ACTUALLY
October 24, 2014 10:02 AM   Subscribe

 
I would love to show this to somebody in ten years' time.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:04 AM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


[jumps over the fence u & ur friend were next 2 with a pogo stick] actually,
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 10:06 AM on October 24, 2014 [10 favorites]


OK, now I understand who is behind the Felicia Day thing.
posted by The Bellman at 10:07 AM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


hahah, ok, several of those did make me guffaw.. Tim Currie, of course, always does ..
posted by k5.user at 10:07 AM on October 24, 2014


As someone who is a white, male, long time gamer the GG nonsense is such a downer. How anyone who uses "social justice" or "social justice warrior" as a slur could turn around and claim to be the good guys just wrecks me.

The GG movement is in dire need of a "Hans, are we the baddies?" moment.

This sort of humor is a great antidote for the moment.
posted by Slackermagee at 10:07 AM on October 24, 2014 [56 favorites]


context
posted by griphus at 10:07 AM on October 24, 2014


If nothing else I now know a term for this kind of weird spamming, thanks to Wondermark.
posted by selfnoise at 10:10 AM on October 24, 2014 [15 favorites]


I chuckled a bit at the Phantasy Star one.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 10:10 AM on October 24, 2014


There's no amount of context that can actually make GG make sense, is there? It's like the Time Cube of baseless fury and wildly flailing misogyny as far as I can tell.
posted by sobarel at 10:13 AM on October 24, 2014 [45 favorites]


I love that you can somehow ignore the last twenty-five years of gaming magazines giving 9.9/10 ratings to mediocre big budget games developed by companies who just coincidentally buy ads in the same magazine but somehow when a few indie developers get some press, it's all "GAME JOURNALISM ETHICS!.
posted by octothorpe at 10:13 AM on October 24, 2014 [88 favorites]


I feel kind of bad for the tiny minority of people who genuinely did care about improving video game journalism prior to this -- remember that critic who got fired for panning Kane & Lynch when the developers were sponsoring full-page ads on the homepage? -- only to find their lonely, somewhat boring crusade co-opted as a fig leaf by this nasty retrograde movement. Like if campaign finance reform somehow got usurped as a flimsy cover for racial voter suppression on the same scale as the "state's rights" excuse.
posted by Rhaomi at 10:15 AM on October 24, 2014 [46 favorites]


As someone who is a white, male, long time gamer the GG nonsense is such a downer. How anyone who uses "social justice" or "social justice warrior" as a slur could turn around and claim to be the good guys just wrecks me.

I think @DinkMagic put it well the other day:
It's neat that the masters of rhetoric have set themselves up, on purpose, as explicitly antijustice

If you're going to pick a name for your foe don't choose Righteous Truth Masters or whatever

We are just a coalition of people dedicated to fighting the idea of a just society. Also we are incredibly normal obviously
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 10:17 AM on October 24, 2014 [23 favorites]


Can we please just get to the part where video games are ruined forever by the removal of mysogny and the celebration of game designers of every make and model?
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 10:21 AM on October 24, 2014 [22 favorites]


To be fair, many reprehensible positions have seemingly nice or anodyne names, just as many terms which are now neutral descriptors had once been pejorative.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:22 AM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


At first, this was amusing that this was an issue at all. Then, it became annoying that it gained traction. Now it's downright disturbing. I need a combo move to make this shit go away. Stat.
posted by savitarka at 10:22 AM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


Since this is the direction we're going in, I will mention that the Internet has a history of giving people grandiose titles meant to shame them, along the lines of "goody two-shoes" in the real world. "White Knight" leaps to mind.

So, there are people on the internet who instinctively get that "Social Justice Warrior" is not a compliment and would have a difficult time interpreting it otherwise, and they exist outside the set of "people on the wrong side of #GamerGate".
posted by Poppa Bear at 10:23 AM on October 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


Yeah, I doubt many of us would find a Men's Rights Activist to be appealing, even if we do not literally think that men should not have rights.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:25 AM on October 24, 2014 [10 favorites]


At first, this was amusing that this was an issue at all. Then, it became annoying that it gained traction.

As far as I can tell, it's only gained traction in that some right-wing misogynist outlets are pushing it and the mainstream media is reporting on it because they hate everything breitbart likes, but feel like they need to report on it because page-views.
posted by empath at 10:27 AM on October 24, 2014


I was thinking the other day: this has been a whining point for a long time.

Around 2000 something there was this big debate about game developers no longer explicitly catering to 'hardcore' gamers. The Wii, my god, there was some vitriol because of this. How dare there be more attention 'people who want to play games not male aged 15-28.' I remember specifically the vitriol toward Bejeweled because it was a 'chick' game and not something 'hardcore' (ie males aged 15-28) would dare play.

I had never made that connection before.
posted by Tevin at 10:28 AM on October 24, 2014 [28 favorites]


I downloaded Forza Horizon 2 on my xbox one the other day, and I was thinking about it through the lens of the work of people targeted by gamergate.

The default character is a guy, whose voice dominates the game as the all-powerful ruler/director of what you do next, and you can't change it to a female character (you are never shown on screen). There is a female character that runs the garage for modding cars, and that's an interesting (and probably new) choice, but she's stick thin and looks like a supermodel. There are women in the crowds after events, and they all look like supermodels.

Now, it's just a car game where you rarely see any other drivers as humans, but would it kill the game studio to do a female (optional) main god character and voiceover? And maybe to have a mix of people in crowds after races instead of treating women as little more than eye candy in the game?

Also, it would in no way diminish the game if these additions were in place -- you could still have dudes around controlling the gameplay, it's just that the other 50% of your potential game playing audience would also get to see themselves in the game, and isn't that the point of games in the first place? To have fun and put yourself in a fantasy world?
posted by mathowie at 10:31 AM on October 24, 2014 [42 favorites]


but somehow when a few indie developers get some press, it's all "GAME JOURNALISM ETHICS!.

Not even that. It's more like, "when a few female indie developers get some press".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:31 AM on October 24, 2014 [47 favorites]


> "Like if campaign finance reform somehow got usurped as a flimsy cover for racial voter suppression on the same scale as the 'state's rights' excuse."

Unfortunately, this kind of thing happens all the time. There were actually people trying to figure out ways to prevent vote fraud before the U.S. right wing started trying to use "preventing vote fraud" as a cover for voter suppression. (I even have a sadly credulous acquaintance who has been successfully duped by it.)
posted by kyrademon at 10:32 AM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


If you love games, play games.
If you really love games, write about games.
If you really, really love games, make games.

I have no idea where 'harassing people who actually write about and make games' falls into that continuum.
posted by empath at 10:32 AM on October 24, 2014 [15 favorites]


Since this is the direction we're going in, I will mention that the Internet has a history of giving people grandiose titles meant to shame them, along the lines of "goody two-shoes" in the real world. "White Knight" leaps to mind.

Yeah, but "social justice warrior" doesn't make you sound like a child or Don Quixote, so it's easier for the people it's meant to insult to co-opt it.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 10:33 AM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


As far as I can tell, it's only gained traction in that some right-wing misogynist outlets are pushing it and the mainstream media is reporting on it because they hate everything breitbart likes, but feel like they need to report on it because page-views.

It's gained traction for me because of the chilling efficacy by which women have been silenced and threatened. Let's not pretend that it's just annoying yobbos being annoying and that anyone who covers the story is "feeding the trolls" or whatnot; this is a potent and organized hate movement.
posted by KathrynT at 10:33 AM on October 24, 2014 [79 favorites]


I bet many of these GGers are motivated not just by generally full-throated misogyny, although there is also that, but also a more specific form: an entitled sense that video games are Their Space. They hate the fact that the video game universe doesn't center around them one hundred percent of the time always always always. They can tell that the trend will always be to try to bring in other voices, and that's threatening to them. To them, it feels like strangers sneaking into your house. They don't care that games still routinely cater to them: the point is that the seal has been broken.

Somewhat reminds me of an old Onion article which was something like, "GUY WHO'S BETTER-LOOKING THAN YOU IS ALSO BETTER AT VIDEO GAMES". To a certain kind of person, it's galling to discover that you're not the King of the Nerds, but rather just one of a billion people who enjoy video games.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:35 AM on October 24, 2014 [35 favorites]


It's gained traction for me because of the chilling efficacy by which women have been silenced and threatened. Let's not pretend that it's just annoying yobbos being annoying and that anyone who covers the story is "feeding the trolls" or whatnot; this is a potent and organized hate movement.

I question its potency and organization. To me, it feels like the last gasp of a dying subculture. I doubt they manage to keep it together for another 3 months.
posted by empath at 10:36 AM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


They missed out mine (self link).
posted by EndsOfInvention at 10:36 AM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


...that anyone who covers the story is "feeding the trolls"...

I hope that if there are any lessons learned from the GG thing, at least one is that "don't feed the trolls" isn't a particularly useful piece of advice anymore (if it ever was.)

...an entitled sense that video games are Their Space

Basically. I had actually seen that floating around long before GG, but it definitely makes plain the mindset of many GG-ers, who are apparently severely ignorant of the history of their own hobby.
posted by griphus at 10:37 AM on October 24, 2014 [9 favorites]


It's also gaining traction because the gators have managed to spook some major advertisers, including Intel, Adobe, and Mercedes, which is raising the (justifiable) fear that media outlets won't report truthfully on what #gamergate is about. Advertisers need to read the memo.
posted by Cash4Lead at 10:39 AM on October 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


It's gained traction for me because of the chilling efficacy by which women have been silenced and threatened. Let's not pretend that it's just annoying yobbos being annoying and that anyone who covers the story is "feeding the trolls" or whatnot; this is a potent and organized hate movement.

I question its potency and organization. To me, it feels like the last gasp of a dying subculture. I doubt they manage to keep it together for another 3 months.


I'd agree with this, but ultimately I'm not sure this is really about games and so I'm not sure the chorus of prominent gaming exemplars coming out against it is going to make a difference.

I think this is ultimately about "4chan culture", for lack of a better term, more than "game culture" and I think things are going to get worse and worse until... I'm not sure what.
posted by selfnoise at 10:41 AM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


I question its potency and organization.

On what basis? Women are being forced from their homes under police protection because of credible threats of violence. Is that not potent enough for you?
posted by KathrynT at 10:41 AM on October 24, 2014 [48 favorites]


I downloaded Forza Horizon 2 on my xbox one the other day, and I was thinking about it through the lens of the work of people targeted by gamergate.

Carolyn Petit had a really good post about exactly that issue in Forza Horizons 2.

(Carolyn was the one hounded by proto-GG last year for daring to give GTA a slightly less than perfect score. Really wish a pub/site would pick her up.)
posted by kmz at 10:41 AM on October 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


Not even that. It's more like, "when a few female indie developers get some press".

Sorry. Yes, you're right.
posted by octothorpe at 10:42 AM on October 24, 2014


Advertisers need to read the memo.

Yeah, I'm not going to buy a Mercedes now because I am repelled by their lack of spine regarding the ethics of videogame journalism. Whereas, before, when I thought they were totally on the right side of history regarding videogame journalism, I was totally going to buy a Mercedes to show my solidarity with their stance on videogame journalism. Totally. A Mercedes.
posted by Naberius at 10:44 AM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


Carolyn Petit had a really good post about exactly that issue in Forza Horizons 2

Oh, that's great, thanks for sharing it. I hadn't even tried out the photo mode yet, but yeah, every driver seems to be a white guy in the game.
posted by mathowie at 10:47 AM on October 24, 2014


You listen to me. While I will admit to a certain misogyny, the fact is that I am a naysayer and hatchet-man in the fight against corruption in games journalism. I pride myself in taking a stance against corruption and I'll gladly take another because I choose to live my life in the company of TotalBiscuit and Adam Baldwin. My concerns are global. I reject absolutely: sleeping around for reviews, criticizing tropes in games, and fake gamer girls.

The foundation of such a method... is ethics in gaming journalism. I love ethics in gaming journalism, Sheriff Truman.
— Albert Rosenfield
posted by rorgy at 10:49 AM on October 24, 2014 [8 favorites]


Basically. I had actually seen that floating around long before GG, but it definitely makes plain the mindset of many GG-ers, who are apparently severely ignorant of the history of their own hobby.

I especially like how the timeline given in that tweet starts at 1995, because nothing meaningful in video games could have happened before the mid-nineties.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 10:52 AM on October 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


What is the deal with them using the word "vidya"? I had never seen it before two weeks ago, and now it's everywhere like a cutesy shortcut for jerks to talk about online. Is it to avoid searching or something?
posted by mathowie at 10:54 AM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


The silver lining of all this shit for me has been discovering great new game developers and writers. Like, every time I see a headline saying "Gamergaters attack X" I immediately check out that person's work and more often than not it's great.

Also I hope some sociology or poli sci grad student is writing a thesis on how the right wing did a 180 on video games the instant it became a new front in the culture wars.
posted by no regrets, coyote at 10:55 AM on October 24, 2014 [17 favorites]


What is the deal with them using the word "vidya"? I had never seen it before two weeks ago, and now it's like a cutesy shortcut for jerks to talk about online. Is it to avoid searching or something?

It's been the term on /v/ for ages.

This nonsense seems like 60% /pol/, 30% /v/, 10% other.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:56 AM on October 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


You have to start your history of games at 1995 to erase the contributions of two of the most influential video game designers of all time, Lori Ann Cole and Roberta Williams
posted by muddgirl at 10:56 AM on October 24, 2014 [56 favorites]


Ha ha ha I was literally typing the comment "definitely not Roberta Williams defining literally a generation of video games."
posted by griphus at 10:58 AM on October 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


It's gained traction for me because of the chilling efficacy by which women have been silenced and threatened. Let's not pretend that it's just annoying yobbos being annoying and that anyone who covers the story is "feeding the trolls" or whatnot; this is a potent and organized hate movement.

Yes. Last night on Twitter Zoe Quinn was talking about how she had been basically been made homeless due to the death and rape threats against her, how she had to inform her family and friends to be careful as they might be targets too, she had a fscking lawyer trolling the court system and legal databases to dig up dirt on her, not to mention threaten to hire somebody to stalk her and had to sit down with her partner to ask whether they'd not rather break so as to get out of the firing zone...
posted by MartinWisse at 10:58 AM on October 24, 2014 [30 favorites]


matthowie > it's just that the other 50% of your potential game playing audience would also get to see themselves in the game, and isn't that the point of games in the first place? To have fun and put yourself in a fantasy world?

Oh, don't worry, I've raised this point and I have been assured by white guys that they can TOTALLY project themselves into Laura Croft when they play Tomb Raider, and it doesn't bother them one bit to not be playing a white dude like they do in 99.9% of the other games they play. So clearly I shouldn't have any problem with playing a white dude in 99.9% of the games I play.

Clearly.

lately I've been putting my money where my mouth is and not buying big-budget games that force me to be A White Dude. Which basically restricts me to sprawling open world games with character creators. Currently I am playing "Kingdoms of Amalur" as an alabaster-white elf lady with raccoon makeup, lots of magic defenses, and no clothes.)
posted by egypturnash at 10:59 AM on October 24, 2014 [17 favorites]


Yeah, I'm not going to buy a Mercedes now because I am repelled by their lack of spine regarding the ethics of videogame journalism. Whereas, before, when I thought they were totally on the right side of history regarding videogame journalism, I was totally going to buy a Mercedes to show my solidarity with their stance on videogame journalism. Totally. A Mercedes.

I see your point, but I was arguing more that the gators are trying to drag advertisers into the fight, which they would very much like to avoid. However, in seeking to avoid controversy, Adobe et al have ended up giving aid and comfort to the abusers and harassers. That's what's disturbing.
posted by Cash4Lead at 11:00 AM on October 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


What is the deal with them using the word "vidya"? I had never seen it before two weeks ago, and now it's everywhere like a cutesy shortcut for jerks to talk about online. Is it to avoid searching or something?

Doofus shibboleth.
posted by selfnoise at 11:00 AM on October 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


It's been the term on /v/ for ages.

This nonsense seems like 60% /pol/, 30% /v/, 10% other.


What are /v/ and /pol/? Reddit forums?
posted by zamboni at 11:00 AM on October 24, 2014


Zamboni: almost! They are actually 4chan subforums.
posted by obliterati at 11:02 AM on October 24, 2014


To me, it feels like the last gasp of a dying subculture.

That's a nice fable, but it's as stupid as thinking the Tea Party is "the last gasp of a dying subculture".

GoofusGate long ago went from Zoe Quinn's creepy ex Eron Gjoni's personal vendetta enabled by 4chan to another front in the rightwing kulturkampf and it makes real victims. It's organised and has been from the start and the goal is to drive everybody who isn't a reactionary white man out of the medium.

This of course isn't possible, but these asshats of damage trying.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:02 AM on October 24, 2014 [23 favorites]


It's been the term on /v/ for ages.

This nonsense seems like 60% /pol/, 30% /v/, 10% other.

What are /v/ and /pol/? Reddit forums?


4chan.
posted by selfnoise at 11:03 AM on October 24, 2014


And in related news, Andrew Sullivan remembered he's a conservative and has come down as, well, not pro-Gamergate, but at least anti-anti-Gamergate. Because of course he did.
posted by Cash4Lead at 11:04 AM on October 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


I knew about Roberta Williams but not Lori Ann Cole. The Quest for Glory series (née Hero's Quest) was my Mutha Fukkin JAM. Details of the first 3 are burned into my brain. So often when I dabble in gaming these days I'm seeking to recreate how it felt to play those games. Sooo good.
posted by wemayfreeze at 11:07 AM on October 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


I question its potency and organization. To me, it feels like the last gasp of a dying subculture. I doubt they manage to keep it together for another 3 months.

It's not organized, any more than "Anonymous" is an actual organization with membership cards and a newsletter.

But it's formed the nucleus that a bunch of real shitheels, ranging from merely obnoxious to clearly unhinged, have condensed around. And in finding each other, and in finding a justification—however thin!—for their misogyny, they seem to suddenly feel safe acting out in ways that I do not think they would previously have done.

I'm not entirely sure what to do about this. I think there are certain parallels to radical Islam and terrorist organizations. You can destroy a particular organization, insofar as it happens to be organized. But it's hard to get rid of an ideology as an abstract concept, and as long as you have a ready reserve of disillusioned, violence-prone people, it doesn't take much to point them in a particular direction and say "there's your enemy, go forth and kill."

Now, I don't think most of the jerks twittering about gamergate shit have the stones to put on some semtex coture and blow themselves up for the cause—that'd be giving them too much credit; I'd wager that most of them are your typical basement-dwelling failure-to-launch cases, and the Internet is the sole outlet of their impotent rage at their own failures—but you can't guarantee that. You suck enough people into your violent ideology and eventually, just by blind chance, you'll find somebody who's willing to become a martyr for the cause. So any violence-justifying ideology, however disorganized, needs to be taken seriously if it attracts enough followers.

"Gamergate" may fizzle out in another few months, but the same people and social forces that condensed around it will still be there afterwards, like superheated water fresh out of a microwave, just waiting for someone to stir the pot again, to predictable results.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:07 AM on October 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


And in related news, Andrew Sullivan remembered he's a conservative and has come down as, well, not pro-Gamergate, but at least anti-anti-Gamergate. Because of course he did.

One day we will rip off Andrew Sullivan's beard to reveal Tom Friedman. And then rip off Tom Friedman's moustache to reveal Bill Kristol. And then tear off Bill Kristol's face to reveal Skeletor.
posted by selfnoise at 11:08 AM on October 24, 2014 [69 favorites]


It's organised and has been from the start and the goal is to drive everybody who isn't a reactionary white man out of the medium.

In re: the "are we the baddies?" moment described above, I wonder how much of the GG base is actually prone to that happening. I think by the time your movement has touted the likes of Adam Baldwin, Milo Yiannopoulos, Roosh V, Justine Tunney and Davis Aurini as its celebrity champions, most people who aren't complete pieces of shit have slowly backed out even if they agree with some of the talking points.
posted by griphus at 11:08 AM on October 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


Didn't "gg" used to stand for "good game"?
posted by Slothrup at 11:10 AM on October 24, 2014 [16 favorites]


Oh I left out Mike Cernovitch.
posted by griphus at 11:10 AM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


What are /v/ and /pol/? Reddit forums?

They're the video game and "politically incorrect" boards on 4chan, respectively. 4chan comprises a variety of subboards, each with their own topic and character. From my purposefully limited experience, /v/ aspires to be like /b/ junior, whereas /pol/ is genuinely reactionary and anti-Semitic, and often evangelically so. Contrast with, say, /tg/, the "traditional games" (mostly tabletop RPGs) board, which has an older and more laid-back userbase, where nobody wants any of your /pol/ shit.
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:11 AM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


This seems like as good a place to ask as any: whence and why do the GGers seem so often to use the phrase "journalism ethics"? (In preference to "journalistic," that is.) Is it just a misuse that's stuck by happenstance, or what?
posted by RogerB at 11:11 AM on October 24, 2014


Also worth noting that the GG mob was kicked out of 4chan, and have since taken up residence in 8chan (a 4chan clone) and the subreddit KotakuInAction.
posted by Cash4Lead at 11:13 AM on October 24, 2014 [11 favorites]


This seems like as good a place to ask as any: whence and why do the GGers seem so often to use the phrase "journalism ethics"? (In preference to "journalistic," that is.) Is it just a misuse that's stuck by happenstance, or what?

To be blunt, probably because it's written that way in the original posts, and nobody has seen fit to stray from it. In and of itself, it's not that strange that a vocal, tight-knit group would have a de facto script, including some language quirks.

Wasn't there a bit in the last GG thread about how almost all of the tweets come from about 100 people? Is there a way to keep a running count?
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:15 AM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yes. Last night on Twitter Zoe Quinn was talking about how she had been basically been made homeless due to the death and rape threats against her, how she had to inform her family and friends to be careful as they might be targets too, she had a fscking lawyer trolling the court system and legal databases to dig up dirt on her, not to mention threaten to hire somebody to stalk her and had to sit down with her partner to ask whether they'd not rather break so as to get out of the firing zone...

And in response, that creepy stalking lawyer accused Zoe Quinn of threatening him. Because enumerating the ways in which someone is trying to literally ruin your life and how seemingly nothing can stop them is somehow a threat.

I wonder if that First Amendment lawyer is still representing the creepy stalking lawyer.
posted by palomar at 11:15 AM on October 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


This seems like as good a place to ask as any: whence and why do the GGers seem so often to use the phrase "journalism ethics"? (In preference to "journalistic," that is.) Is it just a misuse that's stuck by happenstance, or what?

Probably for the same reason they keep accusing people of having "a bias opinion" about their movement... because they're fucking morons. (IOW, yes, misuse that sticks around because no one knows any better.)
posted by palomar at 11:16 AM on October 24, 2014 [13 favorites]


whence and why do the GGers seem so often to use the phrase "journalism ethics"?

I swear these gators are playing the weirdest game of telephone.
posted by papercrane at 11:18 AM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


I bet they try to greentext IRL.
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:19 AM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


They also seem to have latched on to "privilige" as the preferred spelling.
posted by almostmanda at 11:20 AM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


> I'm not sure this is really about games and so I'm not sure the chorus of prominent gaming exemplars coming out against it is going to make a difference.

I think this is ultimately about "4chan culture", for lack of a better term, more than "game culture"


it's probably a lot of things together

Women are 3 percent of programmers in game development, but 20 percent in tech as a whole.

i have no problem believing that gamer culture and gamedev culture are even worse than other comparable areas for whatever reasons.
posted by twist my arm at 11:21 AM on October 24, 2014


Oh, I should've thought of it sooner: because that's how the Wikipedia article on "journalism ethics" is titled (which in turn, I surmise based on a quick skim, is, like everything else on Wikipedia, because one highly tenacious possibly crazy person put up a big fight about it in the Talk pages).
posted by RogerB at 11:21 AM on October 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


Gamergate is about ethics in the same way that eugenics is about public health.
posted by smasuch at 11:22 AM on October 24, 2014 [22 favorites]




I swear these gators are playing the weirdest game of telephone.

It's about ethics in game journalism
It's about ethics of game journalists
It's about heckling game journalists
It's about heckling lame journalists
It's about heckling lame feminists
It's about hating lame feminists
posted by naju at 11:25 AM on October 24, 2014 [38 favorites]


Sadly, no. What you're thinking of is Andy Baio's informal researching showing that 24% of the tweets come from 100 people. I imagine there is a long tail of all the people they've swept into their cause.

Whoops! My mistake. That stinks.

I wonder how one could get a rough count of active GGers, to whatever extent such a thing could be defined.
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:26 AM on October 24, 2014


You have to start your history of games at 1995 to erase the contributions of two of the most influential video game designers of all time, Lori Ann Cole and Roberta Williams

I'm so thankful that GG and social media in general wasn't around to harass Dani Bunten
posted by thecjm at 11:28 AM on October 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


Speaking of Wikipedia, I'd like to public thank the various editors of Wikipedia that have fought to follow policy and reflect Gamergate for what it is. One editor, Ryulong, has been on the receiving end of a lot of attention from KotakuInAction (I counted 11 posts just solely about him earlier.) Various other editors have had their personal information posted online, including mefi's own Artw.
posted by papercrane at 11:31 AM on October 24, 2014 [27 favorites]


/r/KotakuInAction has ~16,000 subscribers. I bet most neutral or anti-GG observers don't actually subscribe, so that might be an estimate of the particularly active GGers.

Thanks for that.

Pulling an estimate out of my ass, I would guess that there are ~20,000 people with highly varying degrees of involvement. I would guess that the most active members would both subscribe to KiA and also post on 8chan; I would also guess that many subscribers to KiA may be sympathetic, but they're not personally fighting the fight, as it were.
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:34 AM on October 24, 2014


You can tell a movement is completely awful if Vox Day is on board.

Oddly enough, Vox Day is on board with #GamerGate. So there's that.

There are a lot of neo-reactionary GGers, actually. I'm not sure whether they've been been there since the beginning or if they lampreyed on later, Milo Yiannopoulos-style. Either way it's telling.
posted by brundlefly at 11:35 AM on October 24, 2014 [12 favorites]


I guaran-fucking-tee that most of the neo-reactionaries were there from Day One. This has /pol/'s tentacleprints all over it.
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:36 AM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


The neoreactionary element has been there since the start, AFAIK. One of the guys working on The Sarkeesian Effect (which I think predates GG) is unabashedly a subscriber to the Dark Enlightenment.
posted by griphus at 11:37 AM on October 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


Yeah, Aurini. The guy who looks like a bad Halloween costume version of Anton LaVey.
posted by brundlefly at 11:39 AM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


The neoreactionary element has been there since the start, AFAIK. One of the guys working on The Sarkeesian Effect (which I think predates GG) is unabashedly a subscriber to the Dark Enlightenment.

I love this term because it doesn't sound like "Neo Reactionary", it sounds like "Warhammer 40K Fan Movie".
posted by selfnoise at 11:41 AM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


it sounds like "Warhammer 40K Fan Movie".

check out the movie he made lol
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 11:44 AM on October 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


Thats why I DONT like that term. Makes them sound like a justifiable or at least tongue-in-cheek wacky viewpoint rather than just outright fascists.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:44 AM on October 24, 2014


Your Social Justice Warrior's Storm Bolter has jammed! The Dark Enlightenment Neoreactionary takes no damage.
posted by griphus at 11:46 AM on October 24, 2014 [27 favorites]


Yeah, I was about to say "don't forget they are proud enough of vox day to put him in their ridiculous picture." Octothorpe echos my reaction from the beginning - journalism? Ethics? Writing positive articles about Gone Home is the step too far, not the big shops using press as PR firms for Halo 99?

I'm gobsmacked as the idea that the media is only on this as part of a big circle jerk. The level of threat and harassment of outspoken women is certainly large and significant enough to warrant attention.
posted by phearlez at 11:46 AM on October 24, 2014


check out the movie he made lol

I jumped to a random point in the video and saw a guy in a fedora fighting with ninja daggers. It must be weird to inhabit an aesthetic that's indistinguishable from its own most withering satire.
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:51 AM on October 24, 2014 [26 favorites]


> check out the movie he made lol

is this what it feels like to be redpilled?
posted by postcommunism at 11:52 AM on October 24, 2014


I jumped to a random point in the video and saw a guy in a fedora fighting with ninja daggers

Rewind. You missed the blistering social commentary on the downfall of society played over lonely saxophone music that leads into the big fight scene for no discernible reason.
posted by griphus at 11:53 AM on October 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


You just know that this guy would bristle if any woman whatsoever was ever chosen over him for a creative position. Imagine the conversation he would try to have to salvage that moment. Just imagine it.

The best part is trying to imagine what he sees when he watches his own movie.
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:56 AM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


I skipped around in that film a while back (it's really hard to watch all the way through) but I remember some of that "social commentary" being some sort of domestic abuse apologia; that abuser and abused are both responsible. Am I remembering that correctly? Was there context for that?
posted by brundlefly at 11:57 AM on October 24, 2014


Read this great piece today tying GamerGate to the anti-disco movement and other outburst of masculinity-fear.

Our various “culture wars” tend to boil down to one specific culture war, the one about men wanting to feel like Real Men and lashing out at the women who won’t let them. Whenever men feel like masculinity is under attack, men get dangerous. Because that’s exactly what masculinity teaches you to do, what masculinity is about. Defending yourself with disproportionate force against any loss of power? That’s what masculinity is.
posted by emjaybee at 11:59 AM on October 24, 2014 [10 favorites]


Sticherbeast: ... his own movie.

Huh. His own? Shit...I thought it was an homage comprising a random selection of partial sentences from Chuck Palahniuk novels.
posted by lodurr at 11:59 AM on October 24, 2014


emjaybee: Apparently Arthur Chu did an AMA about this issue last night as well. (Edit: NPR interview. Dunno how I got that one so wrong.)
posted by Navelgazer at 12:00 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


I think by the time your movement has touted the likes of Adam Baldwin, Milo Yiannopoulos, Roosh V, Justine Tunney and Davis Aurini as its celebrity champions, most people who aren't complete pieces of shit have slowly backed out even if they agree with some of the talking points.

From my own friend group's reactions to Neoreactionary/Dark Enlightenment name drops, I'm pretty sure the majority of the people in the movement have no idea who these people are, why they are so toxic, and why they are generally considered disingenuous opportunists.
posted by Slackermagee at 12:04 PM on October 24, 2014


Was there context for that?

Most of the pre-fight stuff is centered on women picking on/ridiculing/rejecting men, including, IIRC, a couple having a seemingly evensided physical altercation.
posted by griphus at 12:05 PM on October 24, 2014


I said some of this in the previous thread, but a bit of an update.

I study games, and they way that they can be used to educate, innovate, and do other interesting things. Those of us who care about "serious games" have made a lot of headway in recent years. Look at what has been happening: Games have been used to help understand the way that proteins fold, can create positive impacts on financial literacy for the financially disadvantaged, can help motivate employees, can help medical outcomes, and, of course, can have a deeply personal impact.

I have built a few games for teaching and innovation, have been involved peripherally in many more, have conducted peer-reviewed research on gamification, and even wrote a book on the subject. I speak to lots of educators, policymakers, and businesses, and have started to feel like games are slowly being taken seriously.

At least, they were.

In recent meetings, GamerGate has either been directly mentioned or nervously danced around, and I can feel the progress slipping away. In addition to misogyny; in addition to driving women out of the industry; in addition to the chilling effect on games as art - GamerGate is undermining years of progress in helping people see games (the thing Gaters presumably love) as a real, important media, and not the plaything of violent maladjusted teenagers.

And they are screwing all of that up. Screwing it up for stupid lies. What a disaster.
posted by blahblahblah at 12:06 PM on October 24, 2014 [82 favorites]


Read this great piece today tying GamerGate to the anti-disco movement and other outburst of masculinity-fear.

Holy shit that is a righteous rant.

And let it be known that Disco won that little holy war. Rock is deader than a door-nail. It only took 20 years, though.
posted by empath at 12:08 PM on October 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


Occupy Wall Street can occupy the nearest large body of water, though hopefully they've faded sufficiently that not that many take what they're saying at face value.
posted by sparkletone at 12:11 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


The OWS Twitter account is run solely by Justine Tunney.
posted by griphus at 12:11 PM on October 24, 2014 [10 favorites]


In case you haven't seen it, here's former NFL player Chris Kluwes' epic NSFW takedown of gamergators. Here's a Salon summary of his Reddit AMA.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:12 PM on October 24, 2014 [9 favorites]


(I mean I haven't got the faintest idea if OWS is still a cohesive enough entity to have an opinion on this, or what that opinion would be, but the Twitter account itself is the opinion of exactly one enormously shitty human being.)
posted by griphus at 12:13 PM on October 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


I was about to say. Tunney should not be considered representative of OWS as a whole. At all.
posted by brundlefly at 12:13 PM on October 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


There's no amount of context that can actually make GG make sense, is there?

I feel like its origins make sense (or at least sound familiar).

I don't think it's a coincidence that the good gaming reviews Depression Quest has received are front and center. Because let's be frank, it's not a game.

Or more to the point as a game it is of little or no interest to traditional gamers. It is a nuanced walkthrough of a tough emotional issue. And at least for the gamer demographic nuanced emotions == women. The women are writing women's games and getting them into the gamer press with better reviews than shooters.

Of course the gamers are threatened. Change is scary, and the women entering into gaming are no less scary than (for example) the wave of immigrants coming coming over the U.S. southern border. They need to be vilified, abused, made to know they're not welcome. We need to stand with guns at the border and shoot any who try to cross.

It's not uncommon behavior when faced with change. People get scared and do truly stupid things.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:16 PM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


... games (the thing Gaters presumably love) ...

Except that they don't love "games", they love the feeling of power. Rorgy & some other folks talked at length about this in another thread (it's long & that's only one thing going on, but it's in there) -- that what the games most of these folks play do, is hook them in with continual no-failure stroking.

The kinds of games you're talking about are fundamentally different. They harness the game-like properties of experience to help us learn.

That's not what they love. it's not what they want.
posted by lodurr at 12:18 PM on October 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


Chris Kluwe reposted a graphic pointing out that he and all other people opposed to Gamergate are cis het white males.
posted by larrybob at 12:18 PM on October 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


I feel like its origins make sense (or at least sound familiar).

My one problem with this narrative is that women have always been in gaming. Women have been "traditional gamers," all the way back to the early days of gaming. We weren't marketed to, we were ignored, we were written out of history, but we have always been there.

GamerGate is not a story of man-children uncomfortable with sharing their toys. Presenting it that way is part of their strategy to hide that they just fucking hate women, hate them so much.
posted by muddgirl at 12:20 PM on October 24, 2014 [39 favorites]


I don't think it's a coincidence that the good gaming reviews Depression Quest has received are front and center. Because let's be frank, it's not a game.

