not belong to GamerGate, have threatened them claiming they are operating for GG. Said women lashed back at GG. Shit got out of hand. Mainstream media is mostly reporting the juicy "shit hit the fan" things and are (as always) writing gamers of as assholes with too much time on their hands hating women. So basically, this is pretty much like anything that was ever attributed to 4chan and got on the media? But now the people responsible call themself "gamers". Not to shit on the valid topics of gender equality and journalistic standards. Because I believe these are actually valid concerns and should be discussed somewhere. I just feel any rational discussion is out of the window with this whole shitstorm. You can't state your opinion on anything related to this without being written of as secretly advocating pro- or contra- the whole "lololol we are cool and we hate women"-thing. So euhm. There is no side to take here, this whole ordeal is just a (possibly orchestrated??) distraction from the actual issues? | ||
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Duka08
3391 Posts
On October 16 2014 01:26 datscilly wrote: I was going to comment with a comparison to the Ferguson riot also. In both there's an initial spark, that sets off a longstanding discontent. Then in one view, the facts of the intial spark don't really matter, the fact remains that there is a systemic problem to be solved. In another view, the details of the initial incident come to be at the heart of a controversy, because detractors of the movement make accusations that "the riots are just an excuse to loot" or "this is just an excuse to harass women" and support their claim by citing that the initial incident did not in fact happen as the movement says it did. In other words, their argument is that the story of the initial spark was fabricated by the rioters, and therefore the intentions of the rioters must be different from what they claim. Thanks for this; summarizes my thoughts in a way I haven't been able to in the past few days when people ask me why I'm upset/confused about this whole thing. It all sucks, and there's real problems, but it's such a shitstorm that nothing productive is going to come from either side anymore until the craze and attention dies down (which is ironic considering that's usually a good thing or the whole point) | ||
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Crushinator
Netherlands2138 Posts
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Falling
Canada11363 Posts
I've followed this thing from pretty much the beginning on Escapist where they pretty much have 3 threads per week on this topic- eclipsing the weekly Anita thread, but somehow even pulling her into the whirlpool that is GG. What I found most baffling is how the concern over 'journalistic integrity' began over Kotaku because I was not aware that people thought they had journalistic integrity in the first place. For those of you newer to TL, here is how we spoke of Kotaku in the past: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/240814-response-to-kotaku-article-on-progaming-downswing Highlight- On July 06 2011 08:59 Kennigit wrote: I wouldn't even click the link. Kotaku is a rag of a blog and exists only to spew traffic-generating sensationalism,....there isn't an ounce of journalism here. She interviewed 1 person and wrote an article on it???? You would actually fail an assignment in any journalism program trying to pull that off. Her point is quite literally "Waaah this is boring i don't like it". But I have seen the weirdest conspiracies spun out of this 'movement.' Whenever there was, in essence, breaking news of another website banning Zoe discussions, posters were unironically wondering how 'deep this went.' That is, suspecting even Reddit as being part of the conspirarcy to hush up Zoe critics. They've tried to move on with the whole GamerGate thing, but to me they still largely miss the mark in not dealing with the rampant corruption between big video game industry and the press. I mean, it was TB and the Jimquisition (not the GG movement) that brought up the really shady contract that you had to sign to review Shadows of Mordor. Apparently tumblr has been doing some really crummy stuff, but because I never go there, I don't know. For myself, just hearing directly and unfilitered from the pro-GG side was enough to turn me off. There are good ideas buried in there somewhere, but the tipping point was the wrong tipping point. Right idea, wrong reason if you will. And of course the internet is the internet, so then crummy people get involved on both sides and here we are today. As I've seen this progress since the original flash point, I am even more confirmed that twitter is a crappy method of communication. I wrote this yesterday on Escapist and I think it is very true: I largely dislike twitter and this sort of thing only confirms my antipathy. I'm reminded of a bumper sticker: ![[image loading]](http://s8.postimg.org/j41ii29cx/bumperstickers_are_ineffectual.jpg) Except I would replace it with "Twitter is an ineffectual means of communicating my nuanced views on a variety of issues that cannot be reduced to a simple pithy tweet. Twitter is best geared to create hype, but by the same measure it is also best geared to create firestorms. The internet struggles with proportionality. It is difficult for people on the internet to collectively create a moderate and proportionate response to a hot topic. We've seen this even within our own community on TL. Some person flames out on the internet, and everyone feels the need to chime in on the person's behaviour. Whereas many of the comments were moderate in nature, because everyone needs to say their piece, in aggregate the response is disproportionate to the behaviour. (And then, of course, the trolls and/or the insensitive hateful people get involved.) Maybe the so-called Quinnspirarcy (the original name) needed commentating on, but when everyone piles on, attracting the dregs of the internet and their hateful comments, and with everyone using an inadequate method of communication (twitter). . .you have the makings of a perfect storm. However, regardless of what you think on the topic, I think Escapist released two very good articles on the subject: Female Game Developers Share Their Views on #GamerGate What Male Developers Think of #GamerGate It's a lot of reading and I haven't gotten through all the male developer's interviews yet. There are a variety of opinions. But in my opinion it cuts through the timelines of who did what when, and hear how this affects real people. Especially in the female game developers, you can hear genuine fear over the incident. I know a lot of comments on the article immediately jumped to try and defend the movement and correct misconceptions, but in the process, I'm not sure that they truly heard the fear. The fear is real and it isn't good. | ||
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Jett.Jack.Alvir
Canada2250 Posts
However, there is still a lot more to read, and I really want to get a deeper understanding. With that said, I plan on reading/watching all relevant resources on gamergate, and I will rewrite the original post to incorporate both sides of the discussion. As I have said many times, I am not choosing any sides in this heated debate. I just merely want to be informed on what was said; who it was said too; and why it was said. Please if anyone has more to add to the discussion, I will read it all. | ||
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Stratos_speAr
United States6959 Posts
On October 16 2014 01:35 Godwrath wrote: I just have to facepalm at this crap. The whole problem with this crap is that never had been any kind of real journalism on gaming, and internet only made it worse with shit ton of white noise that prevented anyone who tries to stay objective. About the rest, mysoginy or however it is spelled, i don't even want to comment, the same crap can be said about basically anything, from music to movies, calling it a "gamer" thing is just stupid. Sexism is far, far worse in the gaming community than any of the places you mentioned. | ||
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Godwrath
Spain10131 Posts
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