¿Visual novels and interactive fiction aren't games? That's surprising.
posted by sukeban at 12:21 PM on October 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


Sam Biddle - Cis White Male
John Scalzi - Cis White Male
Max Read - Cis White Male
Chris Kluwe - Cis White Jock


my sides
posted by postcommunism at 12:23 PM on October 24, 2014 [10 favorites]


empath: I question its potency and organization. To me, it feels like the last gasp of a dying subculture. I doubt they manage to keep it together for another 3 months.
The ringleaders had been sniping at Quinn for months before the more widespread attacks started at the end of August. But it's not about Zoe Quinn, of course.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:23 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


... aren't games? That's surprising.

he means, to them. And he's got a point. They have an exceedingly narrow definition of what constitutes a 'real game.'
posted by lodurr at 12:23 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


i will be disappointed if someone doesn't rework that graphic @chriswarcraft posted to turn scalzi into a gamma rabbit and kluwe into a My Little Pony.
posted by lodurr at 12:24 PM on October 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


But... but... visual novels, man. They're some of the most otaku games ever, right up with date sims.
posted by sukeban at 12:25 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


Tell Me No Lies: I don't think it's a coincidence that the good gaming reviews Depression Quest has received are front and center. Because let's be frank, it's not a game.
Please link the "good gaming reviews" you're talking about.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:25 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


Heh. Indeed.
posted by Cash4Lead at 12:28 PM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


Apparently the graphic is a modification of an earlier version that identified Christina Hoff Summers as "Woman" rather than "Feminist."
posted by larrybob at 12:29 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


#germergoat
posted by larrybob at 12:31 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Sam Biddle - Cis White Male
John Scalzi - Cis White Male
Max Read - Cis White Male
Chris Kluwe - Cis White Jock

I've been a cis white male (let me doublecheck...) all my life and a feminist since it was necessary to qualify it as "Male Feminist". Any group that labels "a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute" a Feminist is all about mislabeling.

I doubt many of us would find a Men's Rights Activist to be appealing, even if we do not literally think that men should not have rights.

I always thought "Men's Rights Activist" was wrong because giving Men RIGHTS be a downgrade from our awesome PRIVILEGES and ENTITLEMENTS. Step backward, guys.

And every time I was called a "White Knight" (maybe twice, once as an insult), I took it as flattery and pointed out I was more of a "Knight in Shining Burlap" (see that mark there? genuine Idaho potatoes).

I still can take credit for one of the most favorited comments in the last #GamerGate thread: "Simple principle: Anybody who considers "Social Justice" to be a pejorative is a bigot and a hateful individual."

But any group who considers "Dark Enlightenment" a positive self-labeling doesn't have the mental capacity to formulate a worldview more than "LUSTGREEDHATE". At least "the Tea Party" had some skill in branding even before it became a fully-owned subsidiary of Koch Enterprises (but hey, Brawny and Angel Soft are great branding too).
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:31 PM on October 24, 2014 [9 favorites]


Vox Day - Native American POC

I learned a fun fact about Vox Day's heritage today! But do they know they misspelled POS?
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:33 PM on October 24, 2014 [25 favorites]


BoingBoing has a post up about the "ethics in journalism" meme... and the Pulp Fiction one made me laugh so hard I almost choked on my own saliva. Thank you for that, internet.
posted by palomar at 12:35 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Isn't Day the guy who draws a comic where all the women are sexxy libertarians and also have twisty spines and like to talk about how liberalism makes them feel unwomanly? Oh no, that's Day by Day, by Chris Muir.

Vox Day is the guy with the "Sci-fi is getting too womanly-feely and I hate it".

You can see why I always get those two confused in my mind.
posted by emjaybee at 12:38 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


mathowie: What is the deal with them using the word "vidya"?
Pretty sure it's some kind of ironic co-opting of the way southern people pronounce 'video games.'
posted by ob1quixote at 12:40 PM on October 24, 2014


and I think things are going to get worse and worse until... I'm not sure what.

I suspect, honestly, that a woman is going to be killed by one of these asshats sooner rather than later.

Chris Kluwe reposted a graphic pointing out that he and all other people opposed to Gamergate are cis het white males.

i just died of holy shit
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:41 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


I forgot to mock Sullivan's unironic use of the term "creeping misandry." Thankfully, @darth is on the case.
posted by Cash4Lead at 12:47 PM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


I mean, I don't really get why these are image macros, but I'll admit that sometimes I browse /r/all when I've got downtime and /r/kotakuinaction is starting to leak into my /r/aww and it's pretty repugnant. I won't link to the top post, you can find it if you want, but it's an enormously long screed about anti-gators being "professional victims" looking for more ammunition for their misogyny guns, or something.

It's really amazing and sad and really distracts from the hedgehoglets.
posted by uncleozzy at 12:48 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


My favorite one so far: "Holy shit! A chilling new breakthrough in the Zodiac killer case... "
posted by kmz at 12:48 PM on October 24, 2014 [8 favorites]


Isn't Day the guy who draws a comic where all the women are sexxy libertarians and also have twisty spines and like to talk about how liberalism makes them feel unwomanly? Oh no, that's Day by Day, by Chris Muir.

Oh, God. I forgot about that strip. Why did you have to remind me?

Also, real misandry doesn't creep.
posted by brundlefly at 1:05 PM on October 24, 2014 [7 favorites]


There's no amount of context that can actually make GG make sense, is there?

From what I can tell, some game review sites and magazines are really quite shameless shills. I refer particularly to the Gamespot business from a while back with Jeff Gerstmann losing his job because he gave a game the site was pushing a bad review.

But that was, and is, a problem with publishers, not journalists themselves that I can see. I'm sure there are bad game journalists, but I think they'd be the ones who are most bro-like and uncritical in their opinions and writing, the exact opposite of the "social justice warriors" Gamergaters decry.

I dunno, maybe the people behind the scenes of the whole business used some people's annoyance with gaming media publishers as a wedge into their heads, and sold them a bill of goods about the problem's origins?
posted by JHarris at 1:26 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


The GG movement is in dire need of a "Hans, are we the baddies?" moment.

I've wanted to write a big hand-wringing post, partly equating the GG rank and file to petit bourgeois voters of the Weimar Republic, and would have linked to that sketch. Still wondering if I should bother.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:29 PM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


I'm sure there are bad game journalists, but I think they'd be the ones who are most bro-like and uncritical in their opinions and writing, the exact opposite of the "social justice warriors" Gamergaters decry.

Yeah, but these guys exist in a universe in which "SJW"-inflected reviews are, definitionally, bad and unethical. It's mostly similar to the disco thing. It's a temper tantrum from people who semi-realize that not everybody sees them as the center of the universe.
posted by Sticherbeast at 1:29 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]




Now, it's just a car game where you rarely see any other drivers as humans, but would it kill the game studio to do a female (optional) main god character and voiceover?

They spent all that budget on being able to mod the suspension in microincrements. Or as the Verge review puts it "for as many ways as you can infinitely upgrade and tune your car, you can’t customize your driver at all. You’re simply thrust into the world as a street racer stereotype, a young white dude." Priorities, priorities.

I did read an interesting Polygon piece that touched on how stereotypes have evolved in recent years: the 'damsel in distress' component of narrative increasingly takes the form of father-child relationships (and specifically father-daughter) instead of rescuing the distant princess. It feels like a reflection of how men play games into parenthood these days. But it's still a heavy embrace of small-c conservative tropes.
posted by holgate at 1:39 PM on October 24, 2014


I've wanted to write a big hand-wringing post, partly equating the GG rank and file to petit bourgeois voters of the Weimar Republic, and would have linked to that sketch. Still wondering if I should bother.

Why stop with that? Many using the the #gamergate tag may fall into that category, but the core - the ones who overlap with the MRAs and Dark Enlightenment types - are much closer to Marx's definition of lumpenproletariat:


On the pretext of founding a benevolent society, the lumpen proletariat of Paris had been organized into secret sections, each section led by Bonapartist agents, with a Bonapartist general at the head of the whole. Alongside decayed roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin, alongside ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, maquereaux [pimps], brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars — in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French call la bohème; from this kindred element Bonaparte formed the core of the Society of December 10.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:39 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


There's an article on Popehat about GG. Completely ignores the fact that the reason it came to media attention is due to the violent, credible threats made against the women on the other side of the issue. To me , GG is about that, not journalism.
posted by annsunny at 1:41 PM on October 24, 2014


I find this comparison unfair to vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, pimps, brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, and beggars.
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:42 PM on October 24, 2014 [13 favorites]


You have to start your history of games at 1995 to erase the contributions of two of the most influential video game designers of all time, Lori Ann Cole and Roberta Williams.

Don't forget about Dona Bailey, she co-designed Centipede in 1981!
posted by JHarris at 1:44 PM on October 24, 2014 [10 favorites]


#notalldecayedrouéswithdubiousmeansofsubsistenceandofdubiousorigin
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:45 PM on October 24, 2014 [15 favorites]


> the 'damsel in distress' component of narrative increasingly takes the form of father-child relationships (and specifically father-daughter)

This was one of my main complains about The Last of Us. The story and characters are "mature" in part because it recasts the player as father rather than love interest. Like the writers were sitting around thinking "we have to make this a serious adult story. Hmm. Who do we know who are adults... parents, maybe? Yeah, dad's are macho yet respectable."

And then it plays out like some post-apocalyptic take your daughter to work day.
posted by postcommunism at 1:47 PM on October 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


My one problem with this narrative is that women have always been in gaming. Women have been "traditional gamers," all the way back to the early days of gaming. We weren't marketed to, we were ignored, we were written out of history, but we have always been there.

That sounds like a difference that makes no difference to me. If you can be removed from a community with no one noticing you're gone I would say you've never been part of the community to begin with.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:49 PM on October 24, 2014




There's an article on Popehat about GG.
Gamer Gate as the most recent battle in the Kulturkampf:

The two teams in the culture war have had many names over the last thousand years:

Barons and kings. Parliamentarians and Royalty. Puritans and Southerners. Yankees and Rebs. Democrats and Republicans. Blues Reds. Progressives and reactionaries. Social Justice Warriors and homophobes.

These English terms obscure the fact that these two camps are much bigger than the Anglosphere countries. My reference to Kulturkampf earlier was not accidental nor flippant.
What on earth am I reading
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 1:53 PM on October 24, 2014 [17 favorites]


If you can be removed from a community with no one noticing you're gone I would say you've never been part of the community to begin with.


Um...what?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:54 PM on October 24, 2014 [7 favorites]


That sounds like a difference that makes no difference to me. If you can be removed from a community with no one noticing you're gone I would say you've never been part of the community to begin with.

Beg your pardon. The erasure of women from the historical/ cultural narrative is not exactly new. Take this 30 year old book and begin from there and then continue to the erasure of women programmers.
posted by sukeban at 1:54 PM on October 24, 2014 [25 favorites]


Popehat's been being pretty horrible on Twitter, as well.
posted by Lexica at 1:56 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Apparently we're at the point where people are making pro-gamergate rap songs.
posted by sparkletone at 1:56 PM on October 24, 2014


If you can be removed from a community with no one noticing you're gone I would say you've never been part of the community to begin with.

I'm pretty sure that at the very least the people finding themselves excluded notice.
posted by griphus at 1:57 PM on October 24, 2014 [13 favorites]


If you can be removed from a community with no one noticing you're gone I would say you've never been part of the community to begin with.

Well, no one white and male anyways, so no one important.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:02 PM on October 24, 2014 [9 favorites]


What on earth am I reading
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 2:53 PM on October 24 [3 favorites +] [!]


I know, right? I tried to give it a fair read.
posted by annsunny at 2:03 PM on October 24, 2014


... I would say you've never been part of the community to begin with.

That, my friend, is destructive horseshit.

Certainly the people who created the concensus narrative of what the community was didn't really consider the missing to be part of it. But to say they 'were not part of the community' because someone didn't notice they were excluded from political participation is a really odd thing to day.

If the 'community' breaks when you're not there, then you're part of it -- regardless of whether anybody "notices" you or not.
posted by lodurr at 2:04 PM on October 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


Gaming is mass entertainment anyway, not a "community." There are innumerable gaming-related communities, but to refer to "the gaming community" as a unified bloc is like talking about, I dunno, the TV-watching community. The food-eating community. It makes no sense.
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:06 PM on October 24, 2014 [19 favorites]


Many using the the #gamergate tag may fall into that category, but the core - the ones who overlap with the MRAs and Dark Enlightenment types - are much closer to Marx's definition of lumpenproletariat

I feel there are a lot of MRA/Dark Enlightenment theorists and personalities who may be involved in GG, or at least commenting upon it, but they're mostly dilettantes, analogous to hard-right thinkers such as Evola. My guess is that the actual core of the movement who are orchestrating GG is more analogous to the NSDAP- true believers and those who truly engage in violent, disruptive activities. But I differ with the MeFi consensus because I think they're not necessarily simply misogynists whose crusade is to oppress women. I think they're really nihilists who are doing this "for the lulz" because they want to stir up trouble and agitate for the sake of it, and they're playing both their side and the other as fools. Mythical darknet trolls who are doxxing and harassing both sides, escalating the situation.

Does this vindicate the rank and file? No. But I think that people need to be able to distinguish between different enemies. And yeah, collective guilt and all that, but did Germany's petit bourgeois and lumpenprole deserve the same level of punishment as the actual perpetrators of the Nazi high command? Well, no- Nuremberg showed that different people deserved different levels of punishment for different degrees of crime.

I believe that there must be intelligent, open-minded people on the other side who, if separated from the ideological fervor and tribalism that this conflict has pushed them into, and if spoken to with open words and good faith (instead of insults), may actually break away from GG or try to change it. Even Nazi Germany had groups such as the Kreisau Circle. And how cool would it be that the end of an ostensibly misogynist movement be something analogous to Operation Valkyrie?
posted by Apocryphon at 2:08 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Popehat's been being pretty horrible on Twitter, as well.

Popehat is not one person, and the "owners" of that account hand it around to a small group of people. Some of them are kinda dicks, and the one that's been pro-GG has been getting a lot of shit for it.
posted by daq at 2:10 PM on October 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


Also I don't think there's a single person of my generation who grew up playing video games and didn't notice the gender gap, which only grew wider as time went on. I mean when you're 10 you can chalk it up to "I guess girls just don't like video games," but as an adult the reason for the gap needs to be considered with a bit more nuance.

There's nothing inherently masculine about the concept of using a controller to make a figure on a screen move around and do stuff. Not a single console I am aware of required you to insert your penis into it to play a game. The person behind the counter at Toys 'R' Us did not ask parents the gender of the child for whom they were purchasing a video game. And yet there was that "girls don't like video games" gap, and if it's not genetics, then it's the environment, and the whole megillah here is that the environment is actively hostile to girls and women.
posted by griphus at 2:11 PM on October 24, 2014 [12 favorites]


I was aware of that, daq, but you're right, it should be mentioned. I didn't know they had a twitter account until today.
posted by annsunny at 2:12 PM on October 24, 2014


Regarding the gender gap in tech: "So where did all the women coders go?", an attempt to answer the phenomenon raised by Planet Money this week about female enrollment in CS peaking in 1984.

Spoiler: product marketing of electronics also factors big into the writer's hypothesis
posted by Apocryphon at 2:14 PM on October 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


One day we will rip off Andrew Sullivan's beard to reveal Tom Friedman. And then rip off Tom Friedman's moustache to reveal Bill Kristol. And then tear off Bill Kristol's face to reveal Skeletor.

Shhh! You had me at "One day we will rip off Andrew Sullivan's beard..."
posted by SassHat at 2:16 PM on October 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


What on earth am I reading

That was exactly my reaction to it. It's word salad.
posted by empath at 2:19 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


One day we will rip off Andrew Sullivan's beard to reveal Tom Friedman. And then rip off Tom Friedman's moustache to reveal Bill Kristol. And then tear off Bill Kristol's face to reveal Skeletor.

And then Shaggy will rip Skeletor's face off to reveal Old Man Withers who would have pulled it off if not for us meddling kids.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:20 PM on October 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


I think they're really nihilists who are doing this "for the lulz" because they want to stir up trouble and agitate for the sake of it, and they're playing both their side and the other as fools. Mythical darknet trolls who are doxxing and harassing both sides, escalating the situation.

I don't see why it matters whether the core organizers on 8chan "really" hate women or are just trolls. The end result is empowered misogynists silencing women who dare to "step out of line" with threats or real acts of violence.
posted by muddgirl at 2:21 PM on October 24, 2014 [21 favorites]


Not a single console I am aware of required you to insert your penis into it to play a game.

Although I suppose how children are socialized and gender policed tends to align with the gender they are assigned at birth, this is your standard reminder that not all men/boys have penises and not all folks with penises are men/boys.
posted by NoraReed at 2:24 PM on October 24, 2014 [9 favorites]


"Faking" misogyny is basically just a subset of misogyny.
posted by brundlefly at 2:24 PM on October 24, 2014 [27 favorites]


Oh, yes, my bad. Thanks, NoraReed.
posted by griphus at 2:26 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


I don't see why it matters whether the core organizers on 8chan "really" hate women or are just trolls. The end result is empowered misogynists silencing women who dare to "step out of line" with threats or real acts of violence.

True- I guess the true identity of the core members of whatever mythical darknet trolls who are behind all of this doesn't really matter. Because they've certainly attracted MRA types and anti-women ideologues as well.

However, my opinion is that the rank and file of GG is mostly motivated by the idea of "gamer identity." Which isn't necessarily misogynist in the actively women-hating way that its opponents (including on MeFi) can caricature as pro-MRA. I do think that gamer culture (along with a lot of internet subcultures) is steeped in casual misogyny- the type that trivializes rape threats (and makes the kinds of jokes that turn the word "raping" an opponent into a synonym for "pwning"), that has this big bad caricature of progressivism and "SJWs" and feminists, and so forth. They're no angels. However, I do think that by painting them all with the same brush and dropping truth bombs saying all GGers as misogynists who are sending rape/death threats (or in support of them), far from shaming them and causing them to abandon their positions, will only radicalize moderate members further into believing the "evil feminists are trying to kill gamer culture" narrative. There's an analogy here too for current day politics.

This is my take of it and I probably am wrong. I'm not trying to gamesplain.
posted by Apocryphon at 2:30 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]




FWIW, if you question that people have been silenced about this? I've been silenced. I only talk about GamerGate on my locked-down facebook and here; I don't talk about it on Twitter or on other forums. Because my real name is unique, and I have children.
posted by KathrynT at 2:33 PM on October 24, 2014 [42 favorites]


However, I do think that by painting them all with the same brush not only confuses different groups of people from GG, and far from shaming them and causing them to abandon their positions, will only radicalize them further into believing the "evil feminists are trying to kill gamer culture" narrative.

This is just your standard tone argument.

FWIW, if you question that people have been silenced about this? I've been silenced. I only talk about GamerGate on my locked-down facebook and here; I don't talk about it on Twitter or on other forums. Because my real name is unique, and I have children.

Hell, I'm not even female and I don't talk about gamer gate on reddit because I don't want the hassle.
posted by empath at 2:34 PM on October 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


It's word salad.

It reminds me of Lyndon LaRouche's multi-century conspiracy theories involving the "Anglo-Dutch consortium" (still running things, in case you didn't know) and his screeds against the "Jacobin terror" being run against the world financial system by a small "gang" of billionaires and militant leftists (yes, you read that correctly). If you're aware of the jargon it can make a bit of sense, but from the outside it's quite bewildering.
posted by dhartung at 2:34 PM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


However, I do think that by painting them all with the same brush and dropping truth bombs saying all GGers as misogynists who are sending rape/death threats (or in support of them)

Who's doing this?
posted by muddgirl at 2:35 PM on October 24, 2014


Yes, I agree it's a tone argument. But this is ultimately a war of words, isn't it? Tone arguments matter on the internet. Perception matters. Peoples' hearts and minds are partly determined by tone. When people are polarized into tribes, winning them over with the truth isn't always sufficient.
posted by Apocryphon at 2:35 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


"Not all gamers," then.
posted by muddgirl at 2:43 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


The real problem with "Actually, it's about ethics in games journalism." argument is that anyone who really gets the underlying issues doesn't have to look very hard to see that that's not the case. Game journalism has been a train wreck since Reagan was president, which is like the early Precambrian as games journalism goes. You'd have to be near comatose to not catch on that most game review magazines were essentially house organs, or at least that review scores were as strongly effected by the size of the publisher as the quality of the game.

Where was this massive uprising when Polygon gave the latest SimCity (the one that was so good that Amazon de-listed it) a 95 out of 100? That let it slide that Total Xbox gave the latest Steel Battalion a score on the low side of good while the next nearest score that anyone gave it was a full 15 pts. lower? I mean, hell, I can Mad Lib this: When (major video game company) put out (pick any watered down franchise set piece) that was a (name of console) exclusive and (magazine or website dedicated to console) gave it a score in the good rating.

But now, when a jilted ex-boyfriend suggests that Zoe Quin had ess-eee-ex with some guy and someone else that guy works with gave her game a positive review and suddenly you absolutely loose your shit about her in particular but then proceed to pretty much jump from target to target, if by target you mean "women who are involved with gaming"? You are really going to rage against "Dear Esther" but not bat an eye at "Goat Simulator"? Correlation may not equal causation but as r2 approaches 1, it becomes increasingly difficult to believe that this has more to do with games journalism and less to do with blatant misogyny.

So, yeah, tell the guy from Fox news, or the blogger who six months ago was describing you as a neckbearded manchild hanging out in yellowing underwear in your parent's basement that this is about ethics in games journalism. I'm sure they'll give you momentary pats on the head when they're not busy blaming you for the latest school shooting. Meanwhile, I've been defending the earth from asteroid impact and killer saucers since before you were born and you're absolutely failing to convince me that you really particularly care, or even have clue one about the medium.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 2:44 PM on October 24, 2014 [46 favorites]


Yes, I agree it's a tone argument. But this is ultimately a war of words, isn't it? Tone arguments matter on the internet. Perception matters. Peoples' hearts and minds are partly determined by tone. When people are polarized into tribes, winning them over with the truth isn't always sufficient.

The problem with the tone argument is that it presumes that there is a debate going on between two groups, and that the goal is somehow to 'convert' the other side. The audience for online arguments like this one isn't the opposing side, but rather the people watching from the sidelines. It doesn't matter if we hurt the poor widdle gamer-gaters feewings. They are a lost cause. The goal of pointing out that they're associating with a bunch of shitheels is to delegitimize them in the eyes of others, not to convince them of the errors of their ways, which is a fools errand.
posted by empath at 2:49 PM on October 24, 2014 [12 favorites]


I'd wear a Social Justice Warrior t-shirt...
posted by stenseng at 2:50 PM on October 24, 2014


Meanwhile, I've been defending the earth from asteroid impact and killer saucers since before you were born..

Thank you for your service.
posted by griphus at 2:51 PM on October 24, 2014 [28 favorites]


Comparing the stakes Zoe Quinn's (essentially, if not actually?) free game receiving good reviews to compel someone to try it versus the $60 (or more with MUST NEED DLC) for any big-budget game shilled for by your whatever-gaming outlet is maddening.
posted by Tevin at 2:52 PM on October 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


I'm holding out for a False-Dichotomy Strawman Protected vehicle!
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 2:52 PM on October 24, 2014


He's not calle a "cis white jock male," he's just a "cis white jock" because "jock" comes pre-coded as male to whoever scared up that meme.
posted by absalom at 2:53 PM on October 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


I made some (warning: minor spoilers for Mass Effect, medium spoilers for KOTOR); they're on the twitters
posted by NoraReed at 2:55 PM on October 24, 2014


You are really going to rage against "Dear Esther" but not bat an eye at "Goat Simulator"?

WOAH WOAH WOAH don't go baaaaaad-mouthing Goat Simulator.
posted by GuyZero at 2:57 PM on October 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


He's not calle a "cis white jock male," he's just a "cis white jock" because "jock" comes pre-coded as male to whoever scared up that meme.

Much like there's "Hulk" and "She-Hulk", there's "jock" and "she-jock".
posted by GuyZero at 2:57 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


My guess is that the actual core of the movement who are orchestrating GG is more analogous to the NSDAP- true believers and those who truly engage in violent, disruptive activities. [...] Even Nazi Germany had groups such as the Kreisau Circle.

One of the reasons "SJW" is considered a pejorative is because of this sort of ridiculousness, wherein it appears that the SJW fancies him/herself to be an actual warrior, fighting... the Nazis. The Nazis. Yep, when I hear "GamerGate", I just think Never Again.
posted by amorphatist at 2:58 PM on October 24, 2014


did somebody say goat simulator
posted by NoraReed at 3:00 PM on October 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


Much like there's "Hulk" and "She-Hulk", there's "jock" and "she-jock".

I've always heard jockette, not she-jock.
posted by palomar at 3:01 PM on October 24, 2014


GuyZero: A kissing cousin of whatever you call having a Superman and Batman mirrored by a Supergirl and Batgirl.
posted by absalom at 3:02 PM on October 24, 2014


I guess I just feel that this whole GG debacle isn't something simple like MRA/PUA haters who openly wear their misogyny and regressiveness on their sleeve vs. civilized society. It's more like a lot of people are being duped into a bad cause. And my assumption- perhaps overidealistic and naive- is that GG can be encourage to end itself. That people on that side can wake up and realize they've been lied to, they should understand that trivializing rape threats and attacking and casting shade on women and minority speakers is wrong, that we deserve better online discourse.

The audience for online arguments like this one isn't the opposing side, but rather the people watching from the sidelines. It doesn't matter if we hurt the poor widdle gamer-gaters feewings. They are a lost cause.

I get that, but I don't know if I agree. If we write off an entire group of people as completely compromised, aren't we dehumanizing them as well? By assuming that they can't see reason? Their cause might be wrong, but a cause isn't identical to all of the members of the cause. Shouldn't we reach out for them to willingly leave the cause, instead of castigating them equally?

By all means, I'm not saying that people should stop getting angry at GG, nor ridiculing them. "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." Anger is cathartic. But I'm just wondering if there's anything more than that.

And none of this is specific to GG alone. Because at the end of the day, Nazi Germany, or Daesh aren't the best analogies for them. The Tea Party is more apt. Causes that we don't support, but must coexist with in a democratic society. Just as those voters are part of the same electorate as us, GG members are part of the same internet at us. GamerGate will eventually end, but those people will still be online with us. We can't simply wish them away, or follow them to the gates of Hell.
posted by Apocryphon at 3:02 PM on October 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


are she-jocks also way, way better than jocks, in control of their tempers, and also fantastic lawyers in addition to their regular jockness
posted by NoraReed at 3:03 PM on October 24, 2014 [13 favorites]


One of the reasons "SJW" is considered a pejorative is because of this sort of ridiculousness, wherein it appears that the SJW fancies him/herself to be an actual warrior, fighting... the Nazis. The Nazis. Yep, when I hear "GamerGate", I just think Never Again.

The dumbest thing about all of this is that one of the greatest social justice warriors in American history is the internet-beloved Teddy Roosevelt, a great icon for traditional masculinity but at the same time a champion of women's suffrage and progressive causes, "Our purpose is not to impugn the courts, but to emancipate them from a position where they stand in the way of social justice, and to emancipate the people in an orderly way from the inequity of enforced submission to a doctrine which would turn constitutional provisions, which were intended to favor social justice and advancement, into prohibitions against such justice and advancement."
posted by Apocryphon at 3:05 PM on October 24, 2014 [7 favorites]


Girljock was a zine, later a book.
posted by larrybob at 3:08 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


However, I do think that by painting them all with the same brush and dropping truth bombs saying all GGers as misogynists who are sending rape/death threats (or in support of them)

Who's doing this?


muddgirl, I am pretty much in agreement with most people here, I think, but the previous gamergate thread about how it is a hate group had rhetoric to that effect, I think? I know I got snark for even suggesting that a gamergate person on Twitter who engaged me in dialog was capable of making a cogent argument. And that was after I had already clearly stated in the thread that I felt it was absurdly obvious that the impetus for the whole movement was based on misogyny and condemned them for harassing women.

Maybe it got better, I don't know, because I left the thread later ( I felt really uncomfortable when people started attacking Mefite Dabitch, who was not and had never been participating in the thread, for aligning herself with gamer-gate.)
posted by misha at 3:12 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


I'd wear a Social Justice Warrior t-shirt...

I'm hoping these pins eventually make it on to etsy or something.
posted by sparkletone at 3:15 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


wait, relevant starting place in that thread for why dabitch was brought up (she wrote an article, which is of course fine to link to and discuss). though i think it's probably better not to call her into any thread. there's memail for that.
posted by twist my arm at 3:21 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Mod note: palomar, misha, it'd be best to take this to mefi mail at this point
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:29 PM on October 24, 2014


but the previous gamergate thread about how it is a hate group had rhetoric to that effect

Well, I think there's a legitimate argument that #Gamergate is a hate group that specifically hates Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, and anyone else who dares to speak out against them. Does that mean everyone who supports #gamergate is a mysoginist? No, I'm sure some of them just really hate Anita and Zoe as individual women and not as representative of their whole gender.
posted by muddgirl at 3:30 PM on October 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


GamerGate is undermining years of progress in helping people see games (the thing Gaters presumably love) as a real, important media, and not the plaything of violent maladjusted teenagers.

I think that is exactly that the core of Hanger Gate wants. They want to stop it from being a poplar medium, to become an obscure walled garden of by and for AA style gamers. This is really a war against gamers joining the larger society.

And the worst of it is, they're winning. The campaign of fear and intimidation has affected every female I know who works in games. Everyone, including my wife are scared.

It's only going to get worse as well- much as I want to disbelieve, but I think Zoe Quinn is right about how this will end. I predict the shitstorm over the next Anita Sarkeesian video will be an even bigger tipping point. What will they do when they find that threats won't silence her?
posted by happyroach at 3:34 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


I kinda think if you don't want to have people talk about how you are supporting a movement that, at worst, is driving women from the games industry, harassing women out of their homes and making bomb threats and at best is, whether through ineptness and naivete or misogynistic ill intention, lending cover and marginal credibility to these campaigns, you should, uh, not support movements that do that shit.

Additionally, let's all remember that it is not possible to write an unbiased review because reviews are opinion pieces.

Oh, and don't forget that the type of gamer who supports gamergate is the same kind of gamer who tends to throw tantrums when Anders hits on them in Dragon Age II.
posted by NoraReed at 3:35 PM on October 24, 2014 [9 favorites]


Mattie Brice:
What I’ve realized during my time engaging with the online community surrounding games media and development is that minoritized voices often only get visibility and resources when they are talking about their pain. This is particularly true for people who aren’t men, who on top of doing good work, they must put themselves out there enough for hordes to harass them. As is seen with turf wars with games journalism, people are looking for personalities in their media, and the technologies we converse on emphasize these tendencies. In a way, social media is reality TV the audience gets to heavily participate in and shape.
posted by divabat at 3:35 PM on October 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


Apocryphon, I agree with a lot of what you're saying -- some of the core actors here are in it for the gleeful malice, that a lot of the uh, footsoldiers, are motivated to protect what they see as a threatened identity -- but I also don't care about winning those people over. I care about everyone else in the situation, really.

At this point, it doesn't matter what their motivation is; someone tweeting support of #GG is telling the people #GG threatens (primarily women, independent game devs, and probably anyone who finds games interesting for anything beyond enthusiastic spectacle) that the people making the threats have their support and blessing. I know some of that support, even a lot of it, is "innocent" in the sense that the person hitting 'post' may not really believe that Anita Sarkeesian should be killed, nor even subscribe to MRA nonsense. So what? Functionally, they're supporting her longstanding and ongoing harassment.

Yes, they're claiming to be hardline anti-harassment, but no, loudly reporting a couple people doesn't count for much when every other moment is: "won't someone rid us of these meddlesome hipsters with degrees in cultural studies!"

This isn't about writing people off, but one of the central ironies here is that the footsoilder #GGers can walk away at any time with minimal damage. What, an unpleasant patch in their twitter timelines? People like Zoe Quinn can't walk away because people won't let them. The stupid rumors and impersonations and general social damage you see here lasts for years. And even if they could walk, the whole host of people on the sidelines are effectively getting pushed away along with them. Why would anyone want to make games as a woman when it means bying a lottery ticket for this?

Basically, whatever the motivations of the principals, #GG could not have gotten where it is were those principals not floating on a huge iceberg of Problems With Women in gaming, tech, and our culture at large. Maybe when people take shots at that misogyny, some dude who tweeted #GG in all sincerity gets his feathers ruffled. "Hey, we're floating over here!" And so they are. But those people taking the shots are, I think, chipping away at the hulking belly of that iceberg. I don't really want them to stop, you know?
posted by postcommunism at 3:36 PM on October 24, 2014 [14 favorites]


Or, I guess, people could read the article in the previous thread which uses a sociological framework to discuss exactly what it means to be a hate group, without saying that everyone in the group is a misogynist, evil, or whatever other strawman we're supposed to be very concerned about.
posted by muddgirl at 3:36 PM on October 24, 2014 [9 favorites]


"Knock knock."
"Who's there?"
"The interrupting cow."
"The interrupting cow wh--"
"Actually it's about ethics in video game journalism."
posted by NoraReed at 3:37 PM on October 24, 2014 [17 favorites]


Oh NoraReed, someone did say Goat Simulator, but your link is broken. Try again? We nead moar gotes.
posted by JHarris at 3:38 PM on October 24, 2014


It's more like a lot of people are being duped into a bad cause.

You'd have to be limiting yourself to 5 minutes of internet usage a week to be duped into the cause and then not almost immediately see the real filth you're associating with. Maybe MAYBE if you only got your information from the sludgepuddles where they organize, but even then they're constantly whining about how the mainstream media is portraying them.

So if you're "duped" in and then don't wise up then you're being willfully obtuse to who you're associating with. You can't do that without being firmly convinced that the endless stories of people - some of who you presumably like and follow on twitter or read their blogs or tumblrs - are fabricating all this swill and threats. You're shrugging off the endless stories of mistreatment. You're disbelieving that the endless microaggressions against women have an impact on their life and mental well-being.

To be "duped" into the bad cause requires you not to give a crap about the cost of the cause.

I'm okay with lumping those people together in light of that. The people who cheer or watch calmly on the sidelines while someone else rapes the girl on the pinball machine are bad people too.
posted by phearlez at 3:42 PM on October 24, 2014 [16 favorites]


JHarris: That's weird, it works for me-- it's just me being self-aggrandizing over my ridiculous Goat Simulator opus in a previous thread, which I'm pretty sure you read at the time. It's right after the first Control-F hit for "goat simulator" if the anchor links are borked, though.
posted by NoraReed at 3:42 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


but no, loudly reporting a couple people doesn't count for much when every other moment is: "won't someone rid us of these meddlesome hipsters with degrees in cultural studies!

One can only dream of that bright day.
posted by amorphatist at 3:46 PM on October 24, 2014


We nead moar gotes.

As you wish.
posted by Tevin at 3:46 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


Ah! I see, I thought it was going to be another image macro. When the link went to another Metafilter thread I assumed it was this thread, which is what MeFi's software does with malformed links. My error.

The link is good reading, too! (And one I had favorited before!)
posted by JHarris at 3:48 PM on October 24, 2014


I think that is exactly that the core of Hanger Gate wants. They want to stop it from being a poplar medium, to become an obscure walled garden of by and for AA style gamers. This is really a war against gamers joining the larger society.

THIS!!!

But hey, don't take my word for it.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 3:50 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Is this something that you would have to have an ethics or a game journalism to understand?
posted by SpacemanStix at 3:50 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Entitlement
Bigotry
Obstinacy
Lying
Actually it’s about ethics in games journalism.
posted by mullacc at 3:55 PM on October 24, 2014 [14 favorites]


Maybe MAYBE if you only got your information from the sludgepuddles where they organize, but even then they're constantly whining about how the mainstream media is portraying them.

I understand your viewpoint, but I think you're seriously underestimating how easily "regular folks" can be fed lies and then willing entrap themselves into self-affirming ideologically-skewed information bubbles, given the entire state of American politics in the past few decades.

The reason why I keep bringing up their motivations is not to excuse the individual GG supporter. I think that there are chauvinist- as I put it, casually misogynist- attitudes there that cause them to prioritize a fucking hobbyist identity over rape/death threats. And the general paranoia about SJWs/feminism.

I bring up their motivations to explain that many of them do not see themselves as pro-misogyny. There's enough disinfo and trolling floating around that they have assembled interminable lists of links, YouTube videos, and screencaps claiming that anti-GG uses the same tactics against them. Whether someone claiming to forward pro-GG statements to an employer, or a pro-GG transgendered person getting insulted, and so on, they can dredge up dozens of supposed incidents where their side was attacked.

And yes, there's a lot of delusional thinking involved in this. Certainly there are no high-profile supposed victims of harassment on the pro-GG side similar to LW1, 2, 3. That's probably because the claims of harassment on pro-GG members aren't actually happening, or are false flags, etc. But they believe it. Everything becomes an ad hominem, or failing that, a tu quoque. I don't claim to know the solution to any of this. I'm just claiming that the situation is more nuanced than "bigots gonna bigot."
posted by Apocryphon at 3:56 PM on October 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


Hey, can we not do the LW/Literally Who thing here? The whole "creating euphemisms so we can talk about the women we hate without it showing up in word clouds" is really creepy and gross.
posted by NoraReed at 4:08 PM on October 24, 2014 [20 favorites]


And there was me thinking LW1 was Letter Writer 1, which I thought was an odd idiom. But out of curiosity, what is the problem with the term, I don't think I understand Nora's complaint?
posted by amorphatist at 4:11 PM on October 24, 2014


Sorry, I was just doing that as shorthand for the sake of brevity. I'll refrain from that in the future.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:11 PM on October 24, 2014


But out of curiosity, what is the problem with the term, I don't think I understand Nora's complaint?

It's the shorthand Gaters use for women who have been targets (Quinn, Wu, Sarkeesian, etc) because they think it absolves them of accusations of being creepily obsessed with them. Apocryphon wasn't using it that way, but it's off-putting because of what they've done with it.
posted by zombieflanders at 4:15 PM on October 24, 2014


But out of curiosity, what is the problem with the term, I don't think I understand Nora's complaint?

Unlike Voldemort, Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, and Brianna Wu have done nothing to deserve idiotic dehumanizing name replacements.
posted by kmz at 4:16 PM on October 24, 2014 [7 favorites]


I've also found that any mention of Zoe Quinn on Twitter gets responses from randos saying "Literally who?", which is pretty skeevy IMO.

Also, Voldemort chose the name; he gets the inversion of the Literally Who treatment from Dumbledore with the slightly patronizing (or perhaps unwantedly humanizing) use of "Tom" in battle.
posted by NoraReed at 4:22 PM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


I mean it's sort of emblematic of the whole GG thing when their attempt to distance themselves from active campaigns of misogyny turned into a dehumanizing nickname making it easier to target a woman.
posted by griphus at 4:23 PM on October 24, 2014 [8 favorites]


Going back to the previous thread and rereading the origin of it being "a search dodge," it seems that I've misunderstood that the phrase originates from GamerGate and is being used to perpetuate their tactics. I apologize for that, and for not reading more carefully.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:24 PM on October 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


I understand your viewpoint, but I think you're seriously underestimating how easily "regular folks" can be fed lies and then willing entrap themselves into self-affirming ideologically-skewed information bubbles

They can do that, but when they consciously step into a "cause" they are taking some responsibility on themselves. They could be sympathetic dupes all day long on the sidelines, but the second they pick up a banner and say, "This thing, I'm part of it," that has to mean something.
posted by fleacircus at 4:24 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]



Additionally, let's all remember that it is not possible to write an unbiased review because reviews are opinion pieces.


Repeating for truth. If you think all reviews need to be completely free of bias to be legit, you are an idiot.
posted by palomar at 4:29 PM on October 24, 2014


From what I can tell, some game review sites and magazines are really quite shameless shills. I refer particularly to the Gamespot business from a while back with Jeff Gerstmann losing his job because he gave a game the site was pushing a bad review.

The stated goal, some sort of 'objective' or 'ethical' review of video games?, I guess?, is so petty and so far from the tactics as to not even merit mentioning in light of the methods deployed in its service...which include death and rape threats against random women who happen to (gasp!) express an opinion on the internet. Your ethical argument becomes immediately invalid when members of your #hashtagmovement threaten to rape someone they disagree with in the name of ethics. You can't form a hate group, threaten a bunch of women (and its just women, really) and then claim some sort of higher purpose, it doesnt really matter if that purpose is supposedly better video game reviews, or saving kids with ass cancer, you're still a hate group that threatens to rape women.

Why there's not more of a police/FBI angle to this...whatever it is... continues to be a mystery to me, with all the surveillance power available to law enforcement, surely it'd be pretty easy to round up a few hundred people making open death threats on unprotected twitter accounts and charge them with terrorist threatening.

Not attacking the author JHarris with this pull quote at all, I just waded in and grabbed an illustrative quote to make my point.
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:30 PM on October 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


I try to avoid discussing all political issues on my Facebook page (except marriage equality) because its exhausting debating issues with crazy people I otherwise like and care about. However, the fact that Felicia Day got doxxed sort of pushed me over the edge.

Sure enough, Gamergators came out of the woodwork with this very "its about ethics in gaming journalism" thing. But, you know, ugh, fuck those guys. Even if they believe it, fuck them fuck them fuck them. At some point enabling misogyny, doxxing as revenge for saying things that hurt some mens' feels, rape and and death threats, and "look how clever we are we are trying to hide what we're doing to fuck these women up by giving them code names" behavior is pretty damn bad in its own right.

Anyhow, I only really seriously engaged one of them and tried to keep is at the level of discussion instead of debate. He stopped responding after I pointed out how, immediately after insisting this whole thing is about journalists and developers not sleeping together, he'd just linked a "Anita Sarkeesian is a fraud" thing which had nothing to do with his "this whole thing is about" statement. I mean, the "its about game journalism" arguments are just so blatantly cobbled together out of wishes, horseshit and Hearthstone cards that you just need to blow on it and the whole mess collapses on itself.
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:31 PM on October 24, 2014 [18 favorites]


You can't form a hate group, threaten a bunch of women (and its just women, really)

Right? Quinn and Sarkeesian get death threats. Kluwe, who is in all out attack mode against GamerGate, gets image macros.
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:32 PM on October 24, 2014 [13 favorites]


Why there's not more of a police/FBI angle to this...whatever it is... continues to be a mystery to me...

Law enforcement barely cares about actual sexual assaults that have happened. Reporting a threat from an internet stranger is more often than not a lost cause.
posted by griphus at 4:33 PM on October 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


Another in case you haven't read it thing, The Onion's take.
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:35 PM on October 24, 2014 [6 favorites]




How anyone who uses "social justice" or "social justice warrior" as a slur could turn around and claim to be the good guys just wrecks me.

Before that, I seem to recall about half the US thinking Sarah Palin's use of "community organizer" was a hilarious dis.

Before that, "do-gooder" had been a put-down for a long time.

Humanity kinda sucks.

(I wish G4 TV was still around. Attack of the Show and X-Play probably would've been all over this. But then, I'm thinking of the G4 of 2006 or so, the pre-Olivia Munn/pre-Blair Herter era. The original G4 probably would've had a lot of thoughtful and sometimes hilarious commentary on this whole ridiculous wangdoodle. But I don't even know what they would've done with it, post Spike TV/Maxim-makeover. They probably would've still been on the right side, but they would have somehow found a way to express that with clips of chicks in bikinis washing cars. Watching that network lobotomize itself was so sad. To this day I can't look at Olivia Munn's face without wishing she was Sarah Lane instead. )

(I miss 2006 G4, kind of a lot. Where have you gone, Ratty the groundhog puppet? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.)
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:47 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


We nead moar gotes.

My Goat is a little rusty, but I'm pretty sure this goat is actually saying "it's about ethics in games journalism."
posted by homunculus at 4:48 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


MBD, at BoingBoing's forum, created a detailed analysis of #gamergate and #stopgamergate2014 tweets.

Kinda interesting, as one commentator put it, when you discover only around 10% of #gg actually had anything to say about anything, like ZQ or Sarkeesian or journalism. The rest of it was just talking about #gg itself.
posted by honestcoyote at 4:50 PM on October 24, 2014 [8 favorites]


Law enforcement barely cares about actual sexual assaults that have happened. Reporting a threat from an internet stranger is more often than not a lost cause.

I think the arrival of an unimpeachable (viewed by both sides of the conflict) neutral third party would be a possible resolution to this whole mess. Have the FBI make moves on the troll instigators of this situation. Make examples of those who are internet harassers (especially of women). GamerGaters refuse to listen to the media, but I think they'd listen to the law. If the law said, "Those guys on you're side? They're literally bad guys." the 'regular people' in the movement might actually be willing to listen, and be like, "Well, fuck."

GameGaters are a cowardly and superstitious lot. Conspiracy theories are ultimately all about appealing to authority. That's why the support (or opposition) by public figures is so important to them. "Wikileaks and Mercedes-Benz agrees with us!" That's why I was saying that it would be great if Gabe Newell, their god-emperor, made a statement about all of this.

I think another problem with online discourse besides info bubbles is that there's a surrealness to it, the lack of feeling of actual full-life consequences. That's what causes the lack of empathy, the casual misogyny (and casual misanthropy) of "it's the internet, everyone gets death threats, just deal with it." But if the law was to arrive and start busting trolls, well it'll remind everyone that the internet is part of real life. And it'll clearly illustrate who the villains are.

Long term, of course, resorting to legislation is a terrible way to deal with internet trolling. People need to police themselves. Civility should be maintained without relying on solely force. But in the short-term, it can be beneficial, and hopefully it will encourage websites and other online non-governmental communities to institute better ways with dealing with harassment.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:54 PM on October 24, 2014


Why there's not more of a police/FBI angle to this...whatever it is... continues to be a mystery to me

I suspect this attitude might be part of the problem.
posted by homunculus at 4:55 PM on October 24, 2014 [9 favorites]


The bomb, mass murder, rape, and death threats against Sarkeesian have all been reported to the FBI; they claimed her most recent thread of a mass murder targeting her and other women in Utah was in line with the other sorts of threats she's received over the past few years. It's difficult to say if their assessment was dismissive; I fear it is.

Quinn and Wu have both said their death threats were also reported to the FBI, and I have no reason to disbelieve them.

I hope the FBI is trying to identify the people who have done these things. I fear it will take someone else getting murdered for them to do so. I doubly fear not even that will do it, since women get murdered all of the time by men who say they hate women, and a lot of the response seems to be people thinking women should stop being victims, professional or otherwise.
posted by Deoridhe at 4:56 PM on October 24, 2014 [14 favorites]


There's already been plenty of high-profile news cases of online bullying over the years where law enforcement have acted against the perpetrator. Hasn't done jack shit.
posted by divabat at 4:59 PM on October 24, 2014


Tevin: "I was thinking the other day: this has been a whining point for a long time.

Around 2000 something there was this big debate about game developers no longer explicitly catering to 'hardcore' gamers. The Wii, my god, there was some vitriol because of this. How dare there be more attention 'people who want to play games not male aged 15-28.' I remember specifically the vitriol toward Bejeweled because it was a 'chick' game and not something 'hardcore' (ie males aged 15-28) would dare play.

I had never made that connection before.
"

John Romero wants to make you his ETHICS IN JOURNALISM.
posted by symbioid at 4:59 PM on October 24, 2014 [8 favorites]


Police action could at least dissipate GamerGate by revealing to non-trolls that they've been led by criminals all along.

But yeah, the prevalent nature of harassment of women, especially on the internet, is really depressing. It's insane that this is happening in a year where online harassment of women has been brought up on The Atlantic, Pacific Standard, etc. - The Daily Beast wrote about this weeks, if not days, before GG blew up.
posted by Apocryphon at 5:09 PM on October 24, 2014


I want Gabe Newell to put out a press release that both announces Half-Life 3 and tells #GamerGate to fuck right off.
posted by brundlefly at 5:10 PM on October 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


I've seen a lot of good instances of the meme today, but I think I might have a new favorite.
posted by sparkletone at 5:13 PM on October 24, 2014 [7 favorites]


Norareed: are she-jocks also way, way better than jocks, in control of their tempers, and also fantastic lawyers in addition to their regular jockness

Yes, but they also get canceled after twelve issues.
posted by lodurr at 5:16 PM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


The Wii, my god, there was some vitriol because of this.

There's something to be said for the argument that "blowing off your early adopters is not a good way to achieve greater market penetration." "You have made a game that doesn't cater to my interests - How DARE YOU!?!?! I will hunt you down, kill you and then sodomize your corpse!!!" is almost exactly not that something.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 5:17 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


Ken Jennings: "Just saw a tired 2-year-old throwing a huge GamerGate on the floor of the grocery store."
posted by lodurr at 5:18 PM on October 24, 2014 [40 favorites]


that's nothing - i walked through the park today and got gamergate on my shoes - people and their damn dogs!
posted by pyramid termite at 5:20 PM on October 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


THAT'S nothing. I just heard Rick Santorum complaining that people were using his last name to mean GamerGate.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:21 PM on October 24, 2014 [18 favorites]


For some reason, the creepy stalker lawyer is going after Anil Dash again... and tweeting about his attempts to doxx more people.
posted by palomar at 5:32 PM on October 24, 2014


Ursula Hitler: I miss 2006 G4, kind of a lot.
I think the G4 I miss is the Charles Hirschhorn era. Which is the iteration before the 2006 version. When Wil Wheaton still had a show there. Still, I agree. I'd love to hear what Laura Foy or Tina Wood have to say about this. Actually, just imagining the epic flame war on the G4TV.com thread and the coverage on the show of the same name makes me more nostalgic than ever for the before-time, the long-long ago.
posted by ob1quixote at 6:04 PM on October 24, 2014


I understand the reasoning behind thinking that, if they were talked to calmly or by an impartial third party, some of the gamergate supporters would stop. I also do believe that some, maybe a large chunk of them, really think they are in it for 'videogame ethics' or whatever and do not think of themselves as anti-feminist.

But I do not think that it will be possible to dissuade any of these supporters through debate. That's because the energy behind gamergate is now "I am not being listened to!". Every reasonable reaction to this will only strengthen this. They feel that they are being ridiculed (and they are, because they're being ridiculous), and that just inflames it more.

This article on feeling outcast and finding solace in games is a good piece on how that feeling starts. Trouble At The Koolaid Point describes one facet of the anger that the GG people feel about their concerns (as stupid as they are) not being taken seriously because other people are listening to someone else, goddamn it, and they're so wrong, why don't they listen to them, they know the what truth is!

The twisted genius of gamergate is how any evidence or statement against their claims can be repurposed as proof of them, because they're just more evidence towards the thesis: "They're not listening to you! They're not taking you seriously!". And then when an advertiser or journalist or a Wormtongue-like opportunist does take them seriously, then that re-enforces them more. They are making a difference, as negative as that is, and that lets them think that since some people do take them seriously, everyone should.

So, one way to counteract this might be to agree with them at first, say they have good points, and then try to convince them that they're mistaken in going under the gamergate banner. But the movement as a whole has done so many terrible things that this is a disgusting option. GaymerX tried it (or were just trying to avoid more harassment themselves), and rightly lost the trust of many of their previous attendees.

Yes, many of the gamergate supporters are feeling hurt or estranged or isolated in their lives, and gaming gave them a way to feel better, and now they feel like their only place of power is being demolished. Maybe through time and support, they change their minds. Their feelings could be soothed and they could grow into healthier people.

But right now, they're enabling a hate mob, supporting misogynists, neoreactionaries, literal nazis, and whitewashing a months-long campaign of abuse. They are scaring and hurting people. They are damaging the industry they claim to love. It's an internet-spanning garbage tornado, and it needs to be met with zero tolerance.
posted by smasuch at 6:23 PM on October 24, 2014 [15 favorites]


Dont lawyers have to keep their immoral behaviour hidden in order to practice?
posted by Yowser at 6:23 PM on October 24, 2014


Dont lawyers have to keep their immoral behaviour hidden in order to practice?

There's a vast, vast space between being a shithead on the internet and action taken by the state bar. For the most part, what the bar cares about is stealing money from, or sleeping with, clients, and in some states, advertising. Outside of an actual conviction at least. And depending on the practice area and type of practice, clients may not do any searching online to discover if their lawyer is part of some online hate campaign. Sure a lot of sketchy conduct on and offline may be technically against the ethic rules, in practice, enforcement is uneven at best, and it takes a long time and a lot of sustained conduct to get anyone's attention.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:31 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


I see, I thought the standard was much higher. I stand corrected!
posted by Yowser at 6:37 PM on October 24, 2014


It's an internet-spanning garbage tornado, and it needs to be met with zero tolerance.

but meeting them with zero tolerance is just going to fan the flames further - which isn't to say it's wrong, it's just that these people are complete dickheads and complete dickheads are going to be dickheads for as long as they find their dickishness entertaining or fulfilling

shit like this can go on for years, and probably will

so we can flame them to pieces, we can snark at them from the sidelines in a safe place like this, many of us can ignore them, and a few of their enemies will continue to suffer terrible persecution and without the authorities cracking down on the really vile actions, it's just all going to go on and on and on

i'm really sorry, but i just can't think of anything that's going to work to stop this - victims should be supported, advertisers and other 3rd parties should be educated, but i just don't see it ending anytime soon
posted by pyramid termite at 6:52 PM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]




Holy shit, Joey Michaels. That link.
posted by rtha at 7:04 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


WHAT. THE. FUCK?
posted by PROD_TPSL at 7:17 PM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


"Actually it's about ethics in video game journalism."

Yes, because Anita Sarkeesian's 'Tropes Against Women' was the highest quality ethical journalism about the game industry since... well, ever, and #gamergate needs to nip that kind of thing in the bud and return to the bought-and-paid-for game reviews and other 'coverage' that has told them what to spend their money on for decades.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:28 PM on October 24, 2014 [7 favorites]


Yowser: "I see, I thought the standard was much higher. I stand corrected!"

Nah - you're thinking journalism. Ethics is for journalism, not lawyers.
posted by symbioid at 7:34 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


Tropes vs Women in Video Games isn't journalism.

Anita Sarkeesian isn't a journalist, she's a media critic and educator.

"Ethics in journalism" has nothing to do with Sarkeesian, nor the other two main targets Brianna Wu and Zoe Quinn, as none of the women are journalists.
posted by Deoridhe at 7:49 PM on October 24, 2014 [14 favorites]


pyramid termite: there is an action that could be taken that you didn't list: they can be booted from the sites they're using. If Twitter wanted, they could ban every gamergater in one swoop. But they won't, of course.
posted by smasuch at 8:14 PM on October 24, 2014


This "Actually", made by a friend of mine, I think is the best Actually.

KathrynT: "FWIW, if you question that people have been silenced about this? I've been silenced. I only talk about GamerGate on my locked-down facebook and here; I don't talk about it on Twitter or on other forums. Because my real name is unique, and I have children."

I know a lot of women, gamers and women who love gamers, and not a single one of them is willing to engage in anything that might get gg attention.



Joey Michaels: "Related: "Misogyny is a tech industry institution that has yet to be disrupted.""

Jayzus onna stick. How could anyone be that clueless?
posted by dejah420 at 8:35 PM on October 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


I also do believe that some, maybe a large chunk of them, really think they are in it for 'videogame ethics' or whatever and do not think of themselves as anti-feminist.

If so, they really have no idea what "ethics" really means. When asked about the Gamespot editor who was fired for giving "Kane and Lynch", a game that was advertised on the site a bad review, the answer was that it was unprofessional to say bad things about an advertiser, and that reviewers had an obligation not to criticize advertising companies.

"Ethics" to gamergate basically means 1) don't rock the boat, and 2) don't bite the hand that feeds you. It's really a movement to return reviews to being pad shills for game companies.
posted by happyroach at 8:39 PM on October 24, 2014 [9 favorites]


For the most part, what the bar cares about is stealing money from, or sleeping with, clients, and in some states, advertising.

The video game industry could use a bar, eh?
posted by amorphatist at 8:51 PM on October 24, 2014


When asked about the Gamespot editor who was fired for giving "Kane and Lynch", a game that was advertised on the site a bad review, the answer was that it was unprofessional to say bad things about an advertiser, and that reviewers had an obligation not to criticize advertising companies.

"The answer" ... from whom?

It's really a movement to return reviews to being pad shills for game companies.

Whuh? Isn't the gg claim that it's the opposite? Or is this some weird sarcasm?
posted by amorphatist at 8:53 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Seriously, the #GG position is that the 'old way' was the one that was ethical, which shows that, as a group, they should not be trusted to operate a cash register at McDonalds.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:00 PM on October 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


amorphatist: "Whuh? Isn't the gg claim that it's the opposite? Or is this some weird sarcasm?"

Nope. GamerGate really is, in its effect, a movement to return reviews to being paid shills for game companies. That is, when it's not attacking women and trying to run them out of the industry.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 9:01 PM on October 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


Nope. GamerGate really is, in its effect, a movement to return reviews to being paid shills for game companies.

Can you show your work on that?
posted by amorphatist at 9:06 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


Check the gamergate tag on mefi. It's a regressive, misogynist movement for MRAs, dark enlightenment weirdos, gullible idiots with persecution complexes, white supremacists, and common-or-garden chan trolls. It's very, very well documented at this point.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 9:09 PM on October 24, 2014 [9 favorites]


Can you show your work on that?

What computer game company do you imagine is paying Anita Sarkeesian to offer up a thoughtful critique of misogyny in modern video games?

If this were about reviewers having too cozy a relationship with the industry, Sarkeesian would be the posterchild hero of GamerGate.
posted by yoink at 9:16 PM on October 24, 2014 [15 favorites]


Whuh? Isn't the gg claim that it's the opposite? Or is this some weird sarcasm?

Not sarcasm.
posted by Corinth at 9:17 PM on October 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


Nope. GamerGate really is, in its effect, a movement to return reviews to being paid shills for game companies.
...
It's very, very well documented at this point.

Going from GG consists of a bunch of shitheels to GG really, in effect, wants to be lied to by the video game press because $OBVIOUSLY is a claim that requires filling in that $OBVIOUSLY variable.
posted by amorphatist at 9:17 PM on October 24, 2014


GamerGaters have a problem with "SJW" ideals being represented in video game reviews, commentary, development, etc.

GamerGaters are completely fine with the existing web of promotional shite known as "hype culture" whereby publishers fly reviewers from the big websites to Vegas, where the big websites fire reviewers for being too harsh on games they are being paid to advertise, etc. Very, very large numbers of people posting on the chans and on r/KiA have said that this kind of stuff is fine.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 9:23 PM on October 24, 2014 [10 favorites]


But I mean really it's a thousand word comment to lay it all out for you; check the links and read back.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 9:27 PM on October 24, 2014


Sorry you couldn't bother to google "Kane and Lynch" review controversy, which I did, bringing up this article from Forbes.com, a site NOT known for its SJW leanings. This is #gamergate's idea of 'ethical journalistic standards', while inserting "Gaterly Incorrect" opinion is an ethical violation.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:29 PM on October 24, 2014 [7 favorites]


>Can you show your work on that?

The two real-world actions that gamegate group has taken thus far are - (1) harassing women and (2) harassing advertisers of those that point out (1). They are directly attempting to break down the Chinese wall between editorial opinion and advertisements. That's a core principal of real ethical journalism which is why its impossible to take attacks on it seriously as somehow for 'ethics'. which is why (2) is mainly a cover for (1).

> there was this big debate about game developers no longer explicitly catering to 'hardcore' gamers.

Most of these kids weren't even alive when gaming was 'hardcore'. Hardcore was when the only game in town, literally, was at the arcade or the pizza shop. God forbid someone spilled something on the centipede ball or broke the heavy punch button on streetfighter 2. Hardcore was hand typing pages of code from the back of a magazine for hours or days so you could play a space invader clone and backing that up tape - like memorix audio tape with the often vain hope you could load it again. Hardcore was pre-internet, pre-windows, pre-nintendo. Hardcore was loading drivers into high memory.

'Hardcore' was a giant pain in the ass. By any and every measure, gaming has gotten better and better the less hardcore it is.
posted by anti social order at 9:30 PM on October 24, 2014 [27 favorites]


GamerGaters are completely fine with the existing web of promotional shite known as "hype culture" whereby publishers fly reviewers from the big websites to Vegas, where the big websites fire reviewers for being too harsh on games they are being paid to advertise, etc.

I've read all the links, so apologies, I must be missing something obvious. Where do the links show that GamerGaters are "completely fine" with the Gerstman firing?

Sorry you couldn't bother to google "Kane and Lynch" review controversy, which I did, bringing up this article from Forbes.com, a site NOT known for its SJW leanings. ... This is #gamergate's idea of 'ethical journalistic standards', while inserting "Gaterly Incorrect" opinion is an ethical violation.

"This is #gamergate's idea of 'ethical journalistic standards"... what does that even mean? What is the "this"? The firing? So the GG crowd were roaring in approval when Gerstman got fired? Because they hate honest journalism? This tangent (#gg really wants corrupt journalism) just makes no sense.
posted by amorphatist at 9:41 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Did you read Corinth's link? I've been following GG disgustedly since the very beginning but I was still struck by how much it revealed they don't have the first idea what "journalistic ethics" are.
posted by valrus at 9:48 PM on October 24, 2014


Can you show your work on that?

Well, GamerGate claims to care about ethics in game journalism, but they choose to focus on a few elements of game criticism and review instead of any of the actual breaches of journalistic ethics inherent in game journalism as it currently is, including the relationship between game media outlets and advertising, the free swag lavished on games journalists, etc. Hell, it's kind of insane that they're targeting people who contribute to Patreons but not flipping their shit when game journalists pay for games. The stuff a lot of gamergate folks and the folks that are really toxic members of the gaming community are mad about are almost all bad reviews of really expensive games; they not only do not know the difference between game criticism and journalism but are 100% okay with the "journalism" part mostly being a mouthpiece for company PR.
posted by NoraReed at 9:54 PM on October 24, 2014 [8 favorites]


If you get tired of waiting around for us to synthesize personal responses to your questions you can always just go put your face in front of the shit firehose until you've had your fill.
posted by Corinth at 9:54 PM on October 24, 2014 [12 favorites]


KotakuInAction: because you played that one minigame in Saint's Row where you run around with a truck full of sewage and shoot it everywhere and it was the most profound and affecting piece of art you ever saw
posted by NoraReed at 9:56 PM on October 24, 2014 [13 favorites]


It seems like the argument re: the Gerstman firing and other pre-GG blatant ethics breaches is that GG was "fine" with them because they didn't respond by throwing the kind of shit fit that they did when a woman dev had sex. But I think we can lay that aside and demonstrate something less abstract: that since its inception GG has accomplished nothing in line with its stated "journalistic ethics" goals and several things directly contradicting them. E.g. this.
posted by valrus at 10:03 PM on October 24, 2014 [8 favorites]


Nora, thanks for your response, that helps. It still doesn't make sense to me that typical #gg members would actually *want* the journalists to lie/mislead/fail-to-disclose... I mean, how does that possibly benefit said #gg member? Unless the responses in the image link are some sort of anti-gawker sentiment due to gawker being anti-gg.

If you get tired of waiting around for us to synthesize personal responses to your questions
It's almost like this is a message board where people ask questions and others can choose to respond to them. Or choose not to respond to them, which is of course an option available to you instead of being shitty.
posted by amorphatist at 10:04 PM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


This isn't actually a Q&A site, you want Ask MeFi for that. This is a discussion about a topic, and like most discussions on topics, people get frustrated occasionally and don't want to go over the 101-level stuff again and again (as is their right).

It still doesn't make sense to me that typical #gg members would actually *want* the journalists to lie/mislead/fail-to-disclose... I mean, how does that possibly benefit said #gg member?

It doesn't. But as evidenced by their lack of concern, they're more interested in harassment than in journalism. That's all there is to it.
posted by Lemurrhea at 10:11 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


If you want to go and find the stuff from a month or two back where GamerGaters were discussing the Gerstman firing and dismissing it as "the sort of corruption we don't need to worry about" then go for it, but you're going to have to wade through a mountain of shit to find it, I suspect.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 10:13 PM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


This isn't actually a Q&A site, you want Ask MeFi for that. This is a discussion about a topic, and like most discussions on topics, people get frustrated occasionally and don't want to go over the 101-level stuff again and again (as is their right).

This is also not your private expert-level message board, and I don't consider that particular claim ("Nope. GamerGate really is, in its effect, a movement to return reviews to being paid shills for game companies") to be an obvious 101-level topic. If you're not happy with this particular sub-topic being discussed, you want MetaTalk for that.

It seems like the argument re: the Gerstman firing and other pre-GG blatant ethics breaches is that GG was "fine" with them because they didn't respond by throwing the kind of shit fit that they did when a woman dev had sex.

Thanks valrus, that actually makes me understand the claim.
posted by amorphatist at 10:20 PM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


If you think about this less as being about stuff that makes sense and more like angry grar based on misconceptions and lies, ironically it makes more sense.

See also: anti-vax; birthers; 9/11 truthers.
posted by Joey Michaels at 10:21 PM on October 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


I'd be surprised if any #GGers ever addressed the Gerstman firing, because either (1) they know they can't defend it, (2) if it's not a scandal involving women and SJWs, it's irrelevant or, for the largest number, (3) they are naively unaware, thanks to the actions of (1) and (2) and they'd never believe it if it came from The Enemy. So the echo chamber is closed up and locked tight. Unlike MetaFilter where we devote many many keystrokes to explain ourselves (which, while annoying, reduces the echo effect more than most internet places).
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:28 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


I've seen the Gerstman firing referenced briefly but, like any corruption involving the AAAs, it was quickly passed over and dismissed with a shrug. The worst that was said about it, and the general response to big studios, is: "that's how it was and how it will ever be with the big studios." This line doubles as GG's excuse for not tackling any of the current or past AAA scandals.

Even the very recent scandal of EA trying to force video reviewers into acting as the Mouth of Sauron has been dismissed as "Youtube reviewers aren't journalists" and are therefore not worthy of GG's shrieks of "Ethics." Though they will bring it up in a self-serving way since Total Biscuit, inexplicably a GG supporter, revealed the scandal. It's usually referenced when people ask a gator: "what has your movement actually accomplished beyond terrorizing women and making gamers look like idiots?"

You could interpret this as gators wanting the bad old days back, but I don't think that's correct. Most gators really do want things to change. But, since they're not even thinking one move ahead, they don't realize everything they're demanding will make game writing worse than the old days of regurgitated press releases.
posted by honestcoyote at 11:08 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


"I believe we have not met, Mister....?"
"Gournalism. James Gournalism."
posted by fleacircus at 11:43 PM on October 24, 2014 [7 favorites]


I had to make this one.
posted by fleacircus at 11:56 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


amorphatist, just read this thread. It contains GG demands from about a month ago, including a list that amounts to wanting only rewritten press releases for AAA games.
posted by zompist at 12:36 AM on October 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


Fleaucifcus, I guess that's Rutger Hauer(so). how did you find that picture without a really teal tint?
posted by Yowser at 12:38 AM on October 25, 2014


I'd be surprised if any #GGers ever addressed the Gerstman firing,

This might be my self-centeredness/echo chamber but: I can't remember it coming up ever on twitter, and ... It's not that I've been the only one to mention it here, but I feel like I've brought it up the most. Mostly in the context of idiots being shocked somehow at Giant Bomb's formal statement about this mess (and some related comments).

As I'd been saying: Patrick somehow seems to get the most hate from the GG crowd for being "SJW" but it just makes absolutely no sense to me that anyone in that crowd that anyone that works at Giant Bomb would find any of this anything but completely disgusting. Because the thing is, it's not just Gerstmann himself's firing from Gamespot that matters in that context. Literally the entire founding and subsequent history of Giant Bomb as a sight stems from Gamespot firing Gerstmann. The first bunch of founders/editors were Gerstmann and a crew of people mostly assembled from writers who quit Gamespot in protest over Gerstmann's firing. All of them are still at Giant Bomb except for the sadly departed Ryan Davis.

One of the few times I've clicked a KotakuInAction link was to see how they felt about the GB formal statement. In typical GG-er fashion, their reaction was a mix of shock, aww, and hilariously "Well, as long as they have Vinny, they have my subscriber money." Like, come on. The only reason Vinny isn't as vocally disgusted as any of them is because he's been busy raising a newborn the last couple months and is probably exhausted despite being back at work now.

How they've handled one could maybe discuss (specific language in the formal statement)... But no one gets to fucking pretend like Gerstmann or Giant Bomb as a whole would be okay with any of this on any level. And how do you know: Because as corporate as that formal statement was, none of them have at ALL hid their contempt for any of this. (Hence why Patrick getting all the heat is so confusing to me.)
posted by sparkletone at 12:42 AM on October 25, 2014 [4 favorites]


I fixed some of their YouTube videos
posted by NoraReed at 1:21 AM on October 25, 2014


Dune might be a little on the nose.

Fleaucifcus, I guess that's Rutger Hauer(so). how did you find that picture without a really teal tint?

It's from Blade Runner, in Tyrell's candlelit boudoir: when Roy Batty takes his consumer revolt to the amoral industrialist who created him, used him, and abandoned him. Nothing to do with GG really.
posted by fleacircus at 1:40 AM on October 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


downfall.mp4 with every subtitle replaced with "actually it's about ethics in gaming journalism"
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 1:59 AM on October 25, 2014 [4 favorites]


youtube inexplicably hates me, here is my video improvement of gamergate
posted by NoraReed at 2:09 AM on October 25, 2014 [8 favorites]


I've seen the Gerstman firing referenced briefly but, like any corruption involving the AAAs, it was quickly passed over and dismissed with a shrug. The worst that was said about it, and the general response to big studios, is: "that's how it was and how it will ever be with the big studios."

Actually, from what I read, it's more than that. Gamergate regards that as proper behavior. They regard professional behavior as a) take advertisements from AAA ame companies and b) give only good reviews to AAA games. That IS what they regard as ethics in journalism.

It's not that I regard them as consciously corrupt- it's that they want a status quo where the big game companies keep putting out games that are the same iterations on the same old theme, and the reviewers promote those games with deliriously enthusiastic reviews.
posted by happyroach at 2:50 AM on October 25, 2014 [16 favorites]


Actually, from what I read, it's more than that. Gamergate regards that as proper behavior. They regard professional behavior as a) take advertisements from AAA ame companies and b) give only good reviews to AAA games. That IS what they regard as ethics in journalism.

That's hilariously sad.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:29 AM on October 25, 2014


I think that is exactly that the core of Hanger Gate wants. They want to stop it from being a poplar medium, to become an obscure walled garden of by and for AA style gamers. This is really a war against gamers joining the larger society.

Which is moronic, because gaming hasn't been underground since the Magnavox Odyssey came out, ie longer than I've been alive. It's always been mainstream.
posted by MartinWisse at 4:50 AM on October 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


and if spoken to with open words and good faith

One doesn't reason with spoiled children, or puppies who have weed on the rug again.

Going from GG consists of a bunch of shitheels to GG really, in effect, wants to be lied to by the video game press because $OBVIOUSLY is a claim that requires filling in that $OBVIOUSLY variable.

Not really, no. Please show any instance of GG shitheels doing a single thing about ethical--as in not bought and paid for by creators/advertisers--games journalism.

What they actually do is attack women. Women, in several cases, who critique video games without sparing the sensibilities of the creators/advertisers. Worth repeating happyroach's link if you still need explanation.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 5:27 AM on October 25, 2014 [4 favorites]


KotakuInAction: because you played that one minigame in Saint's Row where you run around with a truck full of sewage and shoot it everywhere and it was the most profound and affecting piece of art you ever saw

This comparison is really unfair to Septic Avenger which is a perfectly good minigame that never hurt anybody and you should take that back.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:19 AM on October 25, 2014 [5 favorites]


A Voice for Men contributes to the conversation about games with incisive images on facebook.
posted by postcommunism at 9:38 AM on October 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


From the comments: "Every woman is a nun with her nipples exposed."
That magical combination of rancid misogyny and total incoherence.
posted by murphy slaw at 10:06 AM on October 25, 2014 [7 favorites]


Freud would have had a field day with that pack of dimwitted seat moisteners.
posted by sobarel at 10:18 AM on October 25, 2014


There's more about A Voice for Men's latest bullshit in the other thread.
posted by homunculus at 10:33 AM on October 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


Though they will bring it up in a self-serving way since Total Biscuit, inexplicably a GG supporter, revealed the scandal.

And they'll cite the supposedly-weak sales figures, though I see no actual boycott.

It's not like it's not transparent: AAA studios could rain down never-ending freebies on game journalists as long as they keep producing stereotypical gamer-fodder, and the gators would still line up to pay for the Day -1 special edition and pay again for whatever DLC follows. And AAA studios have, for the most part, been pretty damn craven in their silence.
posted by holgate at 10:56 AM on October 25, 2014


Craven? Or just following a successful (and investor-loved) business model?
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:59 AM on October 25, 2014


Also, $5 Patreon donations? $20 Kickstarter pledges? They're all sucked into the lunatic conspiracy matrix because they're visible and searchable. Those Vegas junkets and boxes of freebies and sweet co-sponsorship deals from AAA studios are all done under the table with a nod and a wink, because the AAA studios are a little bit smarter than their gator customer base.

It's like a bunch of Marvel movie fans sending out threats to off-off-Broadway actors because they think experimental theatre threatens their right to see Scarlett Johannson's cleavage.
posted by holgate at 11:09 AM on October 25, 2014 [23 favorites]


Seriously, I could live comfortably for several years, with my current mortgage and car payments, on what it costs to run one of those Vegas promo junkets. And have some left over for a couple of nice vacations.
posted by lodurr at 11:33 AM on October 25, 2014


>One doesn't reason with spoiled children

You can just look at the top two posts of their site from yesterday. This one is a "stay on target" post for attacking the advertisers that contains gems like don't call each other out publicly, don't claim you're part of gamergate because the name is tainted, and don't call it a movement which is important because gamergate is "falling into a classic trap, laid by radicals who are used to this sort of thing" to distract them from disingenuously boycotting a 2nd tier content aggregator. Just your classic radicals kind of thing.

The second, more popular post, titled: "Dear game journalists, media, SJWs , GamerGhazi, et al: I have had it with your disingenuous bullshit. You do not care about threats. You don't care about 'misogyny'. You care about what the perception of them can do for you and what you want to support. And for that reason I will never support you."
"You are no different from the type of people that see the attack on the Benghazi Embassy and attempt to use it as a weapon, just as Presidential Nominee Romney did while the bodies were still warm and people after him are still continuing to try to weaponize to this day."
I don't even know what to say to that. It's all an awful mash of incoherence and bad arguments, wrapped in hatefilled anger, but is roundly embraced and gold starred by the readers.

>Craven? Or just following a successful (and investor-loved) business model?

Go read those links. QFTA "Stop using abuse for your gain and start fighting against it, it's what GamerGate supporters are doing." How can you respond to that? How do you talk to someone when their world view is that there is a massive conspiracy involving literally everyone from bloggers to PBS hiding the truth and that they are a deeply persecuted minority? The summation from the author of that post:
it's all a long, angry rant over what I've been forced to watch these people endure the past few months with no tear shed for them by Kotaku, Polygon, CNN, MSNBC, Verge, Vice, Wikipedia, NPR, ABC, Gawker, The Guardian, Forbes, Foldable Human, Chezpocalypse and on and on while the 'victims of GamerGate' (and I don't write that to trivialize their experience, I trivialize who they're eager to attribute it to) sail across oceans of sympathy.
These are adults saying this stuff, believing it. To quote Théoden, son of Thengel, "What can men do against such reckless hate?"
posted by anti social order at 12:03 PM on October 25, 2014 [7 favorites]


Paradoxically the more robust the counter gamer gate groups become, the more the gg community coalesces and bunkers down. It might be best to support those who are being harassed without engaging with the gg community.
posted by humanfont at 12:03 PM on October 25, 2014


Interesting analysis of #GG tweets by Newsweek published today:

Twitter users have tweeted at Quinn using the #GamerGate hashtag 10,400 times since September 1. Grayson has received 732 tweets with the same hashtag during the same period. If GamerGate is about ethics among journalists, why is the female developer receiving 14 times as many outraged tweets as the male journalist?

Totilo has received 1,708 tweets since September 1—more than Grayson but fewer than Leigh Alexander. Alexander got 13,296 tweets, nearly eight times as many as Totilo. And Alexander’s only crime was writing an op-ed critical of so-called gaming culture—GamerGate hasn’t even accused her of any malfeasance.

The discrepancies there seem to suggest GamerGaters cares less about ethics and more about harassing women.

posted by zakur at 12:17 PM on October 25, 2014 [25 favorites]




Oh, and don't forget that the type of gamer who supports gamergate is the same kind of gamer who tends to throw tantrums when Anders hits on them in Dragon Age II.

Speaking of DA: New Dragon Age: Inquisition Companions Trailer And Hilariously Awkward Sexy Times Details
posted by homunculus at 12:55 PM on October 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


The previously-linked Manfeels Park has now contributed to the "Actually..." meme.

Of course, this just contributes to the #GGers Persecution Complex/Bogus Justification, as did Diesel Sweeties' recent Harley Quinn comic. Just as supporters of police officers murdering black citizens can still look back on such "gangsta rap" examples as "Cop Killer" as justification, while comfortably ignoring that the rapper who vocalized it has been playing a cop on TV for 14 years.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:43 PM on October 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


*puts on a hard hat, reflective jacket, tool belt, and other construction accoutrements*

*goes outside and starts spitting on people*

"Hey, stop spitting on people!"

"How can you say that I'm spitting on people? I'm clearly building a house. Obviously you are the real spitter."
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 1:44 PM on October 25, 2014 [10 favorites]


Thanks for the facts, zakur. The disparity in reaction over the (fake) hump-for-reviews thing is my go-to proof that this is about women who won't touch them rather than about journalism. Nice to have some stats.
posted by phearlez at 2:18 PM on October 25, 2014


From the Strange Bedfellows Department:
The editor of Christ Centered Gamer approached 8chan about getting her reviews on Metacritic. 8chan told her how amazing her site is because she gives each game a technical review and a moral review. Now she is the darling of gamergate. If you scroll down to 3 days ago there is a span where all the scary players show up to say hi to her.
posted by Biblio at 2:20 PM on October 25, 2014


Well, sure. They'll accept any useful ninny. Christ Centered Gamer is just the latest useful ninny.
posted by palomar at 2:21 PM on October 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


Never meet your heroes.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 2:41 PM on October 25, 2014 [11 favorites]


Looks like the blog isn't accepting submissions at the moment, but here's one I made.
posted by brundlefly at 2:53 PM on October 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


But I do not think that it will be possible to dissuade any of these supporters through debate. That's because the energy behind gamergate is now "I am not being listened to!". Every reasonable reaction to this will only strengthen this. They feel that they are being ridiculed (and they are, because they're being ridiculous), and that just inflames it more.

I had a 4 hour conversation via twitter DM (uggggghhh ugh ugh ugh) with an old friend yesterday who is "one of them" (it's kind of like a Walking Dead situation where "oh no, he got bitten" and it's basically a lost cause) and it was one of the most frustrating conversations I've had with anyone, he was linking to bullshit blog articles and MSPaint images, and after a half hour of initial "IT'S TOTALLY ABOUT ETHICS I SWEAR" nonsense, the truth came out quickly and it became all about his incredibly naive views re: feminism. I was like "yep, knew it"..

It was a very civil conversation, but in the end he concluded, "Well, I'm glad to have gotten your side of it and happy you're not as hyperbolic as other SJWs I've talked to, but it looks like we're never going to convince each other, I appreciate your points but they're based on beliefs I just don't share" -- and this is maybe the fifth time a conversation has ended that way for me, even with guys who are super measured and calm and would never personally harass anyone (they assume they're not AT ALL part of the problem, that it's some third-party Anon-op harassing people, and that their views don't contribute at all toward misogynist behavior.)

.....
ALSO hahahahaha the other night, I got called a "kike faggot" who is "dating a tranny" in email (along with my home address from 3 moves ago) because a nice young man with the exact same first and last names as me donated to Zoe's Patreon, and as a result I was put on a list of "industry people who have disappointed us and must be stopped". It was kind of awesome.
posted by jake at 3:03 PM on October 25, 2014 [19 favorites]


My contribution: It's not about the money...
posted by mhum at 3:38 PM on October 25, 2014


> ALSO hahahahaha the other night, I got called a "kike faggot" who is "dating a tranny" in email (along with my home address from 3 moves ago) because a nice young man with the exact same first and last names as me donated to Zoe's Patreon

wtf

that is fucking creepy
posted by postcommunism at 4:11 PM on October 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


I realized today that the Gator concept of "ethics" is remarkably similar to Scientology's, and they're accusing "SJWs" and feminists of a form of "out ethics".

Guess it isn't so surprising if you've ever looked at the leaked OTVIII docs where Hubbard explains the true meaning of Scientology.
posted by honestcoyote at 5:01 PM on October 25, 2014 [6 favorites]


This one is my favorite!
posted by dialetheia at 5:03 PM on October 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


The best part is, with like 5 minutes of chan archive searching I was able to track down the exact place this originated, (though the "hit list" link was dead by the time I got to it) and for every "too bad he's a raging fag" reply, there were like 5 "WTF DO NOT INSULT BASED VIRT" responses, so I kinda felt good after that (by "good" I mean "totally fucking creeped out")

By continuing to give away all my creative output freely, and treating people with love all the time (like my boy Veerender), I'm hoping to somehow show MAYBE just a few of these guys that hate and silencing tactics aren't the answer. I know a lot of people are truly beyond hope, but a bunch of these guys DO have good hearts and thoughtful minds, and will learn more about feminism and stop feeling threatened by it in the future.

I am ashamed to admit that despite being raised in a feminist liberal household, as late as a few years ago I held a few really gross "fake gamer girl"-type gatekeeping opinions out of ignorance and insecurity, and communities like MeFi really opened my eyes and allowed me to learn more about a really complex issue, without feeling like I was being attacked.

Maybe we can make a difference, maybe I'll get a bullet in my head, or my career ruined. Who knows, gonna keep rockin' and stand up for my girls, my wife, my coworkers.
posted by jake at 5:07 PM on October 25, 2014 [11 favorites]


Okay, somebody help me out. I seem to be the only person who doesn't get this Tumblr. I know about Gamergate, and I know about assholes trying to pretend that their bullshit is "actually about ethics in games journalism". But I don't get the Tumblr account. For a little bit I thought "Oh, people have put that phrase on top of pictures of bad guys from movies, like they're collecting human skins or cutting off peoples' ears, but then disclaiming it by saying that it's actually about ethics in games journalism". But then there are pictures of Harry Potter and the dad lion from Lion King and cats, so it can't be that. Then I thought maybe "any text on top of a funny picture", but some of the pictures are really plain, so it's not that, either. So what's the joke?

(Yes, I realize that comedy explained is no longer funny, but I don't get it as it is, so it's not like you're going to spoil the joke for me)
posted by Bugbread at 5:09 PM on October 25, 2014


The joke is: when you talk to Gators and ask them about the doxx & death threats & harassment, or why they have such hysteria over Quinn and Sarkeesian, or why they go on and on and on about "SJWs" and feminists, or why they have so much misogyny and hatred in general, they always try to bring the conversation back with "Actually, it's all about ethics in gaming journalism."

And, yes, they've used that exact wording, which makes the joke even better.
posted by honestcoyote at 5:13 PM on October 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


You understand the joke, Bugbread, it's just that lots of people's senses of humor is not very developed and many of these are not funny. It's humor by numbers. Remember when everybody on the internet was quoting Monty Python constantly even when it was tired and stale? Yeah.
posted by Justinian at 5:14 PM on October 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


Some of these are quite funny just so I'm not coming off as Get Off My Lawn Boy. But as with any internet meme it gets beaten until you just want it to Please Stop.
posted by Justinian at 5:15 PM on October 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yes, the original joke is entirely about it being a bad guy using the line as comically obvious misdirection from their villainy (ideally villainy that they're performing at the exact same moment). A lot of the later iterations seem like they're missing or repurposing that point, though, or being intentionally ridiculous in a fairly untargeted way, or maybe just not funny.
posted by RogerB at 5:16 PM on October 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


Oh, ok, thanks, that makes much more sense.
posted by Bugbread at 5:18 PM on October 25, 2014


I think some people have shifted the meme a bit to suggest that "ethics in games journalism" is totally irrelevant to what's really going on. Which I would agree doesn't work nearly as well.
posted by brundlefly at 5:59 PM on October 25, 2014


Actually, this works pretty well.
posted by brundlefly at 6:00 PM on October 25, 2014 [4 favorites]


There's an opinion piece in tomorrow's New York Times that calls out the Gamergaters on their claim that it's about ethics in games journalism.
posted by palomar at 6:10 PM on October 25, 2014 [8 favorites]


honestcoyote, yup, some of us were there last thread. You're welcome to join the club, though. Lunch meetings are Dutch.

Bugbread, it's more about making a point than about being laugh-out-loud funny per se. See also: ha ha only serious.
posted by dhartung at 6:39 PM on October 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


Mr Juicer Lawyer linked to Sam Biddle's article on Justine Tulley, thought it reflected poorly on Biddle instead of Tulley. GGers consider ir an explicit attack against GG. I didn't realize Mr. Biddle had a time machine to travel back to July in order to write the article!
posted by Yowser at 7:14 PM on October 25, 2014


When the people around you are praising Justine "Bring back slavery!" "Google for President!" Tunney, you should know it's time to gfto.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 7:34 PM on October 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


Missed the Scientology reference in the last thread. Was one of those shower thoughts today: "Wasn't there another group using 'ethics' as a bludgeon? Oh...."

Unrelated to Scientology, but another fun thing somehow related to ethics, somehow: Gators discussing Alinsky's Rules for Radicals.
posted by honestcoyote at 7:41 PM on October 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


Oh lord... from the first comment on that Saul Alinsky discussion:

"And here is the thing: We are the only people doing anything good here. We're the only ones helping people. We're the ones who are lending a hand to those who need it. We are the only ones acting for the benefits of others and not just ourselves. We are actually better than these assholes and all we need to do to win is just keep being us."

I wonder who these people think they're helping. Or what good they're doing. I'd ask, but I'm about 99% sure I'd get a bullshit answer about... wait for it... ethics in games journalism.
posted by palomar at 8:12 PM on October 25, 2014 [4 favorites]


I'm about 150% sure you'd get an answer about giving to charities to prevent bullying and help women make games.
posted by valrus at 9:33 PM on October 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


and emphasizing our importance to the industry as the people who point our friends and the internet public to new games and sites

...aaaaand happyroach gets to take a drink.

They took their courses in, or majored in, Victim Studies, and try to frame things where they are comfortable.

Hilarious. No. It's because you're being dicks to women. Makes it really easy to, uh, "frame" this as people being dicks to women.

This stuff where they believe that "SJWs ... are the incumbents to power" really underlines the self-delusion under which they belabor.

In any case, the fact that this sparked fewer than a half-dozen comments a week ago means it is unlikely that they will ever be able to organize themselves effectively (that, and being unable to articulate concrete goals, although they seem to be getting some bare consensus that they don't want reviews to express opinions on anything but "game mechanics"). Haven't they ever heard of "ignoring"? Is "ignoring" something that you can do to a site that reviews things the way you don't like? Babies. At least that might give them something to do besides going after women who are not reviewing games, so there's that hope, but they should realize their movement has been forever stained by its ugly birth.
posted by dhartung at 10:24 PM on October 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


Is "ignoring" something that you can do to a site that reviews things the way you don't like?

Apparently not, because Metacritic or something. It's a variant of the greater fool theory: if Armed Warfare Combat: Kill The Men, Rape The Women Edition gets a 6.5 for all the warcrime rape missions, there's the terrible terrible fear that this will be taken as a judgement on its combat mechanics and it won't sell enough copies to get the additional burn-the-villages DLC.
posted by holgate at 10:34 PM on October 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


Oh wow... in the discussion that dhartung linked about not wanting reviews to reflect any kind of opinion outside of game mechanics, they bring up that Hatred game:
"Ah right I also meant to address HATRED. This game has been super controversial, which seems to be the idea behind it. After reading my wall o text here, you might be asking how that should be reviewed. I mean, it claims it's going to be a sadistic murder game and it may very well deliver on that. By my logic up here, that's a 10/10 game! Obviously no reviewer wants to give Hatred a 10 just because it is what it claims to be. But on the other hand, to take away points because the whole game has a stupid premise is equally pointless! HATRED should not be reviewed.
I know Hatred is against my ideologies (murdering people at random is pretty bad) so I would never review it. That's all there is to it. Just like that Polygon dude should have taken one look at Bayonetta 2 and declared that he was the wrong man for the job, this is what seriously high quality reviewers would do with Hatred.
I just... what? Really? The only people who can review games are people who agree 100% with any ideology the game might present to the player? If it's a challenging product to review, just don't review it? How does that style of criticism work for other mediums? Have these ninnies never heard of, say, Rotten Tomatoes?
posted by palomar at 10:41 PM on October 25, 2014 [8 favorites]




Liberal Media is ganging up on #GamerGate... almost time for Fox News to come to the rescue, probably led by one of their blonde squad of female anchors, because that would be so New Feminist of them.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:59 PM on October 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


almost time for Fox News to come to the rescue

Not really necessary, seeing as they already have a WaPo blogger/columnist lamely carrying water for them.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:14 PM on October 25, 2014


I know Hatred is against my ideologies..

So, the dude just wrote words expressing his ideological stance on a game. This is something he thinks you should not be allowed to do, so I hope he vanished in a puff of logic.
posted by zompist at 11:52 PM on October 25, 2014 [15 favorites]


Liberal Media is ganging up on #GamerGate... almost time for Fox News to come to the rescue, probably led by one of their blonde squad of female anchors, because that would be so New Feminist of them.

Meanwhile, Shep Smith buries his face in his palms.
posted by brundlefly at 12:17 AM on October 26, 2014


I honestly believe that Shep has to get pre-approval to say anything that doesn't fit the Roger Ailes party line, and his notable "Climate Change Is Real" 3-minute segment was only allowed to warn the oil companies they weren't buying enough commercials...
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:21 AM on October 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


You're welcome to join the club, though. Lunch meetings are Dutch.

So racist.
posted by MartinWisse at 4:53 AM on October 26, 2014 [4 favorites]


I wish G4 TV was still around. Attack of the Show and X-Play probably would've been all over this.

I actually first heard about the whole fiasco from Adam Sessler's twitter feed while he was out with Zoe while she was getting the initial doxxing. There's no end to the wonderful things I could say about Sessler's behavior even before GG. When he was on Rev3 he created a small shitstorm for himself when he questioned the Bros Before Hos trophy for God of War. Then he declared Gone Home his favorite game of 2013 and people did NOT like that. I'm sad he was driven out of games media but I don't blame him for leaving.
posted by MaritaCov at 6:45 AM on October 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


I hope he vanished in a puff of logic.

NUMBERS R MADE OF LOGIC WORDS R MADE OF PINIONS bout ethics in game journalism.
posted by holgate at 9:25 AM on October 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


The default character is a guy, whose voice dominates the game as the all-powerful ruler/director of what you do next, and you can't change it to a female character (you are never shown on screen).

omg yes I was thinking this while playing Bastion...why couldn't they have re recorded a female version of the narrator dude...
posted by pravit at 10:12 AM on October 26, 2014


...why couldn't they have re recorded a female version of the narrator dude...
(1) additional development expense
(2) additional development expense providing income to a WOMAN
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:35 AM on October 26, 2014


New Logo
posted by homunculus at 11:02 AM on October 26, 2014 [3 favorites]


Bastion probably didn't hire a second narrator because the first one fucking nailed it and on a team of less than five that's good enough.

Note Transistor, the spiritual sequel from the same team, features a woman as the only playable character.
posted by sandswipe at 11:11 AM on October 26, 2014 [3 favorites]


on a team of less than five that's good enough
Less than five? You have shaken my non-gamer's perception of everything in the gaming world. I assumed even "Candy Crush" had a development team of at least 20... #nongamerteapotdome
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:29 AM on October 26, 2014


It reminds me of the old line about the difference between how children and adults loves their parents. Despite the invocation of logic and objectivity, there's clearly a strand that wants to arrest the development of the games industry and perpetuate a relationship built upon game developers feeding simple, basic, well-understood desires. The dream is of a perpetual pre-pubescence built upon a consumer relationship: that's how people manage to say, simultaneously, that games need to be taken seriously by the people who feed them but that they and their games mustn't be immune to criticism by others.
posted by holgate at 11:35 AM on October 26, 2014


Last night, Kluwe was thrilled to bits that someone created a conspiracy gif for him; today he's thrilled that Adam Baldwin retweeted it.

Of course, Chris Kluwe still isn't a games journalist.
posted by dhartung at 12:30 PM on October 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


And TotalBiscuit has thrown his hat on the GamerGate side, 100% . And naturally, his SoundCloud on the subject... Is Its All About Ethicss. He is using all of the GamerGate's greatest hits. Naturally he's trying to sound "fair and balanced."

I find it offensive that one of the most spoiled people on the planet, who has done nothing but make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year playing games, could be so offensively uncaring about this hate campaign.
posted by Yowser at 1:00 PM on October 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


And now it's Rebecca Watson's turn: The Top 10 Reasons to Ban Me from Bay Area Science Festival
posted by homunculus at 1:02 PM on October 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


Was anyone on their weird little "this is what Anti-GG looks like" image a journalist? I remember it had Chris Kluwe and John Scalzi on it, but can't remember who else was on there.

In other news, Dr. Nerdlove weighs in. I didn't realize the GG nuts had alleged that Dr. Nerdlove is only siding with Anita Sarkeesian because she threatened to get him fired from his own blog if he didn't bow down. I'm curious as to how someone can get fired from a website they own, maintain, and pay for... but gosh, those Gamergate kiddies are so brilliant, maybe one of them can explain it to me and my rancid vagina.
posted by palomar at 1:03 PM on October 26, 2014 [4 favorites]


homunculus's Rebecca Watson link is both amazingly frustrating and funny as hell. The short version is that someone had the bright idea to co-opt #gamergate as a way to attack freethinking feminist critics of the free-thought movement, with numerically notable and fairly humorous results.

Then I followed the link to P. Z. Myers's blog post about the doctor who "diagnosed" him with an STD and insinuated it was contracted through contact with members of a faction she dislikes.

This all just makes me tired. I need to take a break and go watch yesterday's Dr. Who.
posted by lodurr at 1:37 PM on October 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


> Naturally he's trying to sound "fair and balanced."

Of course he his, bless his scheming and empty heart. But it's bullshit covering for his fanbase, twisting logic to literally say that the women at the center of this asked for it. He's selling his soul for views and he knows it. He even says:
The only people who have ever been willing to talk to me publicly about this issue are firmly on the "Gamergate" side and yes unfortunately some of them have done and said unpleasant things.
Ha. Ha. plenty of anti-gaters have spoken out, to real media that didn't do supportive streams with the assholes at the start of this, but of course he needs to make it about talking to him. While some are eating it up, the mask is slipping on others.
And this is where I deviate from many people here and elsewhere on the SJW issue.

I stand by my belief that SJWs are a problem in gaming. The proof is in the comic industry. The proof is in the science fiction community. The proof is in the atheism community.
So on a happy note, they know they are losing all around.
posted by anti social order at 2:12 PM on October 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


While some are eating it up, the mask is slipping on others.

A little further down from the comment copy/pasted here, there's this one about Joss Whedon:
Whedon is just a useful idiot at this point. He's uninformed and making stupid statements.

Most of Sarkeesian's criticisms could squarely be levied at his own work. Out of context, River Tam is a Damsel, as is Inara. Dollhouse is a bunch of brainwashed fembots being used for their sexuality.
Yes, dears. Out of context, I'm a harbor seal. Out of context, you're a cheese sandwich. Out of context, Joss Whedon is a Finnish delicacy.
posted by palomar at 2:25 PM on October 26, 2014 [13 favorites]


I'll say it again, because I think it's an important point for those who "haven't made up their minds". Yes, #Gamergate is about "ethics in games journalism", because its goal is to return to a "games journalism" that HAD NO ETHICS.

But then, although many will deny it to YOUR dying breath, Social Justice is, by definition, ethical, and almost every system in Modern Society that is "white-male-dominated" can only continue to exist by being very unethical.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:48 PM on October 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


The irony is, feminist critique of Whedon is years old and he's never shifted in his focus on being feminist. He's even, in my estimation, been working on his race-issues.
posted by Deoridhe at 4:34 PM on October 26, 2014 [6 favorites]


He seems to have dedicated himself to paying mediocre lipservice to feminism. If he actually wanted to do something about representation of women in media, he'd be doing more to make Marvel movies better on that front. And I'm not buying the shit about how he's limited to what the studio allows him to do because he could've walked and said why if he wanted to do better and they wouldn't let him. I mean, Dollhouse was clearly giving him enough lipservice-to-feminism rope for him to hang himself, and then he did. In a rather fetishy and autoerotic fashion.
posted by NoraReed at 5:31 PM on October 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


My point wasn't Joss Whedon's feminist bona fides, I think that's an FPP of its own... I was really just pointing out the cognitive dissonance of being instructed to take something out of context in order to get to the heart of its true meaning.
posted by palomar at 6:56 PM on October 26, 2014


This is old news, but I have deeply conflicted feelings about the firing of "bro" Pax Dickinson. It makes me realize that anyone who is actively GLEEFULLY of the firing of someone, or the loss of advertisers, is sociopathic at worse, incredibly naive and sadistic at best.
posted by Yowser at 7:50 PM on October 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


As an aside, I think Joss Whedon takes on too many roles for his film and TV ventures. I could argue that he's a bad writer, but he actually is a good writer. I could argue that he's a bad director, but that's not true either. He's incredibly talented, and stretches himself too thin.

In my personal opinion, he's a very progressive person who loves control maybe a wee bit much.
posted by Yowser at 7:55 PM on October 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Popehat just posted an article on gamergate.
posted by anti social order at 9:19 PM on October 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Man, I'm seeing Popehat suddenly pop up in all kinds of threads. Bader-Meinhoff all over the place.

I thought point #2 was absolutely correct. All these Gater types who have suddenly become hugely vocal about "journalistic ethics" right at this exact moment in time are like the Tea Partiers who suddenly got religion about the debt and health care and voter fraud right at the exact moment a black Democrat made it into the White House. Of course that had nothing to do with it, oh no, and how dare you imply it has anything to do with race.

Actually, it's about ethics in the White House.

Same thing.
posted by Justinian at 9:38 PM on October 26, 2014 [14 favorites]


FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS
posted by divabat at 9:55 PM on October 26, 2014 [9 favorites]


it's bullshit covering for his fanbase, twisting logic to literally say that the women at the center of this asked for it.

TotalBiscuit, in the middle of a long paragraph telling everybody else in gaming media how to ethics:
I also call on Youtubers to fully accept their responsibility to their audience and abide by FTC regulations calling for clear, unavoidable disclosure on advertorial content.
"We must rigorously examine the entire social graph of those games journalists who do words and shit for potentially scandalous $10 Patreon subs and fucking, and if a AAA studio wants to send sacks of money to YouTube reviewers like me, we'll definitely put up a caption."
posted by holgate at 10:15 PM on October 26, 2014 [10 favorites]


Man, I'm seeing Popehat suddenly pop up in all kinds of threads.

Yeah it's been like the worst theme park trip ever. Be sure to remember where you parked on the savanna.
posted by fleacircus at 2:27 AM on October 27, 2014


A comic about Seagulls. It's actually about french fries.
posted by papercrane at 6:11 AM on October 27, 2014 [11 favorites]


Popehat just posted an article on gamergate.

That's more like what I expected from him. That other blog post was fucking crazy-pants.
posted by empath at 6:47 AM on October 27, 2014


Horrible sinking feeling that this may end up being the most controversial game of all time.
posted by Artw at 7:31 AM on October 27, 2014


I'm not sure even gamergaters are clueless enough to go after Boob Jam.
posted by lodurr at 7:47 AM on October 27, 2014


This 10-rants post was from Ken, who (while cccp in his own way) is the more reasoned of the two. (Is it still two? I only ever read Ken's stuff)
posted by phearlez at 7:47 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Horrible sinking feeling that this may end up being the most controversial game of all time.

(Seems worth pointing out that Boob Jam took place over a year ago. But I didn't want to say it in that thread because it would sound like I was criticizing the FPP's relevance?)
posted by nobody at 8:25 AM on October 27, 2014


I'm not sure even gamergaters are clueless enough to go after Boob Jam.

Heh, I, on the other hand, was thinking that they're sufficiently clueless that you could use this as a kind of honey pot to link gamergate handles to IP addresses.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 8:30 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


So KiA are determined to make Wikipedia see the light and write an article with an NPOV.

"We can probably use the Hitler page as en example of a non-biased artcile"

What. The. Fuck.
posted by Talez at 11:17 AM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


So KiA are determined to make Wikipedia see the light and write an article with an NPOV.

"Hello, Wikipedia? We're self-identified members of an amorphous, leaderless group. Who do we speak to about changing the content of one of your pages?"

Oh, that's precious.
posted by holgate at 11:37 AM on October 27, 2014 [6 favorites]


homunculus: "And now it's Rebecca Watson's turn: The Top 10 Reasons to Ban Me from Bay Area Science Festival"

Comments imagining a social justice themed restaurant:
" Though I do not own this chain, I am excited about their menu items, like delicious cheese-stuffed FriendZonis."

"Next time you’re at SJW’s, try an order of Garlic KnotAllMens. They’ll derail your meal straight into deliciousness."
posted by boo_radley at 11:38 AM on October 27, 2014 [6 favorites]


Though I do not own this chain, I am excited about their menu items, like delicious cheese-stuffed FriendZonis

The Low Cal Calzone Zone is back?
posted by Talez at 11:41 AM on October 27, 2014


Yeh, the collision of gamergate and wikipedia will not be pretty. not looking forward to it.
posted by lodurr at 11:42 AM on October 27, 2014


"delicious cheese-stuffed FriendZonis" was not something I was expecting to see in Rebecca Watson's post, and I laughed so hard I startled my next door neighbor. That felt good. I should go apologize to that guy later.
posted by palomar at 11:42 AM on October 27, 2014 [4 favorites]


"We can probably use the Hitler page as en example of a non-biased artcile"

What. The. Fuck.


...Did KiA just Godwin itself??

Meantime, the Actually Tumblr is publishing submissions again, having taking the weekend off. This one totally nails it.
posted by Doktor Zed at 12:36 PM on October 27, 2014 [7 favorites]


I was hoping for one with Giorgio Tsoukalos.
posted by malocchio at 12:52 PM on October 27, 2014


And TotalBiscuit has thrown his hat on the GamerGate side, 100% . . .

I find it offensive that one of the most spoiled people on the planet, who has done nothing but make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year playing games, could be so offensively uncaring about this hate campaign.


Well, nothing but be riddled with cancer and almost die.
posted by misha at 12:52 PM on October 27, 2014


Well, nothing but be riddled with cancer and almost die.

Wait, so chemotherapy also makes you immune to being an asshole?
posted by murphy slaw at 12:59 PM on October 27, 2014 [9 favorites]


I mean you'd think that would make him less likely to be a vocal part of a movement endangering people's lives.
posted by griphus at 1:00 PM on October 27, 2014 [6 favorites]


Huh? Would one of the most spoiled people on the planet, who has done nothing but make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year playing games and experience a health scare this year be a materially different statement?
posted by phearlez at 1:54 PM on October 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


If there's one thing that being in the hospital taught me, it's that life is short and we should spend what remaining time we have on earth putting our differences behind us and doing whatever we can to keep feminism out of games journalism.
posted by nobody at 2:09 PM on October 27, 2014 [25 favorites]


No, I get it. Terminal cancer can really change your outlook on life. Things which seemed important before can seem trivial.

Like, before cancer, you might have been really bothered by the lack of ethics in gaming journalism, and you might have been really bothered by people harassing women and trans*folk, trying to get them fired or threatening to kill them. But when you face your mortality close up, you realize what's truly important. You stop worrying about the little things, like someone taking your parking space, or the neighborhood kids playing their music too loud, or people threatening to attack and cripple women reviewers who complain about misogyny. Instead, you focus on what's really important, disclosing that you didn't receive free product to review, but had to pay for it out of your own wallet.

Totally makes sense.

This comment has been brought to you by Americans for Extreme Sarcasm
posted by Bugbread at 2:16 PM on October 27, 2014 [10 favorites]


I had encountered this meme in the earlier stages popping up in my Twitter feed. I think it started out using video games for the source images. For example, Sephiroth stabbing Aeris and then telling Cloud that it's actually about ethics in video game journalism.

I think that had a rhetorical connotation to reinforce the fact that the critics of GamerGate also play video games, they can't be dismissed as outsiders.
posted by RobotHero at 2:57 PM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


Huh. Sorry, I thought the point I actually meant to make would be obvious by the pull quote I chose, but I guess not, so:

I just think it is bizarre to characterize someone who's suffering from cancer and in the hospital right now as "one of the most spoiled people on the planet." Like, if that's what it means to be spoiled in life, count me out, please.

Not a comment on his gg stance, at all.
posted by misha at 4:40 PM on October 27, 2014


TB's stance shouldn't surprise anyone. He's commented before that he didn't like the social justice articles on RPS, and he's criticized the Tropes v.s. Women videos (usual stuff, too expensive, the tired Hitman complaint.)

The cancer stuff sucks, lets not use it to poke fun. There's plenty of other material to use.
posted by papercrane at 5:12 PM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


Ah, ok, misha, that makes sense. So you'd be okay with this statement, then?:
"I find it offensive that someone who has made hundreds of thousands of dollars a year playing games could be so offensively uncaring about this hate campaign."
posted by Bugbread at 5:16 PM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


The cancer stuff sucks, lets not use it to poke fun.

No one did.
posted by zombieflanders at 5:16 PM on October 27, 2014 [7 favorites]


I stand behind my assertion that professionally and personally, TB is spoiled rotten compared to 99% of the population. Being spoiled doesn't make you immune from ailments like cancer.
posted by Yowser at 5:22 PM on October 27, 2014


And experiencing illness or injury doesn't neutralize one's negative words or activities. Can we please set "he's got cancer" aside from discussion of how he's been conducting himself and whether he's supporting harassers?
posted by Lexica at 5:28 PM on October 27, 2014 [11 favorites]


Yowser: "Being spoiled doesn't make you immune from ailments like cancer."

Shall we get into a big discussion about the definition of "spoil", then? Some people use it to mean "have an easy life free of worry or want", and having cancer is a big bucket of worry, so if you use that definition of "spoil", he was spoiled until he got cancer, and then he was no longer spoiled. Other people use it to mean "have a life where you get what you want without effort", in which case getting cancer would not affect whether you are spoiled or not.

So, like, if this is really going to devolve into a discussion about what the word "spoiled" means, and whether children with leukemia are spoiled because the Make A Wish Foundation does cool stuff for them, or if Donald Trump would be spoiled if he suffered for 3 minutes before dying, then lets bust out the dictionaries and corpuses of actual usage examples, and let's go! And if we're lucky, maybe we can segue that into a debate about descriptivism and prescriptivism!

Or, y'know, just drop the "spoil" topic. It's even more of bottomless discussion hole than the "cancer" topic.
posted by Bugbread at 5:33 PM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


For those not in the know, TB actually went on InternetAristocrat stream along with KingOfPol, The Ralph Report and Sargon of Akkad. He's carousing with some of the worst elements of GamerGate. He's written about Zoe Quinn using phrases like 'I'm not saying she did, but if she did this horrible thing I denounce it."


No one did.
I found some of the comments in bad taste and will leave it at that.

posted by papercrane at 5:39 PM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Viewing TB's channel, it's obvious he puts almost no effort in and reaps huge benefits for it. Whatever, I'm done with this post.
posted by Yowser at 5:51 PM on October 27, 2014


Bugbread: "Shall we get into a big discussion about the definition of "spoil", then?"

Jesus Christ, no.
posted by boo_radley at 5:57 PM on October 27, 2014 [7 favorites]


I don't think it's uncontroversial to say that the entire subfield of YouTube game reviews is sketchy about transparency and ethics because it's so new. It lacks the institutional frameworks and conventions of print publications or online ones that emulate print, and has been making up its code of conduct as it goes along. Reviewers' expenses are comparatively minimal because they piggyback on third-party services, splitting the advertising pie with YouTube and others; they're usually individuals or loose collectives, often with shrouded identities. They are "nym-brands". If we were to ask if and how "Sargon of Akkad" or "KingOfPol" are being compensated, it would be treated as a doxxing threat.
posted by holgate at 6:02 PM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


Additionally, this is bullshit:
Even if you truly believe this whole thing is about “harassment”, you have an opportunity to prove it by engaging with the ethical concerns. If once you have addressed these concerns harassment continues, then I promise you will have my full support in stamping out whatever toxicity remains.
Since "these concerns" are goalposts so moveable they're been fitted with casters, his promise is that he'll start giving a shit about harassment at the end of a never-ending, ever-expanding purge, and no sooner. It's a formulation reminiscent of those who say "enforce all the laws and secure all the borders, then we'll talk about immigration reform" meaning "fuck immigration reform".
posted by holgate at 6:23 PM on October 27, 2014 [12 favorites]


Ah, ok, misha, that makes sense. So you'd be okay with this statement, then?:

"I find it offensive that someone who has made hundreds of thousands of dollars a year playing games could be so offensively uncaring about this hate campaign."

Yes. Not that anyone needs my approval or anything, of course.

I'm just a little sensitive right now, to be honest, with the health stuff. My FIL is in hospice so we're here and he's not expected to last out the week, and I've been put through the ringer this month already with (yet more) tests trying to get a handle on why my autoimmune stuff is attacking my adrenal glands this time around. Sorry for the derail.
posted by misha at 6:40 PM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


holgate: "Even if you truly believe this whole thing is about “harassment”, you have an opportunity to prove it by engaging with the ethical concerns. If once you have addressed these concerns harassment continues, then I promise you will have my full support in stamping out whatever toxicity remains."

"Even if you think this whole thing is about ethics in gaming journalism, you have an opportunity to prove it by stamping out the toxicity. I promise that when there's no more toxicity, you will have my full engagement in discussing ethical concerns"
posted by Bugbread at 6:40 PM on October 27, 2014 [14 favorites]


Even if you truly believe this whole thing is about “harassment”, you have an opportunity to prove it by engaging with the ethical concerns. If once you have addressed these concerns harassment continues, then I promise you will have my full support in stamping out whatever toxicity remains.

And, back on target, that really is disappointing. Just switch ethical concerns and harassment around and it would actually make sense, too. If we could get gators to stop harassing women, we could concentrate on the ethical concerns with my full support. (And, on preview, Bugbread beat me to it).

It's a shame because I honestly do enjoy TB's Starcraft casts. My son introduced me to them (my son's a big Starcraft player and the one who introduced me to Scarlett, too), and they've helped me understand a little bit of the game play and strategy much better than I did before. He's entertainng enough that a long match just flies by.
posted by misha at 6:54 PM on October 27, 2014


Plus, the gall of putting the issues in that order..."I'll help you with your severed artery after you help me with my papercut"
posted by Bugbread at 7:00 PM on October 27, 2014 [5 favorites]




...Urg. And you know what, on further reflection/steaming: I don't know if maybe MeFi is an outlier in this discussion, but in all the GamerGate threads, I've seen like 1/3 of the comments to be "Gaters say it's about ethics, and as part of that they say X, but here's a breakdown of why X is wrong/stupid/illogical. It isn't the kind of argument someone who actually cared about ethics would put forth. Therefore it's not about ethics." And TotalBiscuit is saying "If you really think it's about harassment, you prove it by talking about ethics".

Well guess what? That breakdown of why X is wrong/stupid/illogical is talking about ethics. Whenever people point out that requiring people to disclose that they paid for a game, which would make them less likely to just suck up to developers? That's talking about ethics! When people talk about Gerstman being fired, and how that was a bad thing? That's talking about ethics! When people talk about reviewers getting flown out to Las Vegas to review a game in a swanky hotel? That's talking about ethics! Every instance of a flimsy Gater ethical argument getting countered, as opposed to ignored, is an instance of anti-Gaters discussing game journalism ethics!
posted by Bugbread at 8:16 PM on October 27, 2014 [6 favorites]


"What we talk about when we talk about talking about ethics."

And what they talk about, mostly, is the prospect of forming a permanent gaming-ethics militia that can call down punishment on perceived offenders at short notice according to their whims, with the tacit protection of the AAA studios and big dumb confict-averse advertisers. Let's call it the Committee for the Prevention of Vice and Protection of Ethics in Gaming Journalism.
posted by holgate at 8:38 PM on October 27, 2014


And now, by semi-popular demand, writer and obsessive movie guy Matthew Dessem presents, "The Objective Reviewer" and it's first Objective Review: "Citizen Kane". Too bad the people who need to understand this never will.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:00 PM on October 27, 2014 [6 favorites]


oneswellfoop: "And now, by semi-popular demand, writer and obsessive movie guy Matthew Dessem presents, "The Objective Reviewer" and it's first Objective Review: "Citizen Kane"."

Pah! "There is a book which features very nice fonts and images and an attractive binding" You call that objective?! The rot extends all the way to the core!!
posted by Bugbread at 10:11 PM on October 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


I can't imagine that there would ever be a more perfect time for objectivegamereviews.com to become active again.

(Really, it's a shame they stopped updating, I loved their gimmick.)
posted by Kortney at 10:18 PM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]




On the positive side, Ryk E. Spoor, AKA Seawasp znd James Nicoll have both come out strongly against GamerGate. they may not be big names, but it's good to see support from other areas of fandom.
posted by happyroach at 11:41 PM on October 27, 2014


I have worked on indie game projects for at least 2.5 keyboard years. As a member of content groups I specialized in environmental effects. Others worked on textures, animations, and models. Building virtual worlds has brought me some of the deepest enjoyments of my adult life.

The tams I was a part of contained genders across the spectrum. Most of them I never met. I don't know what the majority looked like, how old they were, or if all of them were who they claimed.

The person I enjoyed working with most was a woman: an artist of staggering talent, wit, and imagination. This person has my admiration over every game dev on our blue planet. Helping her with her vision was an honor.

In the games community I have met people of every ethical stripe of every gender. Bad apples and glittering gems. Girls and boys who steal code and sell shit in boxes. Geniuses who give away thier best for free. I adored every woman I collaborated with and liked every fella. These were people I judged not by the label of thier gender but by the character of thier content.

"Women in gaming" is not a political issue for me. I do not give a shit what gender a dev is. In my experience women are not the majority but neither are they rare. I really don't know where this narrative that women are just now breaking into video games is coming from. I know girls who have been playing and building games for over twenty years.

Both the GG crowd and thier detractors have points to make. Both are exhibiting denial and insular groupthink. And as this FPP shows, both have thier own tribal shibboleths and memes.

But I know two concrete things:

If I bring the anti-gg talking points to the Gaters on 4chan I will get insults. I will get epithets. I will get thier arguments. And I'll get some agreement. I will get debate for as long as I want it.

If I bring thier points here, or any other anti-gg forum I will get my comments deleted.


If you wonder why these people are becoming radicalized, there's your reason.
posted by clarknova at 2:15 AM on October 28, 2014


clarknova: " I really don't know where this narrative that women are just now breaking into video games is coming from."

I think that came from Gaters making a timeline of women in gamers that tried to show that women haven't been involved in gaming or something, and they had to start their history of gaming in some awkwardly late year or else they would have had to include folks Roberta Williams, so they kinda conveniently massaged the truth.

clarknova: "If I bring thier points here, or any other anti-gg forum I will get my comments deleted."

Dunno about other anti-gg forums, but have you got any evidence of that here on MeFi? Because, if so, that is something that should definitely be brought up in MeTa. But I've been reading most of the GG threads, and I haven't seen any comments get posted and then get deleted. If it's not even happening in the first place, it can't be the reason behind anything. (Plus, I don't think "why are some people misogynist assholes" is a big mystery in the first place)
posted by Bugbread at 2:33 AM on October 28, 2014 [4 favorites]


But, seriously, if you want to test the waters, it's real easy. Let's talk about ethics in journalism. Take some screen shots, we'll come back in a week, and we'll see if your comments have been deleted.
posted by Bugbread at 2:34 AM on October 28, 2014 [3 favorites]


I agree with you Bugbread, I don't think there's any chance clarknova is correct that taking anything but a hardline anti-GG stance would result in deleted comments. I don't know why he thinks that is so.
posted by Justinian at 2:54 AM on October 28, 2014 [4 favorites]


Maybe because it's hard to post pro-GG stuff for very long without veering hard into the sort of ridiculous misogyny that isn't welcome on places other than 4chan and reddit.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:07 AM on October 28, 2014 [10 favorites]


If you wonder why these people are becoming radicalized, there's your reason.

Oh, come on. What's radicalising is being granted explicit permission by bandwagoneering MRA shits and general purpose bandwagoneering shits like Milo Yiannopolous to wrap their messy collective anger in some kind of encompassing reactionary framework.
posted by holgate at 3:15 AM on October 28, 2014 [15 favorites]


Also it doesn't help that they regard the existence of website moderation as a form of censorship that violates their rights.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:19 AM on October 28, 2014 [10 favorites]


I know two concrete things: If I bring the anti-gg talking points to the Gaters on 4chan I will get insults. I will get epithets. I will get thier arguments. And I'll get some agreement. I will get debate for as long as I want it. If I bring thier points here, or any other anti-gg forum I will get my comments deleted.

Reviewing the six Mefi threads tagged "gamergate", there is a single moderator comment about a single deleted comment out of 3921 comments in total. I didn't see the comment that got deleted, but gnfti's moderation note suggests it might have been pro-GG but was deleted because of the framing rather than the content ("maybe not so much with the 'here's how I predict my comment will be received'? That's a kind of prophecy that tends to self-fulfill. Thanks."). Was it your comment, clarknova, or are you just assuming a wider policy of unannounced comment deletion that would be contrary to all of this site's norms, and would hardly have gone unnoticed by the hundreds of people commenting in these threads?

As chilling effects go, one deleted comment out of almost four thousand across six threads on a highly contentious topic over two months is pretty small beer.
posted by rory at 4:26 AM on October 28, 2014 [5 favorites]


Actually, it's about ethics in Metafilter commenting.
posted by zombieflanders at 4:29 AM on October 28, 2014 [28 favorites]


If you wonder why these people are becoming radicalized, there's your reason.

Wait, so your explanation for why gamergaters are becoming "radicalized" is effectively "well, you started it"?

huh.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:30 AM on October 28, 2014 [5 favorites]


Ryk E. Spoor...James Nicoll....

Heh. I argue with Ryk on Facebook about half the time we're on the same post. But it's just two pedantic geeks arguing. He's basically a good guy, and this does not surprise me at all. Nicoll I know even less well, though I see a lot of stuff from him via friends, and again, a decent guy. Also absolutely no surprise.

I have to suspect the only reason they said nothing earlier is that they weren't aware of it. Because, strange as it might seem to us, I'm daily made aware that most people have no idea what gamergate is or what it's about. Even people in 'related' fandoms, like SF/F. [I guess Ryk Spoor & James Nicoll are 'fandom.' I'm not really 'of fandom', so I just think of them as writers.] (FWIW, this made me curious and I checked -- Brin is also [unsurprisingly] down against gamergate, though [also unsurprisingly] he sees it through is inevitable transprency lens.)
posted by lodurr at 4:31 AM on October 28, 2014


holgate: ... the entire subfield of YouTube game reviews is sketchy about transparency and ethics because it's so new.

Is that why it's sketchy about transparency and ethics, or is it that the ethos most of them adheres to is basically a Mob ethos?

Consider the ethical sentiment that gaters agreed to: that it's 'unprofessional' or 'unethical' to give a bad review to a company that's paying you for advertising.

Much as we complain about that, it is an ethos, and a coherent one. It's just that it's a mobster's ethos, not one that would help foster a civil society.

It's a fundamentally meritocratic ethos, where the 'merit' that's rewarded is a certain kind of dominating, controlling strength: The guy with the money to pay for it, gets justice. Might makes right.
posted by lodurr at 4:39 AM on October 28, 2014 [4 favorites]


Well, rory, to be fair, you can't really just do a percentage of total comments comparison. If, for example, there were only two comments that brought up GG points, and one got deleted, that would be one out of four thousand total comments, but half of all GG comments.

But I still can't see any way that MeFi is deleting comments just for discussing ethics in game journalism. My disagreement with your statistical approach is not a disagreement with your conclusions.
posted by Bugbread at 4:43 AM on October 28, 2014


clarknova: If I bring thier points here, or any other anti-gg forum I will get my comments deleted.

I'm not going to hedge on this and I don't know why more active people with almost as much time on the blue as I have are bothering to hedge.

On Metafilter, just about the only thing that will reliably get your comment deleted is some form of shit-slinging -- a personal attack of some kind, up to and including doxxing (because that is a personal attack). And to think otherwise is to have very little familiarity with this community. You want evidence? Browse MeTa.

I've seen comments deleted to avoid personal embarrassment of the poster, but that's uncommon.
posted by lodurr at 4:48 AM on October 28, 2014 [4 favorites]


Another example would be the back-and-forth on the other, older thread, starting about here, over whether 'caving' (e.g., canceling a talk because of a mass-shooting threat) was a valid response. It got tired, Cortex suggested as much, and it was dropped. No deletions I was aware of -- I've been here long enough to know that in a case like that, Cortex would have made a note of the deletions in-thread.

That's how we do things here. We don't delete unpleasant arguments. We answer them.
posted by lodurr at 4:53 AM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


Well, rory, to be fair, you can't really just do a percentage of total comments comparison.

I agree, which is why I wasn't talking percentages. I'm just pointing out that in six long threads conducted over two months, with almost four thousand comments between them, we've seen only one moderator deletion. If there was some sort of pattern of GGers being deleted on Mefi, we'd have expected to see more, just because of the time covered and volume of comments involved. I'm not even 100% sure that deletion was a pro-GG comment; it might not have been.
posted by rory at 5:01 AM on October 28, 2014


Is that why it's sketchy about transparency and ethics, or is it that the ethos most of them adheres to is basically a Mob ethos?

At least it's an ethos...

I noticed that the preferred description for prominent YTers is "personalities", which is usefully meaningless, and allows them to choose from a buffet table of self-regulation. Fine enough for a new thing that encompasses a lot of other things, but as with all social spaces, ethics emerge from customary practice, and the normative is defined by the intolerable.
posted by holgate at 5:01 AM on October 28, 2014 [4 favorites]


I will be working "usefully meaningless" into some conversation today. "[A]s with all social spaces, ethics emerge from customary practice, and the normative is defined by the intolerable" will be harder, but I'll try.
posted by lodurr at 5:15 AM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


Besides the point that there is no sign of a campaign of deletion of pro-GG comments on Mefi, there's something disturbing about your wording, clarknova:

If I bring thier points here, or any other anti-gg forum I will get my comments deleted.

Plenty of people have "brought their points here"; there are links aplenty in the gamergate threads to their tweets, threads, videos and so forth, and we've discussed them and quoted them and debated them and sometimes ridiculed them.

So you don't seem to mean "bringing" in the sense of linking/quoting for the purposes of critique. Do you mean "if I voice GG views as my own"?

If anyone came here to say "actually, it's about ethics in games journalism", or to say that we're all a bunch of SJWs, I expect they would see vigorous debate, and that would be that.

But if anyone came here to call for the key targets of GG to be raped or killed, or to threaten to stalk them, or to doxx them, then yes, I would expect their comments to be deleted. Not because our mods are anti-GG, but because we have moderators, and cleaning up that sort of toxicity is part of their job. If the mods ever let a doxxing stand on Mefi the site would see a mass exodus of users that would put the recent Google troubles in the shade. Never Mind the Googlerank, Here's the Doxx Pistols.

So, depending which of their points you wanted to bring here, you could expect a range of responses.
posted by rory at 5:44 AM on October 28, 2014 [7 favorites]


Other numbers, drawn from the Gamasutra salary survey: "Female programmers stand at 4 percent; QA, the front door to a career in the industry, at a woeful 7 percent." Also: "The average indie worker made $23,000 a year." (The most recent survey puts it at half that, noting that indie income is massively volatile.)

Two extremes: you don't eat lunch because you're working 70-hour crunch weeks, or you don't eat lunch because you can't afford it.
posted by holgate at 7:00 AM on October 28, 2014 [3 favorites]




My experience of women in dev is that they tend to get tracked out of individual contributor roles into what I refer to as 'lower management': team lead, project management, product management, etc. (Exceptions noted: I know an amazingly talented java dev who's managed to remain an individual contributor for almost 20 years -- she's turned down management jobs a bunch of times that I know of -- and a really talented Drupal dev who so far has managed to do the same.)

Testing seems to have a lot of women in it, but my impression is that they're mostly in testing orgs that use big toolsets, not open-source testing toolsets. Which squares a bit with the whole cultural concept of who computing is 'sold' to. Testers using the open-source tools tend to be frustrated developers.

In IT I mostly see them in lower support positions or in management. Kind of a vacant middle, where they're in management at all. My group at the college I work at is about 40% female, but only one of the area leads is female. Both managers are women, though. That's skewed 'because higher ed' -- I've not seen nearly as many female IT managers outside higher ed.
posted by lodurr at 7:03 AM on October 28, 2014


(Note: I've only worked in business dev, not game dev, so take my observations as such.)
posted by lodurr at 7:04 AM on October 28, 2014


Why the individual contributor bit matters: I don't know about game dev, but in business web dev, individual contributors can sometimes make more money than their managers, and with hella fewer meetings. The latter is often the much more important point.
posted by lodurr at 7:06 AM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


I don't think that I've ever worked anywhere where the number of women engineers was over 15%. My current team about about thirty-five people has two female dev engineers, one QA engineer and one product analyst.
posted by octothorpe at 7:17 AM on October 28, 2014


Thinking back, I think the ratio of actual devs was always at 25% or less. I was on a team of 8 once with 2 female devs, but that was in the dotcom. I led a team of 15 that had 2 women, but both were primarily database devs (another area women often get shunted into).

But most of the QA people I ever worked with were women -- in business dev, lots of women in QA. Because they shift the women into the roles that are crucial but unnoticed, like QA and DBA.
posted by lodurr at 7:22 AM on October 28, 2014


(Outside of game dev, QA is categorically NOT an upward path to anything.)
posted by lodurr at 7:25 AM on October 28, 2014


Clarification from the mods on the comments-deletion issue: MeTa.
posted by rory at 8:20 AM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


I was wrong about the number of deletions there have been, but it still sounds like a pretty modest amount given the topic of the threads.
posted by rory at 8:26 AM on October 28, 2014


I'm sure that many people, myself included, would be intrigued by some sort of defense of GamerGate that wasn't instantly reducible to "boys rule and girls drool nyaaaah" which is pretty much all I'm seeing. In fact, I think that might give it too much credit.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:43 AM on October 28, 2014 [3 favorites]


If you wonder why these people are becoming radicalized, there's your reason.

You know, I couldn't give a tin shit about if people are radicalized on this issue. You want to choose ethics in game journalism as a hill to die on, knock yourself out. Everyone needs something to care about and I won't judge someone for differing priorities than me.

But I'll take issue with the "techniques of war" someone picks up once radicalized, and in particular I'll judge them for whether those techniques go after the right people and if they're proportional. I'll judge whether their stated goals match their aggressions and if those goals make any damned sense.

What's going on with the pro-GG community is not reasoned or proportional and asking people to show them respect for their stated position as a pre-req for them knocking it the fuck off is insane.
posted by phearlez at 8:58 AM on October 28, 2014 [21 favorites]


kadin2048: I'm sure that many people, myself included, would be intrigued by some sort of defense of GamerGate that wasn't instantly reducible to "boys rule and girls drool nyaaaah" which is pretty much all I'm seeing.

I've followed 3 gamergate threads so far on mefi, and I've seen a lot of attempts to try to construct defenses that would make sense.

Unfortunately, we don't get gaters or gate-supporters here to help us with that.

Sure, they would likely get opposition. But when has that ever stopped anyone from expressing their views on MeFi?

Plus, it's not like you'd get death threats or something.
posted by lodurr at 9:46 AM on October 28, 2014 [10 favorites]


The problem with being pro-gamergate is that to actually agree with it -- and not use it as a smokescreen or as a ruse to get more youtube subscribers (or keep the ones you already have) -- you have to accept a few core premises, like

1) Women only recently started playing video games in any real numbers, and
2) Video game companies who attempt to "appease" women and minorities by taking them into account during the design process are acting against their own economic interest out of fear of "SJW condemnation."

Both of these premises -- and I'm sure people here could name ten more core GG assumptions like them -- are such obvious nonsense that you can only get away with voicing them somewhere that the majority of posters are invested in believing them as well. A general-audience site like this, with a culture of calling people on their shit if they happen to have pooped, will spot this stuff instantly.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 9:59 AM on October 28, 2014 [15 favorites]


Metafilter: calling people on their shit if they happen to have pooped.
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:09 AM on October 28, 2014 [5 favorites]


GG's messaging is pretty terrible. I haven't followed all these threads very closely but for all the links and articles I have read, I can't find anything resembling a coherent agenda or discernible point other than that women and SJWs are going to ruin video games, and, I dunno, something about disclosing donations to small developers' fundraisers? I'm willing to accept that the stuff that circulates here isn't likely to run favorably towards GG, but given their inextricable ties with the worst sort of misogynistic shitheads the internet has to offer, I have absolutely no inclination to waste my time embarking on a research project to find something of worth in this, er, movement. I would think any grownup with a valid point to make on these issues would make their first priority putting a few hundred miles of distance between themselves and the GG brand.

Back in my day, we dealt with the problem of ethics in game journalism by starting photocopied fanzines and drawing mean cartoons of Arnie Katz. Kids today. Blah.
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:10 AM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


Anita Sarkeesian in the NYT: 'I don’t care about being a "gamer," but I sure do love video games.' Beautiful.
posted by Cash4Lead at 11:11 AM on October 28, 2014 [8 favorites]


Tea Partiers: Don’t Compare Us to Gamergate
“That’s an absurd comparison,” said Niger Innis, former Nevada congressional candidate and executive director of TheTeaParty.net, reacting to the lengthy Deadspin essay arguing that the two movements share intellectual roots. “It sounds like a desperate left-winger who knows his ass is about to get handed to him in the upcoming election and is desperately grasping at any way possible to slam the Tea Party.”

“We are offended by any attacks on women, be it in videos, be it in rap lyrics,” he added. “Last time I checked there are not a bunch of rappers that are Tea Partiers, yet they use the same kind of misogynistic themes that go on in these video games.”

Taylor Budowich, the executive director of Tea Party Express, concurred.

“It’s just kind of stupid,” he said. “There’s no actual connection.”
I can no longer tell what's satire.
posted by anti social order at 11:38 AM on October 28, 2014 [12 favorites]


“That’s an absurd comparison,” said Niger Innis, former Nevada congressional candidate and executive director of TheTeaParty.net, reacting to the lengthy Deadspin essay arguing that the two movements share intellectual roots. “It sounds like a desperate left-winger who knows his ass is about to get handed to him in the upcoming election and is desperately grasping at any way possible to slam the Tea Party.”

Wow. It's like everything is a potential source of spin to them. What a tool.
posted by JHarris at 11:48 AM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


From Cash4Lead's link:

This was a story I was planning to share a couple of weeks ago at Utah State University. Unfortunately, I was not able to give my scheduled lecture there. The school received emailed threats to carry out “the deadliest school shooting in American history” if I were allowed to speak on campus. When the Utah campus police said they could not search attendees for firearms, citing the state’s concealed carry laws, I felt forced to cancel the event.

Yikes. One bit of cultural insanity intersects with another, to create an outcome more insane than either individual thing.
posted by JHarris at 11:52 AM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


Not to spam the thread, but I love that article:

She mentioned Threes! I knew that Sarkeesian was good folk.

Also, she said this:

The time for invisible boundaries that guard the “purity” of gaming as a niche subculture is over. The violent macho power fantasy will no longer define what gaming is all about.

Those who police the borders of our hobby, the ones who try to shame and threaten women like me into silence, have already lost. The new reality is that video games are maturing, evolving and becoming more diverse.

Those of us who critique the industry are simply saying that games matter. We know games can tell different, broader stories, be quirky and emotional, and give us more ways to win and have fun.


I think this, in a way, might get to the root of why the Gamergaters are feeling so improbably, ludicrously (indeed, would be hilariously, if they weren't such dangerous bullies) threatened.

We've known for some years now that gaming was becoming more mainstream. The statistic that games bring in more revenue than movies is frequently-cited. The entitled gamers saw this as evidence that their attitudes were becoming more mainstream, that they were becoming more represented in the cultural mindspace, that their opinions were spreading and becoming more important. The world would eventually join together into one big happy gay-bashing, Tosh.0-watching brodown.

But now these other kinds of experiences are coming around, showing (as we have always known) that video gaming is about far more than juvenile power fantasies, and shown them that it was the medium more than the message of those games that people found interesting.

The realization that no, their first-person-shooter manly man games were not actually going to take over the world, that these other, healthier things would jump in front and steal their thunder, maybe that was the thing that caused them to flip their proverbial shit.
posted by JHarris at 12:08 PM on October 28, 2014 [16 favorites]


let's shift gears and just talk more about how the Tea Party feels about 'rappers'."

Just so you know, Niger Innis. He specializes in being the black guy that makes it OK to criticize blacks.
posted by dhartung at 12:20 PM on October 28, 2014


I can't imagine that first person shooter games will go away as long as they continue to make money. Furthermore, as games continue to diversify, I can't help but think that more games will be made to cater to adolescent fantasies (see film, TV). Economics will continue to trump ethics like it always does (see racist sports team names).

When I first started gaming, I feel in love with the Adams Adventures. Text adventures in general. The big companies don't make those anymore but they're still interactive fiction companies out there. Besides "get stick"/"stab bear" is both the essential model of Adams Adventures and World of Warcraft, so I'm still covered 30 years later.

They'll be fine but gg folks really need to chill.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:22 PM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


One gamergater asks "What if... we lose?" Hilarious lack of perspective and delusions of grandeur ensue.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:29 PM on October 28, 2014 [5 favorites]


Top response to that thread: "We respawn"
Top response to top response: "Press Wu to continue"

What does that even mean? I'm trying to come up with an interpretation besides "we'll harass some woman who's not a games journalist if we don't get our way" but nothing else really makes sense.
posted by sandswipe at 12:58 PM on October 28, 2014




One of my many hopes is that this establishes a new word for that kind of gamer. Like, until now "gamer" has been a dirty word on MeFi. Yet, at the same time, women make up about half of people who play games. The average age of people who play games is something like 35. There is an especially high number of women in their 40s and 50s who play games. So "gamer" is not being used to mean "person who plays games", it's being used to refer to that particularly toxic type of person-who-plays-games, which makes it awkward to talk about people-who-play-games.

So being able to say use gater to distinguish between meanings of gamer would be useful, like the coining of "brostep" to distinguish it from non-Skrillexy dubstep.
posted by Bugbread at 1:03 PM on October 28, 2014 [4 favorites]


What does that even mean?

lodurr's advice to me in a previous thread applies I think.
posted by papercrane at 1:03 PM on October 28, 2014


What does that even mean? I'm trying to come up with an interpretation besides "we'll harass some woman who's not a games journalist if we don't get our way" but nothing else really makes sense.

Given that the responses to "Press Wu to continue" are "When Wu gets pressed, she loses her shit" and "so give her press"... yeah. If they perceive that they're losing, they're going to go after her some more.

But it's DEFINITELY about ethics in games journalism, you guys.
posted by palomar at 1:24 PM on October 28, 2014 [2 favorites]


This response in that "what if we lose" thread is seriously cracking me up, though [sic throughout]:
Then the same thing that happen to the comic book industry, the television industry, the clothing industry , the food industry. Will happen to us . We will only have poltical correct games, "inclusive" games. Characters that doesn't progress the story but are there just to check off anti racist list. Dear God , we must not lose
I'm trying really hard not to laugh at the level of delusion required to believe these industries are bastions of inclusiveness.
posted by palomar at 1:27 PM on October 28, 2014 [13 favorites]


Pope Guilty: "One gamergater asks "What if... we lose?" Hilarious lack of perspective and delusions of grandeur ensue."

I love this comment:
if we win, the gaming media is destroyed, and if we lose, the entire game market crashes, taking the gaming media with it. We get big enough, the game's over. Checkmate. Whether we win or lose, they go down.
...well, except that the kind of crash they're envisioning would only affect AAA studies. Indies would keep chugging along. Which means if they lose, they lose the AAA games and just keep stuff like DepressionQuest.
posted by Bugbread at 1:29 PM on October 28, 2014 [2 favorites]


How on earth...how did the food industry get infected by so-called political correctness? What does that even mean?
posted by Sticherbeast at 1:29 PM on October 28, 2014 [3 favorites]


Sticherbeast: "How on earth...how did the food industry get infected by so-called political correctness? What does that even mean?"

Like...maybe the use of multiethnic casts in food commercials? That's the only thing I can think of.
posted by Bugbread at 1:31 PM on October 28, 2014


clarknova: “ In my experience women are not the majority but neither are they rare. I really don't know where this narrative that women are just now breaking into video games is coming from. I know girls who have been playing and building games for over twenty years.”

gilrain: “They aren't just breaking into the industry, and that is not the informed narrative. They are actively being pushed out of the industry by passive sexism and active harassment. I don't know what ‘not rare’ means to you, but these numbers are shockingly low...”

clarknova – I want to say that it is correct to say that women aren't "just now breaking into video games." Women really have been in gaming for decades. I know a whole bunch of them! The fact is that the opposite is true: women have been leaving computer science in general for a long time now. There seem to be a lot of factors – probably for most women it's just the inability to find decent and equitable work, although for many others it's probably harassment and hostile work environments. Regardless of the reason, however, this seems to be clear: there are proportionally fewer women working in gaming now than there were five years ago, or ten years ago, or even thirty years ago.

I'm not sure how that fits into your larger point, though.
posted by koeselitz at 1:32 PM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


It's just another great example of the lack of coherence inherent in the movement. I also liked the comment a little bit further downthread that was like "well fine, if gaming falls apart I'll just go back to the last bastion of maleness, heavy metal music". Which is hilarious to me because most of the people I know who are into metal are women.
posted by palomar at 1:33 PM on October 28, 2014 [4 favorites]


they will be forced to eat their brussels sprouts. all food will be organic and vegan. fast food banned. spicy food banned. sauces banned. tastebuds banned.
posted by twist my arm at 1:34 PM on October 28, 2014


How to End Gamergate: A divide-and-conquer plan for dissolving a toxic online movement.
posted by Cash4Lead at 4:03 PM on October 28 [+][!]


No disrespect but this is one of the most embarrassing things I've ever read on Slate, and that is a high bar. It's full of incredibly strange statements that sound like he got them from some pit of reddit, and beyond that it is just not my responsibility to "end" gamergate anyway. If you are sending violent threats to someone, you need to stop that yourself. Beyond that there is nothing to discuss since nobody actually cares about "ethics in games" or whatever glurge.
posted by selfnoise at 1:37 PM on October 28, 2014 [2 favorites]


No disrespect but this is one of the most embarrassing things I've ever read on Slate, and that is a high bar.

Someone on Twitter described it as "the best piece Clickhole has written yet about Gamergate", in reference to this - which is unkind, but also very acute.

Then again, we're not really the audience.
posted by running order squabble fest at 1:40 PM on October 28, 2014 [7 favorites]


selfnoise: "beyond that it is just not my responsibility to "end" gamergate anyway. If you are sending violent threats to someone, you need to stop that yourself."

Yeah, it's a shitty article, but this is the one point it got right: it doesn't matter whose responsibility it is to stop it. And, yes, people making threats need to stop it themselves. But they aren't, and just saying it's not your job to stop it is...dumb. If someone punches you, you duck, or you punch back, or you call the police, or you do something, right? You just don't say "Hey, why should I do something about this guy punching me? He should be the one to stop, it's not my responsibility to stop him."

That said, like I said, I don't think it's a great article. I just don't agree with or understand the idea that when you're being attacked, you shouldn't try to stop your attacker.
posted by Bugbread at 1:47 PM on October 28, 2014 [2 favorites]


how did the food industry get infected by so-called political correctness? What does that even mean?

Pretty sure that poster is referring to stuff like soda bans (which means that even the Doctor is in the conspiracy), or perhaps gluten free or GMO free labeling, but that seems a bit esoteric.

I mean really. Last time I was at the store there was a whole aisle-long freezer full of pizza, but whatever, dude.
posted by dhartung at 1:51 PM on October 28, 2014


That said, like I said, I don't think it's a great article. I just don't agree with or understand the idea that when you're being attacked, you shouldn't try to stop your attacker.

I think there's a misunderstanding of "stop" here. "End Gamergate" seems to be being used to mean "identify all the things that anyone has expressed unhappiness about on r/KotakuinAction, fire whoever they are unhappy with, and reorder gaming and the games media so it meets the stated requirements of Gamergate. Then, once all Gamergate's ostensible demands have been met, promise that nobody will be at all disadvantaged for having bullied or harassed people in the name of Gamergate. Then, anyone who carries on bullying and harassing in the name of Gamergate will be clearly identified as unreasonable!"

That's not stopping, exactly. It's more accurately appeasing.

Like...maybe the use of multiethnic casts in food commercials? That's the only thing I can think of.

I was thinking maybe the FDA? Libertarians often think of health and safety and political correctness as basically the same thing.

I mean, very little of this makes sense, and it might be that mixed-race family in the Cheerio's advert that the far right got upset about. Who knows?
posted by running order squabble fest at 1:55 PM on October 28, 2014 [8 favorites]


GregNog: made me eat a Luna bar

[shudder /]

Maybe it was just that particular one. But I'll eat some nasty shit, and I don't want to go near one of those things again.
posted by lodurr at 2:08 PM on October 28, 2014


running order squabble fest: "That's not stopping, exactly. It's more accurately appeasing. "

True. That's why I said I wasn't agreeing with the article's proposed approach. My disagreement with selfnoise was just about the position that if someone is doing something bad, there's no reason to talk about how to stop it, because the person doing the bad thing should stop themselves. I mean, by that token, there shouldn't even be a GamerGate discussion, because GamerGate should not be happening. The whole issue is that what should be isn't matching up with what is.
posted by Bugbread at 2:11 PM on October 28, 2014


That's not stopping, exactly. It's more accurately appeasing.

"Simply by merit of existing, we're akin to Sauron's eye watching every move made... Whenever someone tells you we're not getting anything done it's 100% false, lets see them try to pull off another Gone Home or conflict of interest gaffe again with thousands of people watching their every move."

Oh. Kay.

Like I said upthread, there are plenty of gators who fancy being part of an ever-vigilant gaming-morality police with the too much time they have on their hands. The 'victory scenario' is that they get copy approval on everything.
posted by holgate at 2:35 PM on October 28, 2014 [4 favorites]


"lets see them try to pull off another Gone Home or conflict of interest gaffe again with thousands of people watching their every move."

Yeah, the only reason Gone Home got released was because nobody was watching. That's why it's such a little-known game. I mean, until this thread, I'd never even heard of it. But now that the Gaters are watching, game journalists will be giving lots of coverage to stuff like Gone Home. Unlike when Gone Home itself got released.

And, of course, the fact that journalists give it lots of coverage will keep it from selling many games. That's how coverage works. Journalists never talked about games like Gone Home or Dear Esther or Depression Quest or the Stanley Parable. That's why nobody knows about them, and nobody bought them.
posted by Bugbread at 2:56 PM on October 28, 2014 [12 favorites]


"Simply by merit of existing, we're akin to Sauron's eye watching every move made."

Wait, what kind of geek-cred do these gamergaters profess to have when they don't seem to know that Sauron, whose name means "the Abhorred" in the tongue of the High Elves, is totally evil and stuff? (Or is it merely a total lack of self-awareness?)

The GG movement is in dire need of a "Hans, are we the baddies?" moment.

The eventual epiphany is going to have a great payoff after all this build-up.
posted by Doktor Zed at 3:19 PM on October 28, 2014


I'm not sure what sarcasm level we are working on here, but for the record Gamegaters beef with Gone Home is that it got good reviews and isn't a "real" game.
posted by selfnoise at 3:44 PM on October 28, 2014 [3 favorites]


selfnoise: "I'm not sure what sarcasm level we are working on here, but for the record Gamegaters beef with Gone Home is that it got good reviews and isn't a "real" game."

Yeah, sorry, I was on Sarcasm Level Red. But I'm still not quite getting the concept that games like Gone Home won't get good reviews because now people "have their eyes on them" (which means, in terms of reviews, "now are reading game reviews"). Gone Home got reviewed in pretty much every single major gaming site. Gamespot, IGN, Joystiq, Eurogamer, PC Gamer, Destructoid, Giant Bomb...They're saying that somehow gamers managed to miss all those reviews, but now Gaters will start reading game reviews on major sites?
posted by Bugbread at 4:00 PM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


Point me at the Kickstarter for the next SJW walk-em-up.
posted by Artw at 4:04 PM on October 28, 2014


I'm not sure what sarcasm level we are working on here, but for the record Gamegaters beef with Gone Home is that it got good reviews and isn't a "real" game.

Their narrow definition of what a "real" game is just seems so boring.
posted by palomar at 4:10 PM on October 28, 2014 [4 favorites]


> (Or is it merely a total lack of self-awareness?

If you're going to have a mad-with-power fantasy, go all in.
posted by anti social order at 4:11 PM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


They're saying that somehow gamers managed to miss all those reviews, but now Gaters will start reading game reviews on major sites?

I think they're saying (or at least this irony-deficient gator is saying) that Gone Home caught them by surprise with its SJW not-a-real-gamishness and all of its critical praise and commercial success was down to sneaky SJW agenda and collusion and corruption and that won't happen again and where did I put that damn ring I made?
posted by holgate at 4:11 PM on October 28, 2014 [4 favorites]


I mean the nice thing about making not-a-real-game kinds of games has been that up until now, the Eye of Sauron didn't fall upon you because the gamers that turned into Gaters were happy to ignore such things, if they ever even heard of them. Crossing my fingers and hoping they get bored with tracking the indie scene real fast.
posted by Andrhia at 5:38 PM on October 28, 2014


Is the "Eye of Sauron" falling on you sort of like the Streisand Effect, then? Like, people won't notice your indie work until the giant evil eye sees it and complains then people will flock to it?

Or does it mean I have to throw a copy of Call of Duty into a volcano and then the Tower of Gator collapses and I can wait to be rescued by eagles?
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:52 PM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


Identifying with sauron is not that strange if you've internalized the idea that your opposition is using 'goodness' as a cover for the real evil. Hell, I used to daydream about playing Judas in a production of Jesus Christ superstar when I was an alienated teenager.
posted by lodurr at 6:07 PM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


The irony of trying to suppress free expression to protect the sacred space of GAMING in the name of ethics is pretty rich, though.
posted by lodurr at 6:10 PM on October 28, 2014


There is a thing going around claiming a reviewer at Polygon was too chummy with someone who made the music for the game. Though, since the Eye of Sauron said "another Gone Home or conflict of interest gaffe" rather than "a conflict of interest gaffe like Gone Home" I can't promise he didn't mean to take offense at the very existence of Gone Home, or positive reviews of it.
posted by RobotHero at 6:30 PM on October 28, 2014


Identifying with sauron is not that strange

well, he hangs out in a dungeon-like environment, watches everything on a little video ball, commands hordes of mythical creatures, doesn't have a girlfriend and resents successful and fun loving enemies

sounds about right
posted by pyramid termite at 6:36 PM on October 28, 2014 [18 favorites]


Well, the GGers talked me into paying the $24.95 for Going Home (plus soundtrack), my first game purchase since '11, and THAT was a Humble Bundle, only a couple of whose games I played for more than 2 minutes. Yep, their Eye of Sauron is going to kill games like that. (Here. You can buy it too if you haven't already.) And if you're wondering what the GGators really object to, maybe this screenshot thumbnail on the front page is a clue.
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:22 PM on October 28, 2014 [6 favorites]


Gone Home is a truly fantastic game. I actually wrote up the FPP for it the day it was released - before any critical consensus had formed, and before more than a handful of reviews had been written. I'm kinda proud of it. Clearly gamergate should be doxxing and harrassing me, a totally average guy without any agenda or industry connections who merely gets excited about innovative storytelling and unconventional gaming.
posted by naju at 8:27 PM on October 28, 2014 [7 favorites]


Gone Home's great. Kentucky Route Zero is great. Likewise Papers, Please and The Stanley Parable; likewise Depression Quest. All doing really fun things. My gaming foundation is the 8-bit 80s when there were flashy arcade conversions and licenced games, but there were also clever, imaginative (and bonkers) games working within huge constraints. That urge to push hard at the boundaries of convention has been around as long as there have been conventions.

And I'm pretty sure there are gators that took offence at Gone Home precisely because it took a FPS engine and subverted the tropes of FPSes. A not-game: a technical sacrilege as well as a narrative one.
posted by holgate at 8:59 PM on October 28, 2014 [4 favorites]


True to an extent - but don't count out good, old-fashioned homophobia! Same-sex romance is permitted in games as long as it involves women and is there for the titillation of the player, but something like Gone Home doesn't fit that narrative.

Interestingly, The Stanley Parable doesn't get this kind of invective flung at it, despite being a) an FPS with no shooting and b) all about subverting the narrative expectations of the FPS genre. I'd say there are a few reasons why...
posted by running order squabble fest at 9:09 PM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]




I can't tell -- is Civilization good to GGers because GIANT DEATH ROBOT AWESOME (which is true), or bad because actual girls run major civilizations plus no boobs?
posted by msalt at 10:13 PM on October 28, 2014


Everybody loves Civilization!
posted by Justinian at 10:37 PM on October 28, 2014


No disrespect but this is one of the most embarrassing things I've ever read on Slate, and that is a high bar.

The article correctly assesses the movement as something that has spun out of control, with a confusing mess of subfactions, ultimately providing cover for who knows how many malicious trolls working in concert or independently of each other to escalate the situation. The article points out how many different tactics used against GamerGate have repeatedly failed in the past. In fact, they have only inflamed and strengthened their movement. It points out there are both moderates and extremists in that organization. In short, it is an article that is at least trying to examine this social phenomenon with nuance, as a problem that needs to be solved with seriousness and earnestness.

I really like how it mentions Truth and Reconciliation panels, because honestly I feel that should be the end goal. Prosecute the harassers, the doxxers, and the law breakers. But for the rest, there needs to be some way to reintegrate them into the online body politic. If they continue to feel alienated, then you're going to see ten thousand more GamerGate-type dumb identity crusades, and endless tides of trolling.

This is their internet too. You might not like it, and they might not like you, but that's how society works.

If you are sending violent threats to someone, you need to stop that yourself. Beyond that there is nothing to discuss since nobody actually cares about "ethics in games" or whatever glurge.

Once again, the majority of GamerGate are likely not actually sending violent threats. The rest have been duped by propaganda that 1) many threats were false flags by anti-GG types, 2) hyped by anti-GG media, 3) "well their side does it to GG anyway." It's all bad rhetoric, but they don't know it. No one cared about the debt ceiling crisis except for hard-right Republicans and the Tea Party, but they did, and they also believed that the IRS was out to get them. People will believe different things, oftentimes wrong. But we still need to get along with them because they still are members of our internet, of our electorate, of our civilization. David Auerbach's article may be weird, and you don't have to agree with all of his conclusions, but why is it worthy of such derision?
posted by Apocryphon at 10:45 PM on October 28, 2014 [4 favorites]


I really like how it mentions Truth and Reconciliation panels, because honestly I feel that should be the end goal. Prosecute the harassers, the doxxers, and the law breakers. But for the rest, there needs to be some way to reintegrate them into the online body politic.

If we could prosecute the harassers, doxxers and lawbreakers, we wouldn't have this damn problem in the first place. Seriously, GamerGate would be a manageable problem, the way Vox Day and the Weasels in SF&F or James Desborough in tabletop gaming were. The women I know working in gaming are not scared because of gamergate being isolated, delusional idiots, they're scared because of the massive amounts of harassment.

Solving this problem is going to require some major laws and legislation, I'm afraid. And that's going to take time and lobbying in the face of an industry that wants to pretend that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the way things are.
posted by happyroach at 11:17 PM on October 28, 2014 [4 favorites]


Sauron probably gets really upset if you call him a troll, too.
posted by Artw at 11:51 PM on October 28, 2014


why is it worthy of such derision?

Because its conclusion is that games journalism should completely acquiesce to all of GamerGate's ridiculous demands, and after they have stopped reporting on the experimental games scene entirely, maybe GamerGate will calm down, and if it doesn't they can shame what's left, except that he just got done saying that shaming won't stop anything, so if it's not stopping the moderates, why would it stop the extremists?

He cites the Escapist as an example of a website doing "ethics" right, but that didn't stop them from interviewing a bunch of the people harassing Zoe Quinn for their take on GamerGate and presenting it as neutral third parties, until they got called on it.

I also don't believe the moderates are that moderate, since many moderates seem to think the fact that Gone Home got a bunch of praise was a big "ethical" lapse, or believe that Zoe Quinn slept her way to good reviews, or think that Anita Sarkeesian shouldn't be allowed to talk about video games at all.

Finally, the entire article is dripping with condescension towards the people he is ostensibly trying to persuade (the anti-GamerGaters) which he claims is not how to win an argument, but is apparently fine for him to do. Basically the entire thing feels like it is arguing in bad faith.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 3:16 AM on October 29, 2014 [10 favorites]


He's doing that thing that the gaters think "SJWs" are doing: Seeing a window within which to score points (clicks & reposts) by presenting the arguments he knows will score. It's pandering, basically.
posted by lodurr at 3:21 AM on October 29, 2014


One of the things I really don't get is why gaters feel like their AAA games are threatened. I'll go ahead and say something that I'm pretty sure makes me an outlier here: I prefer AAA games. I'm not an indies game man. I mean, sure, I've enjoyed some indie games. Dwarf Fortress, Desktop Dungeons, Steamworld Dig (is that indie, actually?). But if you look at my games collection, there's a lot more Assassin's Creed and Bulletstorm and Tony Hawk and GTA and Saints Row and Fallout and Witcher and Dragon Age and other totally AAA stuff. I just get into the AAA stuff more than the indie stuff. But at no point, from Sarkeesian's first kickstarter to Gone Home or Depression Quest, have I thought "the popularity of this stuff is going to keep a developer from coming out with a new SSX or Dark Souls". We're not talking a tiny brick and mortar store, where adding one product takes away from space for other products. Adding new games to Steam, or Amazon, or whatever, does not reduce the supply of other games. So even as an AAA gamer with no interest in exploratory artistic social justice games, I don't remotely get why some Gaters think an increase in SJ games is someone going to make their AAA games go away.
posted by Bugbread at 3:31 AM on October 29, 2014 [5 favorites]


And I'm pretty sure there are gators that took offence at Gone Home precisely because it took a FPS engine and subverted the tropes of FPSes [...] True to an extent - but don't count out good, old-fashioned homophobia!

My gamer-dar doesn't blip too much for either of these. I think it's mostly a combination of gamer snobbery and misogyny.

If Gone Home had some brain-burning puzzles in it, that probably would have redeemed it enough in the eyes of gamers. The, "I'm 100% crunch, 0% fluff, and I'm objectively right," type can be a tedious sort of person, but they will respect gameplay in almost any form.

If it had been a story about a boy and had more nerdboy markers, I think it would still have been disliked by some for not having much gameplay, but it would have been quickly forgotten. Same if it had been about a nerdy girl—like, maybe instead of coming home to find your little sister is gay and in love, you come home to your moonbase settlement to find out your little sister is gay, in love, and she and her gf are building a giant robot in the basement to fight monsters and rescue lost pets in the moon mountains. It could even been more abstract and gender neutral and gamers would relate. But it has nothing for them. The misogyny kicks in because Gone Home is mostly about young women being just kind of realistically young and women, and to nerdboy gamers that is the most uninteresting thing possible.

So it's the kind of game that they'd rate a 1/10 with a backhanded reason for the 1 point. To see it getting really good reviews must have been a shock to them. I think it's fair to say one of the reasons Gone Home got great reviews in the first place—a reason it was fresh, surprising, interesting—is because it wasn't in any way catering to the typical nerd gamer tastes. Kind of a shot across the bow. The more misogynist ones probably felt it more keenly: something undeserving *and* feminine being elevated is misandry most foul.
posted by fleacircus at 3:40 AM on October 29, 2014 [9 favorites]


One of the things I really don't get is why gaters feel like their AAA games are threatened.

A couple reasons I can see -

1. They think that it's like a zero-sum game, where one group has all the control of gaming at the detriment of all other groups. They literally don't get that having more of another kind of games doesn't mean they stop offering their games.

2. They think the people who make the AAA games are going to change them because of Anita Sarkeesian and others complaining about this or that element.

3. They're spoiled babies.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:51 AM on October 29, 2014 [12 favorites]


This makes me think of the various and sundry ratings fiascoes that have transpired over the years. Some have had a chilling impact on artistic production in some ways -- others, not so much.

The Hayes code is the obvious example, and that's where, say, Dabitch goes in defending GG. And the Hayes code did constrain comics for decades. The motion picture ratings system has shaped the modern film industry. But the ratings panics of the early 90s and the more recent videogame ratings panics would appear to have had essentially zero impact. So the historical data argues for no impact.

I also think back to the history of film. Back in the 60s and 70s there was a plethora of low-budget, incredibly graphic, unrated horror films. They were shocking at the time, but in comparison to the modern popular torture-porn epics, like the Saw franchise, they're comical. And a lot of people get really upset about the existence of those torture-porn epics.

So there's just really no evidence that there will be a problem.

OTOH, and bearing in mind EmpressCallipygos' suggestions: At this point the thinking is cultic -- it's more like the way conspiracy theorists think. 'Evidence' in the conventional sense is irrelevant.
posted by lodurr at 4:43 AM on October 29, 2014


Er, I meant, the comics code authority, not the hayes code, but the Hayes Code is obviously another good, earlier example.
posted by lodurr at 4:46 AM on October 29, 2014


I guess my point would be that something happened at some point that rendered that type of moral censorship much less effective in certain dimensions, and I think that something had a lot more to do with marketism than with the Internet.
posted by lodurr at 4:56 AM on October 29, 2014


They think the people who make the AAA games are going to change them because of Anita Sarkeesian and others complaining about this or that element.

It seems that MetaCritic scores play a big part in some developer's royalties. Obsidian is said to have missed out on $1 million because Fallout: New Vegas scored 84 instead of 85. If that's true, a handful of reviewers "turning" SJW might give AAA developers a strong incentive to adjust their games.
posted by reynaert at 5:36 AM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


My knee-jerk reaction to that is that it takes a lot of interpretation, most of it highly conjectural, to get to a figure like that.

But then I think, "I'm talking about corporate product managers, here, why would I expect them to give a shit about an accurate analysis?"
posted by lodurr at 6:37 AM on October 29, 2014


Well. They are absolutely right that AAA games change based on feedback. AAA developers are desperate for feedback, because they tend to exist in a monoculture. Bungie invited Anita Sarkeesian over in 2012 to talk about how they could improve the representation of women in their games. And, when she released her most recent video, it sparked a discussion among a group of former Irrational employees about how, looking back, they were sort of embarrassed about the brothel level, and that they probably weren't going to make another level like that in their future endeavors.

The Metacritic thing is interesting - I've heard the idea of connecting bonus payments to Metacritic scores represented both as an unfair imposition on developers - who after all are usually ultimately told what to put into a game by the publsher, relayed through the producer - and as a way to protect devs from the failings of the publisher's marketing department, who can often kill a perfectly good game by marketing it poorly.

On the other hand, the problem with Fallout New Vegas wasn't that it fell foul of SJWs - it was that, in line with many other games produced by Obsidian, it was a detailed, fascinating game world that also struggled with release-day bugs. The devs can say that this is the fault of the publishers for not giving them more time or resource for QA, and the publishers can say that the devs should have allocated resource more carefully, but ultimately it is what it is.

However, it is very definitely not the job of a reviewer to worry about the bonus structures a studio has negotiated with a publisher. Not only that, but it's not even coherent in the context of Gamergate's self-image as a "consumer revolt" - reviewers should be protecting the interests of the consumers by providing quote-unquote objective analyses of the gameplay, rather than inflating review scores in the hope that it will trigger a payment clause that may or may not exist in a contract they have not seen.
posted by running order squabble fest at 7:55 AM on October 29, 2014 [11 favorites]


Gone Home was also attacked because there was a long-simmering grudge against Fullbright (the developers) for talking about how important diversity and fairness was to them and for calling out misogynist, transphobic, and other unfair shit when they saw it. E.g., when they decided not to show Gone Home at PAX.
This morning we stopped pushing those long-held reservations about Jerry and Mike into the back of our minds. We talked to each other and did a simple show of hands– do any of us feel comfortable presenting Gone Home at PAX?

No hands went up.

We believe that people’s opinions and actions on social issues and business ethics are important. We believe that agreeing to pay the organizers of PAX over $1,000 for booth space, and to present our game on their showfloor for four days, provides explicit support for and tacit approval of their publicly demonstrated positions on these subjects. And we have finally come to the conclusion that we cannot support Jerry, Mike, and their organization by participating in this event.
There were no small amounts of vile shit thrown at Fullbright in my social network feeds around this. Thankfully, the jerks made it pretty clear who to block and, consequently, I haven't really spotted any new troglodytes in my list during this recent wave of misogynist attacks.
posted by introp at 8:16 AM on October 29, 2014 [8 favorites]


Is that why? I've been wondering about that. I thought it was maybe about having employed Ben Kuchera...
posted by running order squabble fest at 8:28 AM on October 29, 2014


Speaking of troglodytes, much of the GG foofaraw reminds me of when whatsisballs from the Clippers got fired, and a few people on my FB feed kept complaining about free speech. One of these people was even a lawyer! I'm sure that these people would have intellectually understood that that wasn't actually ever a "free speech" issue in the first place, but that's not the real point. The point is that they are upset that they live in a world where you actually can get into concrete trouble for saying racist crap. The power has shifted. It's gotten so "bad" that even many of their white friends won't congratulate them on their un-PCness! They actually have to think about what they say! The horror!

So, yeah, I see where they're coming from. It's just not a good place.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:29 AM on October 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


My impression was that the Penny Arcade "boycott" is because the forum mods deleted Eron's attempts to post his magnum opus about Zoe Quinn, which was tantamount to censoring discussion about corruption in video games or something.

On the other hand, the Escapist edited an old article about Zoe's harassment when Depression Quest went on Steam to change all the references to say "alleged harassment". There was a thing way back at the beginning of this where all harassment that hadn't been witnessed by 20 people had to be "alleged" because that's how real journalists did it. This didn't apply to the syringes that Milo got in the mail or the "knives" GGers claim to be getting in the mail, though, and it seems to have disappeared from the arsenal.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 8:33 AM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


It seems that MetaCritic scores play a big part in some developer's royalties. Obsidian is said to have missed out on $1 million because Fallout: New Vegas scored 84 instead of 85. If that's true, a handful of reviewers "turning" SJW might give AAA developers a strong incentive to adjust their games.

Heh, your example is kind of it's own punchline - all the SJW's luved New Vegas. Oddly enough, so did people generally associated with the right. And my own experience of overly violent teenagers says they were pretty cool with it.

The negative reviews all pretty much looked like this: "This game got released too early. Had it been released around the holidays, and with the collection of bugs and broken quests eliminated, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it as a great gift for gamers. As it is, I can only say that it's beautiful but tragically flawed." I don't think that's the kind of bold honest statement that the Gamergate people give a shit about.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 8:41 AM on October 29, 2014 [4 favorites]


And now Penny Arcade are on their boycott list for having the audacity to apologize for their past behavior. It's almost beautiful.

My impression was that the Penny Arcade "boycott" is because the forum mods deleted Eron's attempts to post his magnum opus about Zoe Quinn, which was tantamount to censoring discussion about corruption in video games or something.


Heh, if they were really putting two and two together, I'd expect them for boycotting Penny Arcade for hosting Extra Credits for more than two years. If you're in the "I want nothing but AAA shooters, these guys are going to make you Grarr! in a big way. Take a look at their episode list.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 8:49 AM on October 29, 2014


Poor Obsidian, another 3 months of bug hunting and they woulda easily pocketed that million.
posted by Justinian at 8:55 AM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


Tycho from PA also came out explicitly against the harrassment in a recent post on the site, so you don't necessarily have to go digging for motivations.
posted by selfnoise at 9:19 AM on October 29, 2014


Bethesda did the QA for New Vegas; it's in the state Bethesda wanted it in when it was shipped. Obsidian aren't to blame for it.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:31 AM on October 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


Well, "wanted" is maybe pushing it. No publisher wants to release a buggy game. It's in the state Bethesda was prepared to release it in, is more accurate.

(Compare Obsidian's more recent South Park: The Stick of Truth, which Ubisoft agreed to delay and which - lolcry - scored 85 on Metacritic.)
posted by running order squabble fest at 10:47 AM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


Item 1 of my SJW reviewers manifesto would be the banning of all scores from game reviews forever, which would ironically also solve this problem.
posted by Artw at 11:37 AM on October 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


(Unless Metacritic uses some RT style positive/negative to determine scoring. )
posted by Artw at 11:38 AM on October 29, 2014


Neither RPS and Ars Technica score games in their reviews so you might be onto something.
posted by papercrane at 11:43 AM on October 29, 2014




Nor does Zero punctuation, though he's never subtle about how he feels or why.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 12:32 PM on October 29, 2014


The new #GamerGate logo.
posted by brundlefly at 2:25 PM on October 29, 2014


Back on topic of the FPP:
Wil Wheaton just posted this absolutely wonderful image to his tumblr. Yes, that is Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day.
posted by daq at 2:46 PM on October 29, 2014 [6 favorites]


selfnoise: "Tycho from PA also came out explicitly against the harrassment in a recent post on the site, so you don't necessarily have to go digging for motivations."

Could you link that? I'm having trouble finding it, but I feel like I did read it recently.

Plus, Tycho is definitely in the "trying hard to become a better person" camp, which A) is wonderful, and B) must seem like some horrible betrayal to people who supported him when he was being a jerk.
posted by Bugbread at 2:56 PM on October 29, 2014


Wait, no, sorry, that should have read "Gabe". I meant I found the Gabe post, but not the Tycho post.
posted by Bugbread at 3:24 PM on October 29, 2014


I think this is the only thing Tycho has really said about all this. It seems pretty conservative to me, but I think that it's directed at the more moderate GG-supporters, and he's probably correct that there's a bunch of them in his audience.

Generally I think of Tycho as being pretty hands off when it comes to the shitstorms that Gabe has started/gotten into. I'd like to see Tycho be more active in using his position to push for good behavior, though certainly the "better person" thing is a much bigger deal from Gabe than it would be from Tycho (I'm glad you corrected your mistake).
posted by aubilenon at 3:30 PM on October 29, 2014


Yeah, I started the comment with "Gabe and Tycho are in the 'trying hard to become better people' camp" and then went searching for links and couldn't find anything for Tycho, so I changed it to the singular, but I erased the wrong name by accident, leaving "Tycho" instead of "Gabe".
posted by Bugbread at 3:56 PM on October 29, 2014




I wanna be the unholy love child of Anita Sarkeesian and a unicorn when I grow up.
posted by Deoridhe at 5:09 PM on October 29, 2014 [3 favorites]


Anita deserves a Macarthur Genius Grant.
posted by divabat at 5:12 PM on October 29, 2014 [4 favorites]


It's petty of me, but the tears, rage, and denial in the KiA thread about Sarkeesian / Colbert are quite beautiful.
posted by honestcoyote at 5:17 PM on October 29, 2014 [5 favorites]



It's petty of me, but the tears, rage, and denial in the KiA thread about Sarkeesian / Colbert are quite beautiful.
Also, mainstream coverage only helped gamergate in the past. Be ready to talk about gamergate all over the Internet with people and show them FACTS.
you're adorable
posted by murphy slaw at 5:28 PM on October 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


Anita Sarkeesian is going to be on The Colbert Report

I can't wait until Poe's law puts Colbert "on their side".

Be ready to talk about gamergate all over the Internet with people and show them FACTS.

I guess that means more 45 minute diatribes on YouTube by young men using pseudonyms. I guess if those videos were powerful enough to elect President Ron Paul, then they're good enough to stop feminism too.
posted by Gary at 5:37 PM on October 29, 2014 [8 favorites]


Just red pill them, guys. Keep red pilling them. Did anyone try red pilling Colbert? Why not? Frank, I thought you were in charge of that.
posted by naju at 5:40 PM on October 29, 2014 [7 favorites]


Oh my god, this is amazing.
And with this, republicans have secured themselves for the next election.
Oh god, my sides
Why? No, I mean really why?

There is a million, a million people out there, doing incredible things, who deserve recognition and spotlight?

Why?

Fuck me, in 5 years the only reliable news source is going to be MTV, if this kind of bullshit and "prioritizing exposure" keeps on.

Also, let me repeat what I said before:

"For people, who went into hiding and are working with the FBI, you are doing a shitty job. Mainstream television, of a country of 300kk+ people, plus all the youtube mirrors, is not a safe and secluded hiding area"
That one sets off an argument wherein some of the gators don't understand that leaving home due to death threats doesn't mean you are literally Salman Rushdie.
I wonder... If I would state publicly that rape cases in the United States simply show a need to begin a conversation about the toxic influence of female promiscuity on our culture, would I get invited to a TV show where I can continue expressing these views? What the fuck is going on!?
Okay, this isn't funny anymore.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:42 PM on October 29, 2014 [10 favorites]


Please Colbert, don't hurt us. I like you a lot. They taking games away from me, don't let them take you too. :'(
I honestly can't tell if this a real GGer, or satire by an anti-GGer.
posted by zakur at 5:44 PM on October 29, 2014 [5 favorites]


I honestly can't if this a real GGer, or satire by an anti-GGer.

Poe's Law has essentially been DDOSed by GG. I've given up even trying to guess with them.
posted by honestcoyote at 5:48 PM on October 29, 2014 [13 favorites]


Okay, this isn't funny anymore.
[–]AlphaWookie [score hidden] 37 minutes ago
Who says he is not going to turn the tables on Anita?

[–]corinroyal [score hidden] 18 minutes ago
Reality.
It's funny again!
posted by Lemurrhea at 6:21 PM on October 29, 2014 [7 favorites]


The thing is that Anita Sarkeesian is going to be on Colbert at the very same time that David Tennant is going to be on David Letterman holy shit i'm so torn what do i do
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:31 PM on October 29, 2014


Oh, if any of you are actually watching those YouTube diatribes and you find any ones that are particularly unintentionally funny and/or can give me timestamps where they are being particularly bad, MeMail me and I'll make more videos where they are interrupted mid-sentence by yelling goats.
posted by NoraReed at 6:31 PM on October 29, 2014 [10 favorites]


EmpressCallipygos: "holy shit i'm so torn what do i do"

Watch Tennant while he's on the air, record Sarkeesian so you can go back and repeatedly savor any particular good moments.
posted by Bugbread at 6:33 PM on October 29, 2014


I snerked audibly at "This feels like Red Wedding all over again!"
posted by Lexica at 6:42 PM on October 29, 2014 [6 favorites]


What? No, watch Sarkeesian while she's on the air and watch in real-time the gators' reactions. Drink their tears. Tape Tennant, because one always wants more videos of Tennant.

...Maybe that's just me?
posted by Lemurrhea at 6:46 PM on October 29, 2014


My favorite part about almost any thread in KiA is the part where someone inevitably brings up the number of subscribers to the subreddit as proof that they have tons of supporters. I don't think it's dawned on any of them that a lot of people love to rubberneck at gruesome wrecks.
posted by palomar at 7:07 PM on October 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


i don't have the means to dvr anything anyway
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:23 PM on October 29, 2014


Has anyone pointed out that when you look up "red pill" on drugs.com, THIS is the first thing that comes up?

Actually, makes a lot of sense.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:23 PM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


number of subscribers to the subreddit as proof that they have tons of supporters

KiA has 17,371 subscribers. To put that in perspective, the easily frightened /r/conspiracy has 262,257 subs. The Red Pill has 79,840 darkly enlightened alphas. Men's Rights has 99,193 crusaders for justice. They're even behind the good people at SRS who number 57,564.

Even if we assume the larger subreddits above are 50% sockpuppets and mockers, they still strongly outnumber KiA. GG can't even reach the same numbers as the people who believe in Zionist-distributed ebola.

If that doesn't define them as the fringe of the fringe, especially when you consider the considerable overlap with MRAs and RedPillers, then I don't know what would.
posted by honestcoyote at 8:04 PM on October 29, 2014 [6 favorites]


My favorite part about almost any thread in KiA is the part where someone inevitably brings up the number of subscribers to the subreddit as proof that they have tons of supporters. I don't think it's dawned on any of them that a lot of people love to rubberneck at gruesome wrecks.

Honestly, palaomar, I don't really get all the gleeful rubbernecking, either. I've never been one for mocking and debasement, and the argument that it is okay to take pleasure in harassment, trolling, doxxing and the like, just as long as you are on the right side (which I have heard way too often lately) just makes me shake my head in disgust. How some people can decry harassment against one select group, yet openly embrace it against another (without a shred of introspection about what that says of their own character) is beyond me.

I still think that everyone is right about there not being two sides here. Clearly the gamergaters are wrong. You just have to read their threads, their tweets, to see that they don't even know themselves what they want. They hate on women, then give to charity like they are contrite, then go right back out and hate some more. It's just a big game to them, and they don't care who gets hurt, because they can always respawn.

But the more I read from the anti-gamergators--even some here on MetaFilter!--the more I find myself wondering whether there is any right side at all any more. You'd think you could expect better behavior from the group who started out with the moral high ground. You'd think, these are the people who should know better, the ones who understand that real people are behind the names on the screen, who can rise above the pettiness and the ego-driven game-playing to work towards a larger goal instead of wallowing around in the mud.

By nope, this gamergate farce is just ugly any way you look at it, turtles all the way down.
posted by misha at 8:21 PM on October 29, 2014


misha, reading their ridiculous screeds and poking fun at them here is not harassment. I don't believe that poking fun at them here or tweaking their noses on Twitter is equivalent to doxxing and rape/death threats, and I think it's beyond gross that you're trying to equate the two.
posted by palomar at 8:29 PM on October 29, 2014 [25 favorites]


misha: "But the more I read from the anti-gamergators--even some here on MetaFilter!--the more I find myself wondering whether there is any right side at all any more."

There's a right side, but, as with many issues, unfortunately: people are assholes. Being on the right side doesn't inoculate people from being assholes. But, so far, the GG side has the much bigger assholes (the death threats, firing threats, etc.). That's not why they're wrong. They're wrong because their arguments make no sense whatsoever. But it is why their being wrong is such a bad thing, as opposed to a bunch of people calmly arguing that it's unethical to review games you paid for or that it's unethical to give a bad review to a game that advertises on your site. If that's all they were doing, having stupid illogical discussions on gaming forums, we wouldn't be discussing GG on MeFi. And if the anti-GGer assholes ramped up to threatening to kill GGers and the like, this conversation would change a lot, too. But neither one of those is the situation we've got now. Right now we have a situation where both sides have assholes, like anything in life, but the assholes on one side are taking assholishness to a way different level.

palomar: "I think it's beyond gross that you're trying to equate the two."

It didn't read to me like misha was trying to equate the two. Discussing similarity is not the same as discussing equivalence.
posted by Bugbread at 8:43 PM on October 29, 2014 [3 favorites]


Oh, and for the record, I TOTALLY get the rubbernecking. I have to stay informed on Gamergate because it's a topic we're covering in a class I'm taking right now on propaganda. Many other people I know are staying informed on Gamergate because they work in the games industry, or they work in journalism, or they're gamers of the non-cretin variety, or a host of other reasons. Staying informed frequently means exposing ourselves to extreme amounts of vitriol, hate speech, threats... and making fun of them is a way to blow off steam that doesn't involve having to engage with them and run the risk of being doxxed or threatened ourselves.
posted by palomar at 8:46 PM on October 29, 2014


Pretending that there's anything even vaguely similar is gross and an example of why truth-is-in-the-middleism/plauge-on-both-your-housesism is a plague.

We're not going to 8chan or KiA to engage them, we're not doing literally anything whatsoever which is in any way comparable. Pointing and laughing in a space that they don't go to or care about is not even vaguely comparable and it's disgusting to claim that it is.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:48 PM on October 29, 2014 [11 favorites]


Pope Guilty: "Pretending that there's anything even vaguely similar is gross"

Well, I guess I'm just a really gross person because if you give me pretty much any two things, I can probably find areas where they are similar. That, or you're using "similar" like "equivalent", which I don't think is what it means.
posted by Bugbread at 8:59 PM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


Also, for what it's worth, I haven't seen the anti-GG assholish behavior on MeFi itself. All the "gamers are fat aspies!" stuff I've seen is offsite, and I think that's what misha is mainly talking about (or am I reading too much into what you said, misha?)
posted by Bugbread at 9:09 PM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


The Mary Sue has the clip.
posted by Lemurrhea at 9:13 PM on October 29, 2014 [6 favorites]


The anti-GG side hasn't done anything remotely similar to the pro-GG side, but it really seems like there's a lot of dehumanization going on their part against pro-GG. Calling them all crypto-pro-rapist misogynists, etc. I mean, I find GG to be a completely duped cause led by darknet trolls, I certainly don't give the cause the credit, but I still think there are individual people within it who can be encouraged to see the light and turn away, even be persuaded to fight against GG.

But again, I understand that anger is cathartic, so people here are venting. I mean, GG struck first, right? People under the GG banner are the ones committing the doxxing and the threats and the aggression. So it's only natural that people on the victimized side will be angry.

But that's one of the paradoxes about conflict. We can simultaneously cheer on the Allies mowing down Nazis and Imperial Japanese troops (just like in a video game!), but at the same time shake our heads at the racism of wartime propaganda. Again, this is hyperbole- GG is nothing near as bad as WWII, or Nazis. But the same principle applies- even as you face off against an opponent, shouldn't you hold yourself to a higher moral standard? Just because anti-GG is the right cause, doesn't mean that there aren't people on the side, both off-site and on MeFi, who have espoused angry rhetoric that dehumanizes pro-GG.

If not for preserving some moral high ground, at least for the sake of pragmatism. Trolling GG back is only making them more fervent, fiercer, and committed to their cause. It's going to make the moderates feel like the world is against gamers and harden them. And it continues to bury the truth under waves of obscurantism and sensationalism and propaganda.

But maybe reconciliation isn't a solution. Maybe circling the wagons, ever-escalating insults, and so forth, is the only way. Same as it always was.
posted by Apocryphon at 9:15 PM on October 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


Lemurrhea: "The Mary Sue has the clip."

Oh, oh, oh, thanks!

And that part about feminism at the end, so good!

And, question! I've only heard about GamerGate on the net, not in mass media (it's an English-language phenomenon, so not covered by mass media here). I've seen articles linked on news sites like Forbes or Newsweek or whatever, but I know that news sites have guest contributors and spinoffs and whatnot, so I have no idea whether those articles get any eyeballs or not. So, in other words, I don't know what image the average non-gamer, non-SJW person is getting of GG. But at the start of that Colbert report, there were all these clips from US TV media about GG, and it was all pretty unequivocal "GamerGate is about harassing women in gaming". Is that how it's generally being reported in the US mass media (TV, newspapers, etc.)?
posted by Bugbread at 9:30 PM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yup.
posted by palomar at 9:33 PM on October 29, 2014 [3 favorites]


Calling them all crypto-pro-rapist misogynists, etc.

Most of the commenters here seem perfectly able to distinguish between the core nihilist/troll/fuckwits, the reactionary bandwagoners, the opportunistic profiteers and the fellow-travellers. I want the first groups to be driven back into the swamps they came from; as for the rank and file, I mainly feel sad for them, and hope that in time they'll be embarrassed by whatever energy they've devoted to this.

Therapists who work with people who've been part of cults make connections beyond the cult's frame of reference. It's not especially easy to do that in online environments where there's nothing but that frame of reference.
posted by holgate at 9:44 PM on October 29, 2014 [5 favorites]


OMG! Colbert, IN CHARACTER, allowed himself to be called a Feminist. Well, the portion of his audience who don't consider his character a parody just tuned out forever. Now he HAS to be himself on CBS.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:51 PM on October 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


AH HA HA HA HA! What a great clip. I rarely watch Colbert but have a huge crush on him right now.

(In the interests of constructive discussion I'm not quoting what I yelled at my screen when they shook hands. It was hostile and gloating and uncivil. Heh.)
posted by Lexica at 9:57 PM on October 29, 2014


This is definitely going to change after Colbert tonight, but in speaking to undergrads here recently, I was surprised to learn that gamergate is completely a non-issue to them. As in, they weren't even aware there was a movement calling itself that, let alone all the history and context surrounding it. This is an age group where I would expect both social activism and gaming to be fairly well represented, the college I visited is among the top-rated in the country for diversity, and the group I spoke to had about a 3:2 M/F ratio, with an assortment of majors represented. And they were completely in the dark, despite over half being well-versed in the recent debacle known as The Fappening.

So even though Metafilter has been following this for the last several weeks, and it has been a big deal online for some sites like Gawker, We Hunted the Mammoth, etc., ithe gamergate controversy really hasn't hit the mainstream here as much as you might think based on online coverage.

But, as I say, I expect that to change once Colbert really covers it, because his show is, parody or not, the leading source of news for this age group as well. Seriously, the number one source.
posted by misha at 10:03 PM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


The KiA folks seem to be REALLY EXCITED that she "couldn't even name three games" - I haven't seen the segment yet, WTF are they talking about? I assume whatever it is, it's from bizarro-land.

I was surprised to learn that gamergate is completely a non-issue to them.

It really is a pretty fringy splinter group of hardcore folks. Andy Baio's analysis showed that 24% of the #Gamergate tweets came from only 100 people.
posted by dialetheia at 10:07 PM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


The other hilarious comment on KiA was someone calling Colbert out for the "racist implications" of a joke that made fun of them for wanting "separate but equal" games. Self-awareness is not exactly their strong point.
posted by dialetheia at 10:10 PM on October 29, 2014 [5 favorites]


>You'd think you could expect better behavior from the group who started out with the moral high ground.

Well, Mercy is the mark of a great man.

The best thing I've seen on reddit about this, after someone pointed out the more this fringe tries to silence her, the more publicity she gets.
I propose a corollary to the Streisand effect, the Sarkeesian effect - when other people's attempt to stop conversation about the topic you're promoting inadvertently results in it being more widely publicized.

posted by anti social order at 10:10 PM on October 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


Colbert asked her specifically for "three examples" of really bad games and she just wanted to talk about bad trends (which even I, a supporter, considered a bad move), before matter-of-factly tossing out the rather obvious "Grand Theft Auto"... but then, haven't there been FIVE GTA games?
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:15 PM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


Well, she didn't name three games. The KiA folks will interpret that as "she couldn't name three games". The GGhazi folks will interpret that as "she didn't want to get bogged down in discussion of three particular games". But, honestly, who cares? It's not like if she had specified three games the KiA folks would go, "You know what? She's right!" So what's important is what the Undecided Colbert Viewer will think, and while that one little tiny bit of the segment wasn't that great, overall the segment was.
posted by Bugbread at 10:23 PM on October 29, 2014 [3 favorites]


Probably about 10, depending on what you see as a game and what as an expansion or port...
posted by running order squabble fest at 10:23 PM on October 29, 2014


holgate: [… T]he core nihilist/troll/fuckwits, the reactionary bandwagoners, the opportunistic profiteers and the fellow-travellers.
Chris Kluwe, after congratulating Sarkesian for her segment on Colbert, followed it up with…
Meanwhile, the #Gamergate boards try to make sense of @StephenAtHome's segment with @femfreq.— Chris Kluwe (@ChrisWarcraft) October 30, 2014
Attached was a photo of a dumpster fire. Literally. A dumpster on fire.

Then he proceeded to go down the litany of cretins, very similar to holgate's list, calling each out by name and making a wrestling joke about them tagging in or having a folding chair or whatnot. All with a different photo of a dumpster fire.

He concludes…
And yes, you'd be surprised at how many pictures of dumpster fires you actually need in this day and age. It's a brave new world.— Chris Kluwe (@ChrisWarcraft) October 30, 2014
posted by ob1quixote at 10:28 PM on October 29, 2014 [14 favorites]


Thank you for introducing me to the expression "dumpster fire".
posted by Bugbread at 10:32 PM on October 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


Incidentally:

But the more I read from the anti-gamergators-- even some here on MetaFilter!--the more I find myself wondering whether there is any right side at all any more.

FWIW, I think I'd probably orient by the writer of "No Tears for Dead Sluts; or Why I Have No Sympathy for Felicia Garcia". Just start there and walk as far away as possible. When you can't go any further, you've walked into the right side.

But, you know, my moral calculus may not be sufficiently acute.
posted by running order squabble fest at 10:32 PM on October 29, 2014 [11 favorites]


I love that they keep going on and on about how Colbert didn't do any research, he's so uninformed, blah blah blah. It just highlights that they have no idea how any part of the media works -- if you really think that any TV show would book a guest and produce a segment on a controversial issue without doing research, or that Colbert does all the research himself, I'm not entirely sure how you managed to get past the password your dad put on the family computer.
posted by palomar at 10:36 PM on October 29, 2014 [4 favorites]


if I may lighten things up without derailing: #gamerdorf?
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:40 PM on October 29, 2014 [3 favorites]


I feel like Cartman licking Scott Tenorman's tears of unfathomable sadness.
posted by Justinian at 10:40 PM on October 29, 2014 [4 favorites]


Aw, gamerdorf. Makes me think of Tim Conway.
posted by palomar at 10:46 PM on October 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


(that's part of what appealed to me too)
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:50 PM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


Dear god, misha, we're making fun of them because they're super mockable and because jokes are a good way to keep away from despair, and we aren't going into their precious spaces to do it. Hell, we get them fucking sealioning all over us every time we mention or criticize them on Twitter.

As far as the "crypto-pro-rapist misogynist" bit goes, I really don't care if people are beings of light and goodness in their heart when they're actively supporting a clearly misogynist movement. I mean, I know some are less bad than others, but even being duped by this requires a willingness to disbelieve women's personal experience or to believe that a few women driven out of their homes and more out of the industry is acceptable collateral damage if they can avoid thinking critically about Bayonetta's tits. All of it involves buying into a culture that not only wants me excluded from certain hobbies, but one that actively wants to harm me and live in fear.

I know this probably makes me one of those bad feminists, but the alternative is being a fucking doormat, and frankly I'm over that.

Also, if you're wondering why we can successfully manage to be funnier than them, it's because when you stop relying on punching down, your comedy sucks less, because that shit isn't just marginalizing and shitty, it's also cliche and boring. And yeah, there are some people saying shitty stuff on the anti-GG side, but when I called out a RT one of my Twitter friends posted about diversity in gaming that made a problematic generalization about the racial identity of characters in Japanese games, I didn't get a bunch of aggro losers calling me misogynist slurs. Feminist Twitter in particular is really good about calling bullshit on allies (or at least the part I follow is) and being critical of its own members, and most of the really good folks actually can suppress the instinct to do the "how dare you criticize me, I'm on your siiiddde" whine dance, which really speeds up conversations.
posted by NoraReed at 10:55 PM on October 29, 2014 [22 favorites]


It's a good night. Too many great comments to pick from. This is my favorite from GamerGhazi so far. A kind message of consolation:

You've still got Milo. You've still got Breibart. You've lost so much in the last few weeks, but you've still got Cernovich. And Stormfront has your back.

It's all going to be okay.


And this might be the best thing from 8Chan:

Hey, why aren't we harassing Kluwe? It would certainly help even out the narrative that we're only harassing women.
posted by honestcoyote at 11:13 PM on October 29, 2014 [14 favorites]


Colbert asked her specifically for "three examples" of really bad games and she just wanted to talk about bad trends (which even I, a supporter, considered a bad move)

It seems to me to be of a piece with her general theory, which is that we can and do enjoy cultural content that uses problematic tropes, and that's ok. She's been pretty consistent about this over the life of Feminist Frequency, and I don't see it changing any time soon. Honestly, as someone who frequently loves problematic things, I appreciate the perspective.

One of the interesting points of contention that's been brought up on Isometric a couple of times is that Sarkeesian doesn't like Bayonetta, considering her oversexualized, but Wu adores her (Wu and Maddy Myers have been going into raptures over Bayonetta 2 for the past, like, month; it's ADORABLE).

I was really struck by how they both disagreed with Sarkeesian, though, Respectful. Recognizing her perspective. Still disagreeing. They do the same thing with each other, which is part of why I love the show.
posted by Deoridhe at 11:31 PM on October 29, 2014 [8 favorites]


On a slightly different note: this visualization of #gamergate and #notyourshield tweets, with pro on left and anti on right, is a beautiful jellyfish undergoing mitosis. Plus interesting breakdowns by age, time on twitter, retweets, et.c (by Andy Baio).
posted by msalt at 11:44 PM on October 29, 2014


I understand Anita's emphasis on General Theory, which makes her videos actually more interesting for me, but this was an interview, and one with an intentionally buffoonish interviewer, and it just made her look like she couldn't be bothered to play along... I haven't seen other interviews she's done, but if/when she faces somebody who is genuinely over-serious or even antagonistic, single-mindedness won't be an asset.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:47 PM on October 29, 2014


I mean, I know some are less bad than others, but even being duped by this requires a willingness to disbelieve women's personal experience or to believe that a few women driven out of their homes and more out of the industry is acceptable collateral damage if they can avoid thinking critically about Bayonetta's tits. All of it involves buying into a culture that not only wants me excluded from certain hobbies, but one that actively wants to harm me and live in fear.

I agree. Like I've said before, the gaming subculture, like many internet and hobbyist subcultures and fandoms, is stepped in casual misogyny.

I know this probably makes me one of those bad feminists, but the alternative is being a fucking doormat, and frankly I'm over that.

I'm just asking if there are any options besides inaction and the current approach of action.

Ignoring GamerGate doesn't mean condoning it. Can't it also be an act of refusing to give them any credence, of not feeding trolls? Couldn't we focus on empowering women to participate in games communities by marginalizing misogynists not with insults but by ignoring them, encourage female developers and journalists to work on more projects, etc. Which I'm sure all of which is already in progress. It's just there's still a lot of flame war stuff going on too, which I just think drags the right side into the same cesspool of the wrong side, and demeans both sides.

I think ultimately the best way to defeat an enemy is not with insults, but with pity. Kill them with kindness. Since compassion either doesn't apply here (or no one knows how to weaponize it appropriately for this situation), I think letting them exhaust themselves out would be a more effective way than competing with them. At the same time, of course, keep your doors locked and the report button handy.

Again, this is just my opinion.
posted by Apocryphon at 12:02 AM on October 30, 2014


I think his "name specific games thing" and her answer both were deliberate. Haven't we heard enough hysteria about how Game-of-the-Week is going to destroy society? Anita's deliberately trying not to do that, to talk about games generally. So he prods her to blame specific targets and the one she calls out is the one that at least used to be most regularly targeted like that.
posted by Sequence at 12:09 AM on October 30, 2014 [6 favorites]


Have you considered that maybe we aren't making jokes about them for their sake, but for ours? That telling us to pity and ignore these people is telling us to shut up about our own experiences with this extremely toxic subculture?
posted by NoraReed at 12:11 AM on October 30, 2014 [18 favorites]


I think that it's good to vent about the depredations of one's enemies and how they've victimized oneself. It's a therapeutic and community-strengthening process, and providing a voice to the oppressed should always be welcomed.

I'm not telling anyone anything. I'm just asking if there are any options that haven't been explored. This phenomenon has been continuing for months now. But then again, it'll probably peter out regardless if people are talking about them or not.
posted by Apocryphon at 12:17 AM on October 30, 2014


This particular fiasco has been going on for months, but harassing female players out of multiplayer games, driving developers out of the industry, campaigns of vitriol against women who speak out about gaming in public and don't say exactly the "right" thing, even the harassment of Sarkeesian herself, have been going on for years. Ignoring the trolls doesn't make them go away, it just makes them wear on you until you quit and they dominate the space, and then this happens.
posted by NoraReed at 12:20 AM on October 30, 2014 [19 favorites]


That's true. Well, I suppose ultimately the best thing about all of this is that the mainstream public is not going to be on the side of gg at all- not as if they would be in the first place, what average outside wants to associate themselves with death/rape threat senders even in the most tangential of ways? And this will bring related issues and problems to national awareness. Maybe someone will draft legislation for stronger law enforcement measures against online harassment, finally.
posted by Apocryphon at 12:22 AM on October 30, 2014


I think it's fun to jump in and tweak people from time to time, if you can keep your sense of perspective and not get caught up in the grar. But I'm a standup, so of course I think that.
posted by msalt at 12:26 AM on October 30, 2014


Sarkeesian has been getting death and rape threats for over three years. All of her public appearances for at least the last six months have been accompanied by bomb or shooting threats; she only cancelled the most recent because people in the audience would be able to be armed.
posted by Deoridhe at 12:35 AM on October 30, 2014 [4 favorites]


Sequence: I think his "name specific games thing" and her answer both were deliberate.
I really thought that since Colbert asked about the names of games that contain the sexual objectification of women, he was going for the joke where when Sarkeesian names, say Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, he writes it down while saying the name slowly. I think she saw that joke coming up 5th Avenue too, and didn't want to play along. Which is fair enough.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:47 AM on October 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


Coulda just sucked the air out of the room by saying "RapeLay".
posted by Bugbread at 12:51 AM on October 30, 2014


Ignoring GamerGate doesn't mean condoning it. Can't it also be an act of refusing to give them any credence, of not feeding trolls?

The thing is they are not trolling for lulz, they are deliberately trying to shut down discussion about misogyny. If we all ignore it then its a question of whether they can sling more shit than their targets can take. But if we talk about what is going on, well, that's exactly the kind of discussion they want to suppress.

You can't ignore them without also ignoring their targets/victims.
posted by aubilenon at 2:17 AM on October 30, 2014 [13 favorites]


I'm handling the stress of all this (and it's .. not insubstantial stress) by reading KotakuInAction posts in the voice of Paul Denton (JC's brother) from Deus Ex, while playing the UNATCO conversation music in the background. It's really shocking how well it works for a lot of these posts:
"Both are known informants too, if vids can be trusted. Wonder if this is the FBI trying to catch harassers using their old assets, or disgraced anons trying to get back in by scoring a big op. Six of one, half dozen of another I guess."

posted by jake at 2:36 AM on October 30, 2014 [9 favorites]


SomethingAwful: #CatGate
posted by Sticherbeast at 3:48 AM on October 30, 2014 [7 favorites]


Like, people won't notice your indie work until the giant evil eye sees it and complains then people will flock to it?

Oh lord, I've been doing it all wrong. Time for a new business plan.
posted by malocchio at 6:39 AM on October 30, 2014 [5 favorites]


FWIW, I think I'd probably orient by the writer of "No Tears for Dead Sluts; or Why I Have No Sympathy for Felicia Garcia". Just start there and walk as far away as possible. When you can't go any further, you've walked into the right side.

So I looked up that post, running_order_squabble_fest, and went and read it. I understand why you directed me to it, but still I wish I'd never read it, you know?

Jesus, that was vile. I feel like I need to scrub my brain clean now.
posted by misha at 9:14 AM on October 30, 2014 [4 favorites]


On the plus side, Misha, at least he apologized! He even put "apologized" in italics. What does it take?

I think that's more than the enthusiastic Gamergater who made the "Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian" flash game, for example.
posted by running order squabble fest at 9:37 AM on October 30, 2014


Yeah, Matt Forney is an Actual Factual Genuine Article Real MRA. He's fairly prominent in the Manosphere as a truth-telling tough guy, and he blocks you on Twitter if you make fun of his bad t-shirts.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 9:55 AM on October 30, 2014


Amazing. Of course, the Manosphere is pretty much all in on Gamergate, with both Return of Kings and A Voice For Men coming out in support. That's Return of Kings, the site run by "Roosh V", the author of "5 Reasons to Date a Girl with an Eating Disorder" and the "Bang $country" series of ebooks, in which he gives tips on how to have sex with women in a variety of largely economically underdeveloped countries, and A Voice for Men, whose founder Paul Elam was recently in the headlines for setting up a fake site with the same branding as Canada's anti-domestic violence White Ribbon campaign, which defended Ray Rice and solicited donations.

So, yeah. I guess what I'm saying is that the "a plague on both your houses" stuff starts to break down at a certain point. Sometimes a "moderate" position does not mean standing between two groups (in this case Gamergate and literally everyone else, who may at some point be targeted by Gamergate) and feeling superior to both - which I think is a mistake a number of people discussed here, including David Auerbach and Totalbiscuit, have made.
posted by running order squabble fest at 10:52 AM on October 30, 2014 [15 favorites]


Matt Bors drew a comic.
posted by postcommunism at 11:00 AM on October 30, 2014 [4 favorites]


Ignoring GamerGate doesn't mean condoning it. Can't it also be an act of refusing to give them any credence, of not feeding trolls?

Unfortunately, it's no longer Usenet, circa 1994. "Ignore the trolls" hasn't been a valid strategy for the last decade.

Currently my wife, who works in gaming, is scared that if she says the wrong thing at the wrong time she will be flooded with death threats- when she lay publicly said something about gamergate immediately someone tried hacking her. And the same goes for every other women who designs or plays games that I know.

To follow up on aubilenon, the goal isn't lulz, it's too silence and intimidate, primarily women, also feminists in general, and end independent criticism. They seriously won't get bored and give up.

I'm actually not adverse to a "truth and reconciliation" situation, but first of all, they have to STOP LYING. They have to completely drop the ethics in gaming bullshit, and admit to what their real goals are. If they do that, then I might be willing to talk.

I'm not telling anyone anything. I'm just asking if there are any options that haven't been explored.

Well, there's my proposal to convey the NSA into an internet police force, but people don't seem to like it for some reason. But it's still better than "ignore them and they'll go away".
posted by happyroach at 1:22 PM on October 30, 2014 [12 favorites]


Oh hey someone (most probably from) gamergate got upset and went to my blog.
posted by Theta States at 1:33 PM on October 30, 2014 [4 favorites]


I'm sort of amazed nobody's linked this yet. Probably the best commentary I've seen so far. (Adapted cartoon from killola on twitter)
posted by George_Spiggott at 2:24 PM on October 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


It's been linked over in the other thread.
posted by Lexica at 2:32 PM on October 30, 2014


Yikes Theta States.
posted by JHarris at 2:35 PM on October 30, 2014


Oh sweet tapdancing baby Buddha... this morning a friend posted something supportive of Anita Sarkeesian on Facebook, and I brought up the shitstorm on Twitter over her toxic masculinity tweet, and now I've got some douchebag friend of my friend trying to tell me that it has nothing to do with sociological influences it's because of paleoanthropology that we can't possibly expect men not to exhibit violence. See, because our prehistoric ancestors had to fight mastodons, that means men are programmed to fight and kill, and because our modern society won't let men do that, it comes out in things like this.

I'm facepalming so hard that I can't even come up with a response that doesn't employ the word bullshit.
posted by palomar at 2:38 PM on October 30, 2014 [8 favorites]


Please, "we hunted the mastodon" is such a cliche they named a blog after it. Tell him to get new material, at least.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:45 PM on October 30, 2014 [9 favorites]


Well, I finally got him to agree that what he's describing is social Darwinism... he had to go Google that first, to figure out what it meant, and then he said he absolutely agrees with that theory. It was really fun for me to send him a couple of links about social Darwinism and the Holocaust. He's gone awfully quiet now.
posted by palomar at 3:03 PM on October 30, 2014 [13 favorites]


#literalnazis
posted by Elementary Penguin at 3:05 PM on October 30, 2014 [5 favorites]


Of course, that now opens you up to Creationists arguing "Hitler believed in Evolution". You can't win.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:08 PM on October 30, 2014


See, because our prehistoric ancestors had to fight mastodons, that means men are programmed to fight and kill, and because our modern society won't let men do that, it comes out in things like this.

jesus, hasn't this guy ever heard of deer hunting?
posted by pyramid termite at 3:58 PM on October 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


Hasn't he heard of evolution? If we're stuck as mammoth hunters permanently we are screwed.
posted by brundlefly at 4:06 PM on October 30, 2014 [3 favorites]


I mean we killed off the fucking mammoths. Should we be satisfied by that?! Argh!
posted by brundlefly at 4:07 PM on October 30, 2014 [5 favorites]


jesus, hasn't this guy ever heard of deer hunting?

I'm descended from the not so vigorously alive hunters. We chased down Swedish meatballs and tacos. Occasionally macaroni and cheese.
posted by happyroach at 4:19 PM on October 30, 2014 [4 favorites]


Whenever people bring up "we hunted the mammoth"-type sentiments, I'm reminded of this classic Cosby Show bit ("This wouldn't have happened if we weren't rich." "Let me get something straight -- your mother and I are rich. You have nothing.") So, "we" didn't hunt the mammoth. Some neanderthals hunted the mammoth. You can barely manage to order a burrito at Chipotle without fucking up your order.
posted by mhum at 4:23 PM on October 30, 2014 [14 favorites]


If we're stuck as mammoth hunters permanently we are screwed.
One would hope that those who don't WANT to evolve from "mammoth hunters" would be headed for extinction, but I have to wonder if they might be better equipped for life after the Climate Change Apocalypse (only as hunters of mutated badgers and raccoons). As I've said before, a lot of the Climate Deniers are probably secretly rooting for it. And certainly their lack of human interaction will protect them from the Ebola Epidemic.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:27 PM on October 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


He came back and tried to claim that this study backs him up and proves me wrong when I say that social Darwinism is a theory that's not supported by scientific evidence.

It's at this point that I have to stop talking to him, because I keep laughing too much to respond politely.
posted by palomar at 4:52 PM on October 30, 2014


Justinian: "Everybody loves Civilization!"

Speaking of which, I just had to make a variant of this meme for my favorite incarnation of Civ.

(Also SimCity.)
posted by Rhaomi at 8:43 PM on October 30, 2014 [6 favorites]


I fixed thunderf00t's latest YouTube screed and I really want to get internet famous for making videos of assholes being interrupted by goats, or at least have assholes being interrupted by goats (and other animals) become a meme.
posted by NoraReed at 9:11 PM on October 30, 2014 [11 favorites]


Now that they're getting more attention from "moderates", the movement is getting weirder and more paranoid. I especially like the tests they've devised to tell if a new poster is a paid Gawker shill or not.

(The Gawker obsession is so weird... I assume it stems from the Sam Biddle tweets, but I wonder if they realize that publicly devoting themselves to trying to sink all of Gawker Media really does not help bolster their ethics in games journalism claims.)
posted by palomar at 9:29 PM on October 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


(Oh, and they're talking about an alleged threat that Christina Hoff Sommers received via Twitter, which reminded me about the thing where they all call her Mom. Anybody else find that really, really weird... and a strong indicator of the age group we're dealing with here?)
posted by palomar at 9:38 PM on October 30, 2014 [6 favorites]


Oh, NoraReed, that is perfect. That is exactly how long I would have lasted if I were a goat.
posted by running order squabble fest at 9:43 PM on October 30, 2014


The Disturbing Misogynist History Of GamerGate’s Goodwill Ambassadors

About KiA. Pretty sure it's all stuff that's been covered already in the threads here, but there you go.
posted by palomar at 9:50 PM on October 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yup, palomar. Kind of gross.
posted by brundlefly at 9:51 PM on October 30, 2014


Oh, and great work NoraReed. Even that little tiny out of context bit of his narration is insufferable. What a disgusting ass. Thanks for the goat.
posted by brundlefly at 9:53 PM on October 30, 2014


Brundlefly, where is Palomar's link taking you? When I click, it just takes me to the top of this post.
posted by Bugbread at 9:57 PM on October 30, 2014




Sorry, the link is here.
posted by palomar at 10:01 PM on October 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


Bugbread, I was actually referring to palomar's earlier comment about "Based Mom". Sorry, I should have been more clear.

That link isn't working for me either.
posted by brundlefly at 10:02 PM on October 30, 2014


Why do they call her "Based Mom". I don't understand. I must be way too old for this shit.
posted by Justinian at 10:03 PM on October 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


"Based" is apparently another way of saying cool or swag or something. It's new to me too. "Mom" is their word for "feeeeemale who I like for reasons other than sex". I gather.
posted by brundlefly at 10:09 PM on October 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


The link I re-posted isn't working for you? Or the previous link? One more time: HERE.

"Based" basically means good according to the urbandictionary definition. The roid lawyer gets called "based lawyer" now and then. He's a guy, so he gets to be defined by his chosen career.
posted by palomar at 10:12 PM on October 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


The previous link. I didn't see your second link until I posted.
posted by brundlefly at 10:13 PM on October 30, 2014


Mod note: Link fixed, carry on.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:21 PM on October 30, 2014


I'm handling the stress of all this (and it's .. not insubstantial stress) by reading KotakuInAction posts in the voice of Paul Denton (JC's brother) from Deus Ex, while playing the UNATCO conversation music in the background. It's really shocking how well it works for a lot of these posts

The ones where it doesn't work, you can switch in Rick from The Young Ones.
posted by rifflesby at 10:29 PM on October 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


There's now a place where you can unleash your inner Paul Denton or Rik Mayall and narrate your favorite battle cries in the War for Actually Ethics.

/r/BestOfOutrageCulture is running a Dramatic Reading Contest.
posted by honestcoyote at 10:40 PM on October 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


Some more context on the meaning of based.

What is “Based”?

In an interview with Complex, Lil’ B was asked what “based” meant:

“Based means being yourself. Not being scared of what people think about you. Not being afraid to do what you wanna do. Being positive. When I was younger, based was a negative term that meant like dopehead, or basehead. People used to make fun of me. They was like, ‘You’re based.’ They’d use it as a negative. And what I did was turn that negative into a positive. I started embracing it like, ‘Yeah, I’m based.’ I made it mine. I embedded it in my head. Based is positive.”
posted by palomar at 10:47 PM on October 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


Haha incidentally before I knew what basehead meant in drug slang, I (and at least one other person in this thread) knew it as the handle of a well-known demoscene tracker musician.... who... happened to do some of the soundtrack for the original Deus Ex.

So I'm going to make a script to replace every instance of BASED MOM with BASEHEAD MODS, and you can't stop me (Actually it's about Effects in Impulse Tracker)
posted by jake at 4:15 AM on October 31, 2014 [2 favorites]


The alternate etymology I have seen for "based journalist", "based mom" etc is that an anti-gg tweeter who misspelled "biased journalist" talking about Milo, and they starting using it to mock.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 4:40 AM on October 31, 2014


I think its current prevalence is probably a combination of the two factors: 'Based' already existed as a positive descriptor, and they use it in coded mockery of "the MSM."* The coded mockery gives them a tiny boost of in-group solidarity juice.

--
*actually using "MSM" as a term, apparently. someone tried to do the whole 'watch this youtube video for the TRUTH' thing to a friend of mine on Facebook. She's an extremely geeky & technophilic library technologist, maker, burner, decidedly feminist, and he throws out this video featuring some young fellow-traveller woman who proceeds to deploy exactly the kind of circumlocutions I hear when apparently well-meaning feminists, LGBTQ people, or PoC use when I see them trying to apologize for the Republican Party. It was cringe-inducing. Plus, he seemed to think Moot was in on the conspiracy to create the "hoax" that #gamergate was created by the #quinnspiracytheorists.
posted by lodurr at 6:04 AM on October 31, 2014


Meanwhile, a redditor complains to the BBC about b(i)ased coverage of the Utah bomb threat. The response from the BBC complaints department says:
For your information, the writers have requested interviews with Stephen Baldwin – who coined the term – as well as another leading proponent of the campaign. However, they declined. As an alternative, their views were referred to and part of a pro-Gamergate blog quoted. This was intended to make clear that many supporters of Gamergate had argued that their core demand was the better ethical standards in gaming journalism.
Epic trolling by the BBC, there.
posted by running order squabble fest at 7:44 AM on October 31, 2014 [1 favorite]


Since the gators love to buy indulgences and give to charities against bullying and etc., I wonder if they'll do a drive for this. Their tag lines could be fun things like "Gamergate supports it's victims!"
posted by papercrane at 9:45 AM on October 31, 2014 [4 favorites]


Well, gg'ers are claiming that they tracked down Anita's harasser for her, as a public service. They allege that they have shared the information with her, but she is ignoring it because catching the guy doesn't fit her image as a "professional victim."
Guys, they are totally just trying to help.

And the "based mom" thing totally goes up my ass sideways, since I am the actual mom of one of these misguided numbskulls.
posted by Biblio at 9:54 AM on October 31, 2014 [5 favorites]


The Existential Crisis of Public Life Online, Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, 30 October 2014
posted by ob1quixote at 10:50 AM on October 31, 2014 [1 favorite]


Well, gg'ers are claiming that they tracked down Anita's harasser for her, as a public service.

Notice they're using the singular there. Harasser.
posted by brundlefly at 10:59 AM on October 31, 2014 [9 favorites]


since I am the actual mom of one of these misguided numbskulls.

I am not telling you how to parent and this is mainly tongue in cheek, because I cannot imagine the anger you must be feeling: if I had a child who started professing this garbage, that child would no longer have video games or internet, or if they were old enough to be living on their own they would no longer be in communication with me, unless and until they'd completed some sort of Feminism 101 course. I mean fuck. These numbskulls.. aaaarrrgh.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:18 AM on October 31, 2014


Man, imagine what you would do if your kid became a... a... Republican.
posted by Justinian at 11:26 AM on October 31, 2014


His whole life up to this point was Feminism 101. I'm not sure what inspired him to join up with these losers. He steadfastly claims it's about ethics. Since he's away at school, there's not much I can do. I did an Ask about it when this all started and the overwhelming advice was not to sweat it too much.
posted by Biblio at 1:43 PM on October 31, 2014 [3 favorites]


His whole life up to this point was Feminism 101. I'm not sure what inspired him to join up with these losers. He steadfastly claims it's about ethics. Since he's away at school, there's not much I can do. I did an Ask about it when this all started and the overwhelming advice was not to sweat it too much.

Standard operating procedure for kids to think their parents are full of shit after they go to school. He'll grow out of it, somewhere between 4 and 20 years from now.
posted by empath at 1:49 PM on October 31, 2014 [7 favorites]


feckless fecal fear mongering: "I am not telling you how to parent and this is mainly tongue in cheek, because I cannot imagine the anger you must be feeling"

I realize you're not preaching, and what I'm about to say is also not from a place of anger, just a calm observation (and not about you, just MeFi (and the world) in general): From what I've seen, a lot of people tend very strongly to believe that whenever a kid does something bad, it stems directly from their parents and how they were raised.

Like, if you read about a kid from an abusive family who grew up to become a stellar father and start a home for children who were abused and donates half the income from his day job to giving to charities, people don't talk about how the abusive family must have been good parents and raised him well. People accept that he was good despite his upbringing. Nobody says "His dad must have been a great dad when he drunkenly beat his kids every night". Nobody says "Well, sure, his dad may have sexually abused him, but he shares some of the credit for producing such a good kid".

But when the opposite happens, when a kid from a loving family grows up to be an abuser or murderer or rapist or thief or what-have-you, people assume that the kid must have been raised wrong, that the parents were bad parents, or at least "share some of the blame". Not that they might be wholly or partly to blame, but that regardless of whether there's any evidence of bad parenting, they must be wholly or partly to blame.

And I'm not just talking horrible stuff. I'm talking everything, down to little things like "kid having a tantrum in the grocery store". There's just an assumption that people can be good despite their upbringing, but people being bad must come at least in part from their upbringing.

Sorry, little derail, but it's something that's been on my mind a lot and I never want to say it in a parenting thread because I'd probably lose my top and say it in a really bad way. Here we're all being cool and relaxed, so I can say it cool and relaxed.
posted by Bugbread at 6:30 PM on October 31, 2014 [14 favorites]


Oh, and to be superclear: Biblio, I'm not saying your kid is bad. Feckless Fecal Fear Mongering: I'm not saying you're blaming Biblio for her son being a gater. It was just the phrase "His whole life up to this point was Feminism 101. I'm not sure what inspired him to join up with these losers." that set my mind on that tangent, like the taste of a Madeleine.
posted by Bugbread at 6:35 PM on October 31, 2014


Completely get what you're saying, Bugbread, and pointed out something I should have articulated: situation like that, I don't leap to "you failed as a parent," I leap to "what the fuck is wrong with you, numbskull who believes numbskull things?"

I apologize if my words were taken in the former way and not the latter.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:05 PM on October 31, 2014 [1 favorite]


No, no, we're cool. Like I said, it was a In Search of Lost Time mental thing where my mind went out on a tangential trip.
posted by Bugbread at 7:08 PM on October 31, 2014


Oh no, your meaning was clear, but your words pointed out how unclear I was, for which I thank you.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:16 PM on October 31, 2014 [2 favorites]


Man, imagine what you would do if your kid became a... a... Republican.

Don't be cruel.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:38 PM on October 31, 2014 [1 favorite]


...to a heart that's true...

The discussion of parentage hits close to home. We have had many related issues in recent years in my household: my wife did her best (and an extremely credible bets AFAICS) to 'raise the kids right.' But we still have problems; they still do things we would have hoped they'd know better than to do, make choices we'd have hoped they'd know better than to make. Some pretty bad.

But you know what? They're growing up.

My wife learned something that made a big impact on her, and is vaguely relevant here: Nobody's really neurologically mature until they're past about 29-30. They haven't gotten there yet and they're still making progress. It's when they stop making progress long before that, or they're, say, 40 and still camping out on 8chan and haunting the manosphere that you need to worry.

OK, so you can worry now. But you know what I mean.
posted by lodurr at 3:44 AM on November 1, 2014


E.g., I know this one guy -- probably mid-50s -- who's a virulent MRA. Apparently he's been at it since the mid-90s. I don't think he's gonna change. But a 20 year old? Maybe. Even has a good shot, I'd say.

I haven't seen this here yet but it's relevant to this sub-discussion: A BBC interview with Zoe. In the video (not in the text), at aroud 1:45 or so she starts talking about how much the girls & women who are supporting gamergate remind her of herself when she was younger. Everything done for male approval, and she didn't really even realize it.

So "actually", maybe a lot of gamergaters grow up and we don't need to have long arguments about what constitutes victory or whether victims should be doing more to resist. Still, the damage in the meantime...
posted by lodurr at 3:50 AM on November 1, 2014 [4 favorites]


OK, so you can worry now. But you know what I mean.

I do know what you mean. If we decided that all people who, when young, made bad choices or believed dumb things or belonged to sub optimal social groups, well, there wouldn't be very many good people in the world. If they're still making the same bad choices or believing the same dumb things or belonging to the same social groups as adults then there may be a problem.
posted by Justinian at 4:30 AM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


I think there's a lot of distance, villainy-wise, between the kids who perpetrate the harassment and the kids who are capable of thinking you can lay down with these dogs and not catch fleas. One represents a willful disregard of other humans and willingness to actively cause harm in the name of non-existent/pissant goals. The other is more childish optimism about what sort of organization can be redeemed and a lack of fully evolved empathy.

I think that second group is enabling somewhere between a lot and a little, depending on whether they're turning their gaze away from seeing what they don't want to see or from actual incidents. But being a useful idiot at some times, particularly at a young age, is almost a requirement for life.
posted by phearlez at 8:34 AM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


One represents a willful disregard of other humans and willingness to actively cause harm in the name of non-existent/pissant goals.

This is what keeps bringing me up short: It all starts with Eron and a bunch of entitled Babbits on 4chan deciding that it was really, really important that The World be "protected" from the morally degrading presence of one particular woman. That any means of doing that was morally defensible, up to and including driving her to suicide.

Intellectually i get that people think that way. But I still can't wrap my mind around it at a gut level, to understand why anyone who professes to being an ethical human being can endorse that kind of thinking. That Zoe Quinn -- and let's not forget, gamergate started explicitly and specifically as a campaign to disgrace Zoe Quinn and ideally drive her to suicide -- is more dangerous and more threatening than any number of other people.

Whatever we say it's "actually about", we basically know that's how it started: That this whole thing was started by a bunch of guys who felt their balls shrivel up when some creepy crypto-MRA told a sob story about a girl refusing to validate his wonderfulness.
posted by lodurr at 10:01 AM on November 1, 2014 [16 favorites]


Because they don't think of it like that (except possibly a small hardcore cadre of asshole misogynists.) They don't believe that it started as a campaign to disgrace Zoe Quinn much less drive her to suicide (which I think is probably hyperbole). They believe, actually, it's about ethics in game journalism.

We might know that's ridiculous. But they don't... or they wouldn't believe it. It's like wondering how anyone who professes to being an ethical human being can disbelieve in climate change and thus endorse consigning humanity to a slow, painful extinction or believe that vaccines are evil and thus endorse the awful death of children.

The answer is that they don't actually endorse those things. They've simply come to their wrongheaded beliefs in a way that doesn't make sense to us, just as the decent people who may be GamerGaters have come to their beliefs in a way that doesn't make sense to us.
posted by Justinian at 12:08 PM on November 1, 2014 [2 favorites]


I'm not convinced the don't know it. So far whenever I've asserted strongly outside of a gater stronghold (e.g., on Facebook) that evidence exists, that I found it convincing, etc., I've seen positions modified to 'well it's not about that anymore.' When I point out that they have the option of creating a new movement around a different tag that doesn't happen to be poisoned, the conversation stops. Cold.

To me that says that they're rationalizing around what they know.

Basically they are stronger of will when they're playing on fields where they feel at home and can function with some degree of remove. When you can engage them in a space where their RL identity is visible, they are much less persistent.

(I haven't yet had the misfortune to engage conspiratorialist gaters yet on Facebook, but that will go just like it does with MRAs or Moon Hoaxers or Truthers, and I don't have illusions about that.)
posted by lodurr at 1:26 PM on November 1, 2014 [6 favorites]


Eron was spiteful, petty and vindictive to passively aggressively post his epic screed about Zoe on the Internet. It was a sucky thing to do. He could have, and should have, realized the potential harassment he was setting her up for when he posted it. At the very least, he has a lot of growing up to do. If he wrote AskMe before posting it, I would have advised him to get it all out of his system by writing it down and then burning his notes instead. If he wrote an Ask now, I would be all up in there suggesting therapy to him, and to any potential partners for their own benefit as well.

My stance on this whole issue is pretty strongly in the, "No one deserves to be harassed" camp. You have a problem with something someone does? Call that person out on their actions, don't go threatening them and their families or inciting others to do so.

That this whole thing was started by a bunch of guys who felt their balls shrivel up when some creepy crypto-MRA told a sob story about a girl refusing to validate his wonderfulness.

Really, you are characterizing Zoe's behavior as just "not validating his wonderfulness"?

I don't think it is unreasonable, or suggestive of entitlement of any kind, when you are in a relationship, to expect your significant other not to cheat on you repeatedly and then lie about it to cover it up, while gaslighting you that it is all in your head and nothing is going on.

That is a shitty thing to do, even if we don't personally like the person who was cheated on. It shouldn't make a difference, but in case it does, don't forget other people were hurt by Zoe's actions, too; one of the men she had a sexual relationship with was married, and his wife was also hurt by their actions.

We get questions from people in AskMe all the time from people who have been cheated on, and been so hurt by the experience they it has affected their future relationships; they find it hard to trust anyone ever again. If one of them wrote an AdkMe, I can't imagine replying with, "Spare me your sob story, you are just upset that your ex refused to validate your wonderfulness." If you can't either, maybe you will get why I think the way you are whitewashing Zoe's actions here is uncool.
posted by misha at 3:02 PM on November 1, 2014 [2 favorites]


If anyone wants to talk about Zoe for whatever reason, keep in mind that you only have her ex's side of the story, because she has quite reasonably decided that she's not going to talk about it since it's nobody else's business.
posted by Corinth at 3:25 PM on November 1, 2014 [15 favorites]


Well, somethng that Gamergate (and, it turns out, misha) has to believe in order to make this work is that everything said about Zoe Quinn is completely true. Hence Mike Cernovich investigating her having killed a man, because someone else said that she had told them that she had killed a man.

It's troopergate, basically. Standard MO.
posted by running order squabble fest at 3:51 PM on November 1, 2014 [6 favorites]


Given that Zoe's ex spent a month publicity declaiming her harassment while he was helping organize it in private on IRC, I don't really consider him that trustworthy.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 3:57 PM on November 1, 2014 [11 favorites]


It shouldn't make a difference, but in case it does

It doesn't, full stop.

Whatever her behaviors were, they had zero bearing on gaming, or ethics in journalism, or the combination thereof. It isn't "whitewashing" to think that their personal life has fuck-all to do with the current state of affairs, and their parroting of that line of reasoning is contributing to the problem.
posted by zombieflanders at 4:02 PM on November 1, 2014 [13 favorites]


maybe you will get why I think the way you are whitewashing Zoe's actions here is uncool.

Well, it's been clear that every time a butthurt male says something about an ex, taking that at face value is obviously the only sane interpretation. And obviously the fact that she was unfaithful to her boyfriend logically requires that we conclude that we need to reform ethics in journalism, because ethics in journalism is all about what Zoe did. Also, Benghazi. Are we going to let the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi blind us to what Zoe Quinn did?
posted by dhartung at 4:03 PM on November 1, 2014 [2 favorites]


And obviously the fact that she was unfaithful to her boyfriend logically requires that we conclude that we need to reform ethics in journalism

Misha has said repeatedly throughout this thread that she thinks the gamergate people are wrong and that their claims about "ethics in journalism" are bogus. I know nothing either way about Zoe Quinn, but it's pretty self-evident that Misha is not saying that "Zoe Quinn is evil, therefore the GamerGaters are right and their cause is righteous!"
posted by yoink at 4:13 PM on November 1, 2014 [3 favorites]


Wow, misha, please don't do this. Spreading someone's sex life across the Internet was a hateful thing to do. It's none of our business. This isn't an AskMe, and even if it was, sliming a person by their real name based on another person's account would be very wrong.
posted by zompist at 4:25 PM on November 1, 2014 [15 favorites]


I've seen quite a few comments online speculating about the mothers of the gators. Like "didn't their mothers teach them how to act?" Even in the context of feminist blogs I've been to it seems that people are quick to blame the mom.
I raised my sons to stand up and fight for what they believe in. I also raised them not to hurt anyone., so I'll have to see how he balances those. I really do think that my older son is like a lot of participants in this disaster-autistic, naive, socially struggling and eager to belong to a greater cause. This unfortunately makes him just right to be a foot soldier for somebody with nefarious intent.
posted by Biblio at 4:45 PM on November 1, 2014 [7 favorites]


misha: Eron was spiteful, petty and vindictive to passively aggressively post his epic screed...

If there was something passive-aggressive about that action, then I must have missed it, because from where I'm sitting it was flat-out aggressive. And when we take into account his own pathologically narcissistic rationalizations about his actions, it starts to look psychotic.

Really, you are characterizing Zoe's behavior as just "not validating his wonderfulness"?

I take it as given that I have no idea what Zoe's actual behavior was prior to this post, other than that it clearly failed to validate Eron Gjoni's sense of his own wonderfulness. But given what he's said since then, I think it's likely he's fantasized or fabulized most of it.
posted by lodurr at 5:52 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


Eron was spiteful, petty and vindictive to passively aggressively post his epic screed about Zoe on the Internet. It was a sucky thing to do. He could have, and should have, realized the potential harassment he was setting her up for when he posted it.

The 4chan logs show that Eron knew exactly what he was doing. The harassment wasn't some kind of horrible side effect, the harassment was the goal from the very beginning.
posted by Proofs and Refutations at 5:56 PM on November 1, 2014 [9 favorites]


Gjoni is the kind of dude who is capable of this type of moral reasoning:
From strictly utilitarian terms, the probabilistic risk she posed to those around her was greater than the probabilistic risk posed by the situation turning toxic. The deontological problem of a false idol struck us as more grievous than the deontological problem of potential for a false idol to be harassed.
Let's be precise, here: This is someone saying "it is morally right for me to ruin someone's life because I did a flow chart that established to my satisfaction that she might hurt someone in the future."

Just in case this isn't clear, I'll swing my sledgehammer of sarcasm and recast Eron Gjoni's words as they might be framed by a random internet.vigilante: "From strictly utilitarian terms, the probabilistic risk Eron poses to those around him is greater than the probabilistic risk posed by the situation turning toxic. The deontological problem of a false idol strikes me as more grievous than the deontological problem of potential for a false idol to be harassed."
posted by lodurr at 6:02 PM on November 1, 2014 [7 favorites]


Biblio - I think something like "didn't their mothers teach them how to act?" is to a significant extent another expression of the kind of background-radiation misogyny of the kinds of culture most of the commenters on this are coming from. To an extent it may also be about people trying to find an explanation that makes sense to them for something totally inexplicable to them, of course. But yeah, it doesn't feel helpful. Mothers have been looking at their children going off the rails and wondering what they did wrong since forever, and media has been shaming them...

In most cases, youthful rebellion-for-rebellion's-sake straightens out over time, and I think for a lot of people involved with Gamergate this is basically that - something which conventional society disapproves of, and a way to join a community that obsessively tells itself how incredible they are as people, what incredible things they are achieving, how they are changing the world and so on. You can see people who start expressing gamergate-sympathetic opinions being relentlessly courted by gaters, and I think - especially if you're a relatively isolated young person - that kind of relentless positive affirmation can be incredibly tempting.

I'd imagine that in a few years a lot of slightly older men are going to look back at what they did during this bout of Salem-ing with incredulity. In most cases, it won't have any long-term effect on them or their prospects, since they have remained anonymous. For someone named as a Gamergate supporter, who is subsequently looking for work in game dev, there may be adverse consequencess... (Or, I guess, positive ones, depending on where they're applying).
posted by running order squabble fest at 6:31 PM on November 1, 2014 [2 favorites]


Zoe wrote this on her Tumblr: An Open Letter To People Calling For Neutrality.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 6:44 PM on November 1, 2014 [17 favorites]


Okay, the American Pie one made me laugh.
posted by RobotHero at 6:59 PM on November 1, 2014


Let's be precise, here: This is someone saying "it is morally right for me to ruin someone's life because I did a flow chart that established to my satisfaction that she might hurt someone in the future."

Eron claims that harassment of female developers is Zoe's fault for cheating on him. He's a complete and irredeemable piece of shit.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:42 PM on November 1, 2014 [11 favorites]


Pope Guilty: "Eron claims that harassment of female developers is Zoe's fault for cheating on him."

He's actually claiming the opposite, but he's still an irredeemable piece of shit.
That is, the part from the "i.e." part forward is meant to mean "Zoey did A. So I did B. So other people did C. Saying it's my fault for doing B is just picking a random part of the chain and placing the blame there. You might as well say Zoey is at fault for doing A."

It doesn't make him less of a piece of shit, but it's not a quote saying that it's Zoey's fault that female devs are being harassed.

(Now, honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if there were some other quote which said just that, it just isn't this quote.)
posted by Bugbread at 8:13 PM on November 1, 2014 [2 favorites]


Wait, "claiming the opposite" isn't quite the right phrasing.
posted by Bugbread at 9:02 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


It doesn't make him less of a piece of shit, but it's not a quote saying that it's Zoey's fault that female devs are being harassed.

Well, yes. It is precisely that. He's saying that the harassment women are getting is Quinn's fault, because she was willing to risk them being harassed as a result of him writing and publishing his megapost as a response to her actions. He is directly disclaiming responsibility for the consequences of his actions and blaming Zoe Quinn.
posted by running order squabble fest at 9:08 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


A couple of Eron Gjoni's latest tweets helped refresh my memory on what an incredible dick he is.
posted by palomar at 9:36 PM on November 1, 2014 [5 favorites]


Oh yes. Also I made a meme and started a movement that has reformed news media and donated over $100k to various causes. Continue hiring me.
I... feel that life may not treat this dude the way he wants it to treat him.
posted by running order squabble fest at 9:46 PM on November 1, 2014 [3 favorites]


Mod note: One comment deleted. Let's just stick more to the topic, please, rather than bringing up meta issues about what sorts of responses or phrasing are okay, comments about flagging, etc. Metatalk is the option for this.
posted by taz (staff) at 11:35 PM on November 1, 2014


Well, yes. It is precisely that.

If you interpret it that way, what does the "arbitrarily down a causal chain" part mean?
posted by Bugbread at 11:46 PM on November 1, 2014


OK, bottom line- it's nobody's goddamn business what Zoey's private life is like. Period.

Anyway...

I'd imagine that in a few years a lot of slightly older men are going to look back at what they did during this bout of Salem-ing with incredulity

You know, I hope so, but the MRA and PU and antifeminist and "Oh God I'm unwillingly celibate" groups have plenty of men in their thirties and older. I suspect that quite a few of these guys may be locked into the mode of "It's feminists fault for everything" for the rest of their life.
posted by happyroach at 12:31 AM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


I'm not sure if it's an autocorrect error gone contagious or what, but Quinn's first name isn't spelled with a y. It's just 'Zoe'.
posted by NoraReed at 1:15 AM on November 2, 2014 [2 favorites]


... what does the "arbitrarily down a causal chain" part mean?

It means "I'm going to give you an example of insinuation..."
posted by lodurr at 4:40 AM on November 2, 2014


If you interpret it that way, what does the "arbitrarily down a causal chain" part mean?

He means "It's not my fault that these gamergaters are harassing and threatening women just because I went to a lot of effort to whip them up into a fury with the specific purpose of getting them to harass and threaten a woman! It was Zoe's fault, for making me mad!"

Or, more simply, he's saying that if you didn't want him to punch you, you shouldn't have made him angry, and really it's your own fault.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:54 AM on November 2, 2014 [3 favorites]


I'm not disagreeing, but I totally don't understand what you're saying, lodurr, and while I think I understand you, Pope Guilty, I don't see how it relates to the "arbitrarily down a causal chain" bit.

Like, the way I read it he's talking about a causal chain which extends from the present time back to the big bang. "People threatened women. This was caused by my posting shit about Zoey. That was caused by Zoey cheating on me. That was caused by me dating Zoey. That was caused by us running into each other on the same train. That was caused by me missing my usual train. That was caused by my alarm clock not going off because it ran out of batteries." (etc.) (actual background is entirely fictional, I don't actually know how they met/dated) So he's saying "Hey, it's not my fault that people threatened women. That's on the harassers, not me. Putting the blame on me is just picking an arbitrary point on the causal chain. You could just as well say it was Zoey's fault for cheating in the first place. And you wouldn't say that, right? So, by the same logic, you can't be pinning this on me, either". It's a bullshit argument, but it seems that that's the argument that he's making, which is why he says "you are assigning blame arbitrarily down a causal chain" instead of just saying "Yes I regret Zoe was willing to risk doing this to those women."

Now, lodurr, you're saying it means "I'm going to give you an example of insinuation", but I don't get how "you are assigning blame arbitrarily down a causal chain" would mean that, plus I don't really understand what the sentence "Yes I regret Zoe was willing to risk doing this to those women, I.e. I'm going to give you an example of insinuation" means.

And Pope Guilty, it reads like what you're saying is about the first half of the tweet, and not the "I.e. you are assigning blame arbitrarily down a causal chain" part at all.

Now, what I'm thinking is that maybe you're interpreting him as using "arbitrarily" to mean "at the wrong point"? Because then your interpretation makes total sense. "Yes I regret Zoe was willing to risk doing this to those women, I.e. you are assigning blame at the wrong point in a causal chain". That would totally be "It's not my fault, it's her fault".

But if he used "arbitrarily" to mean "arbitrarily", it seems to point more at him saying "Hey, pinning the blame on me is just as off-base as pinning the blame on her, and you wouldn't do that, right? So if you wouldn't blame her, don't blame, either!"

Like I said, I think he's an asshole, and the IRC stuff makes it pretty clear that pinning the blame on him is not picking an "arbitrary" point, but picking in fact a "really accurate" point. So this is just a super minor point on interpretation of a single comment. Like talking about if Pol Pot kicked a particular puppy on a particular day. It doesn't really affect whether or not Pol Pot was a good or justified person.
posted by Bugbread at 5:21 AM on November 2, 2014


The "causal chain of events", as Eron sees it, is:

Zoe cheats on Eron -> Eron incites massive harassment and threats against Zoe -> the mob he stirred up harasses and threatens other women

He's saying that blaming him for inciting the harassment is an arbitrary point to assign blame at and that the correct point to assign blame at is Zoe for cheating on him- fundamentally denying that he had any agency or choice.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:26 AM on November 2, 2014 [2 favorites]


Ok, so you're interpreting "arbitrary" as "incorrect". That makes sense. I guess I can see it as either interpretation, now. Thanks.
posted by Bugbread at 5:28 AM on November 2, 2014


it's bullshit, because women were already being harassed in the gaming community - what he's really saying is "it wasn't my fault there was gasoline all over the floor when i threw that match"
posted by pyramid termite at 5:29 AM on November 2, 2014 [3 favorites]


yes, he's dogwhistling.

pyramid termite, yes, he is saying that, but he's also saying "and anyway it was OK because Reasons." (Don't forget that focus group and those flow charts. Don't ever forget them.)
posted by lodurr at 5:38 AM on November 2, 2014 [2 favorites]


It seems like the usual bully's defensive rationalization. "What I did was inevitable, morally neutral, a mere fact." Pretty gross.
posted by fleacircus at 6:40 AM on November 2, 2014 [2 favorites]


From /r/GamerGhazi: I was a moderator of KotakuInAction. AMA
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:55 AM on November 2, 2014 [2 favorites]


Someone asks him if he has any regrets, seeing as his actions caused women to be harrassed out of their homes...

Yes, I regret Zoe was willing to risk doing this to those women. I.e, you are assigning blame arbitrarily down a causal chain

A couple of people give him pushback for seemingly blaming Zoe and he says...

I'm asking why the blame for her terrible behavior falls on me for simply speaking out.

Sure seems to me like he's saying it's her fault because of things she did, and all he did was "speak out" about those things, so it isn't his fault all this shit has happened.
posted by Orb at 9:07 AM on November 2, 2014 [8 favorites]


Well, this is interesting. I decided to do some reading and see what CH Sommers is all about. Turns out, before she was an anti-feminist feminist, she was writing about ethics in education. She was concerned that children were being educated with ethics, but without virtue, i.e. traditional middle class morals. One of the ways she proposed teaching morals was through instructive stories. "Children should be told stories that reinforce goodness." I wonder if she considers what the moral effect of the stories video games tell have on young minds? After all, if you can positively impact moral development via story, couldn't you do the opposite? She also thought schools put too much emphasis on "tolerance" which is funny, since in her latest video I believe she talks positively about how tolerant gamer gaters are.
Just some thoughts.
posted by Biblio at 11:20 AM on November 2, 2014


I couldn't stay away from this post forever!

So GamerGate is going nuts because two of their leaders had a life stream where one of the participants discussed in detail how the holocaust was impossible, another got a blow job, among various other complete insanities. It is easy to find.

I haven't heard it yet, but eagerly anticipate some true batshit insanity from the MRA crowd( and let's be honest, that's what this movement derives its momentum from)
posted by Yowser at 11:34 AM on November 2, 2014 [2 favorites]


I was a moderator of KiA. Ask me anything!
I was a mod of KiA. After some drama I walked off with the entirety of their mod mail, private moderator subreddit, and loads of gossip. So AMA.

Just remember though, that this AMA is totally about ethics in journalism.
posted by palomar at 11:43 AM on November 2, 2014 [4 favorites]


For a moment there I was going to say, "it's not nice to say that it's insane to think that a gamer gator would get a blowjob" but then I realized you meant that they got a blowjob during the live stream which sort of fits into this clown show.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 12:09 PM on November 2, 2014 [4 favorites]


I'm disappointed that Wordpress Inc continues to host Eron's hate blog. It seems to me that they have no obligation to keep this crap on their servers.
posted by humanfont at 12:35 PM on November 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


Stress-reducing brain blast:
I wanted you guys to know that I've been talking to people in private, individual GG supporters, avoiding tit-for-tat arguments where we just go back and forth linking to "proof" or "refutations" or trying to win points -- just talking to them about our viewpoints and why we each feel the way we do.

Of maybe 25 people I've talked to privately, about a dozen of the conversations have resulted in the other person doing some soul-searching, even agreeing to stop using the tag, resolving to shut down knee-jerk Twitter responses and conversational vitriol, even if it doesn't rise to the level of threats or actionable harassment. The toxic tone of everyday back-and-forth is what I'm most troubled by; the extreme MRA/redpill fringe is way beyond hope, but I don't think individual people are.

If there's anything I've found, it's that GGers are NOT idiots, they're usually pretty damn smart, and intelligence and empathy are sometimes at odds. Sometimes they're (like me) somewhere on the autistic spectrum, sometimes they're just uncertain about the impact that a changing social landscape will have on their hobby, sometimes they're young people who feel good about being part of a social movement for the first time in their lives, and don't fully appreciate the damage it's caused, because people they look up to are downplaying or dismissing it.

But even the discussions where we "agreeed to disagree" have been worthwhile, because they've come away from it with a better understanding that there are human beings on "the other side," not so easily painted with caricatures.

If we can get individual people to stop feeling vilified and condescended to, I think we can reach them and help them learn that feminist critique isn't going to wreck our industry or our hobby, and will only expand it to safely include more people.

I've been really really scared (cowardly, even) about speaking out publicly against GG. I have juuuust enough people following me that anything I say can / will be used against me and my family, and cause the companies I work with to get mail-bombed. I don't want to be a target, but I'm angry as hell that women and other minorities don't have that choice; they are targets just because they exist. Until they feel completely safe and welcome in my industry, and are allowed to be critical and even advocate for change without being shouted down or intimidated, I can't just sit back and watch.

I'll say it here. If anyone reading this is active on KiA and wants to have a RESPECTFUL, FRIENDLY talk about this stuff with an ultra-hardcore gamer and super-active industry person who completely understands where you're coming from, and simply disagrees with the "take-no-prisoners" approach to change, please get in touch with me via Twitter (@virtjk) and I will treat you with kindness and confidentiality, and actually listen to you.

For all the amazing articles that have been written, I feel that opening hearts and minds one by one is the only way we're going to resolve this, and marginalize the true haters and abusers.
posted by jake at 2:54 PM on November 2, 2014 [14 favorites]




Wow. That was dumb. Is Vox trying to be Slater than Slate?
posted by octothorpe at 5:09 PM on November 2, 2014 [4 favorites]


What was with the numbered paragraphs? Was that supposed to make it look more authoritatively aphoristic? It just put me off the whole thing from the start.

I actually don't think it's making dumb points, but the way that it's packaged is distracting and unhelpful. And strenuously as Klein tries to insist that we can't forget about the abuse, and as careful as he is about establishing the demographics of partisanship up front, he makes some problematically evidence-free characterizations throughout.

Overall, it's a piece that should have been written differently, better supported, and better argued, and it's disappointing considering the author. But I suppose I may in general expect too much from the current iteration of 'Ezra Klein.'
posted by lodurr at 6:14 PM on November 2, 2014 [2 favorites]


Okay so I couldn't shut my brain off on this issue, and I just wrote a lengthy blog post about my views on it. I'm sorry for the self-link, but as a longstanding Mefite, I am curious to know what you folks think about it, because I value your opinions on this stuff and this is driving me nuts.
posted by jake at 6:45 PM on November 2, 2014 [4 favorites]


Ezra Klein has always, always been terrible on women's issues. Ignoring anything he has to say about anything relating to women is a good idea.
posted by winna at 5:27 AM on November 3, 2014 [1 favorite]


But being against, say, marriage equality really can be dangerous right now. Remember when the CEO of Mozilla was driven from his job because he donated, as a private citizen, to a campaign against gay marriage? It's easy to imagine a reverse Gamergate that's much more effective in tearing revenue from rightwing media outlets that place themselves on the wrong side of a social justice fight. In the long-run, that would be a disaster for the media as a whole. My hope — and my guess — is that advertisers and web services will quickly acclimate to this new climate and these new organizing tactics, just as they have in the past. But ugly stuff can happen in transition.

For example, here's the threat to which he actually devotes a whole numbered paragraph, as opposed to a couple of brief references to women being driven from their homes and being forced to cancel public appearances by organized violent threats.

It's dangerous to be opposed to marriage equality! Poor CEO! Poor media outlets who might lose revenue!
posted by winna at 5:31 AM on November 3, 2014 [13 favorites]




Good god. Not only can they not tell two Asian men apart, but they frequently call Arthur Chu a banana when they "apologize" to him.

I'm sure there are probably some worthwhile people in the Gamergate movement, if you have unbelievable patience... but I do not. When I see the public face of the movement constantly doing this, it makes me so sad. Because I have to be in society with these people for a number of decades more, and I don't really have a lot of faith that the younger members will grow up and become decent people that are worth knowing.
posted by palomar at 10:30 AM on November 3, 2014 [1 favorite]




Eron Gjoni's female friend that encouraged him to kick off this whole mess with his little blog post posted a story to Medium about it. Lots and lots and lots of justifications based on how Zoe Quinn deserved what she got because she was a shitty girlfriend.

But it's totally about ethics in games journalism. Right?
posted by palomar at 12:23 PM on November 3, 2014 [7 favorites]


The irony of her post is that she talks a lot about how her own life was impacted by harassment, and how it had a detrimental effect on her career... but really, Zoe Quinn deserves the same exact things to happen to her, because she was shitty to her boyfriend, and you can't believe any of her lies anyway, because we're the good guys.

What the everloving fuck is wrong with these people?
posted by palomar at 12:27 PM on November 3, 2014 [12 favorites]


The creepiest part about that is that she never really sees everything that comes afterward as a problem. She makes some noises about how horrible harassment is, and then concludes that what really sucks is to be Eron Gjoni (and to a certain extent, his friends and/or a "moderate" #gamergate supporter). I got to the end, and her attitude of "All of this? Totally worth it." was so palpable that I was actually surprised she didn't just come out and say it.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:09 PM on November 3, 2014 [1 favorite]


Worth noting: This is basically confirmation that the decision-endorsing part of Eron's "approaching statistically significant" focus group was him and his new girlfriend.
posted by lodurr at 1:21 PM on November 3, 2014 [10 favorites]


Is his new girlfriend his left hand?
posted by humanfont at 1:31 PM on November 3, 2014


The author is Eron's girlfriend? Something something ethics in Medium essays.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 1:32 PM on November 3, 2014 [3 favorites]


I got to the end, and her attitude of "All of this? Totally worth it." was so palpable that I was actually surprised she didn't just come out and say it.

Well, Quinn gets smeared is the important thing, and that's a victory over the men who harassed and abused the author because
posted by fleacircus at 1:36 PM on November 3, 2014 [2 favorites]


No, well, she doesn't say she's his new girlfriend. She's his friend.

I said she's his new girlfriend.

Admittedly, I'm parsing sentences like "he day after we saw Edge of Tomorrow and got really fantastically drunk (he drew powered exo-suits in condensation on the bar while I yelled about tachyon biology), this friend got back together with his girlfriend, which was cool" through my filter of once having been a young geek who was fascinated by charismatic, manipulative, drama-addicted people.
posted by lodurr at 1:41 PM on November 3, 2014 [1 favorite]


i miss the good old days when 20-somethings with relationship problems just talked to one another and their friends instead of everybody with a web browser
posted by pyramid termite at 1:55 PM on November 3, 2014 [13 favorites]


Yeah, if she's not his new girlfriend, then she really really wants to be. I would say that's sad, because he seems like not a great guy to be involved with and she could do better, but... if she's the kind of person that does things like this, then maybe she's right where she's supposed to be. Mazel tov, honey.
posted by palomar at 1:55 PM on November 3, 2014 [1 favorite]


Ahh, the stank of overshared dirty millenial laundry. Breathe it in.

What in the hell was the point of that article?
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:00 PM on November 3, 2014 [4 favorites]


Some really weird projection in there.
posted by Artw at 2:06 PM on November 3, 2014


i miss the good old days when 20-somethings with relationship problems just talked to one another and their friends instead of everybody with a web browser

Or at very least posted anon on AskMe.
posted by holgate at 3:21 PM on November 3, 2014 [3 favorites]


Over at KiA, where Eron Gjoni is eating up all the praise for his friend's Medium post, someone says, "I thought GamerGate was about harassment." Eron responds, posting under the name qrios:
No, we've been seriously slacking on the harassment front. Luckily, the media hasn't caught on, and we still get all of the harassment points.

If anyone had any questions left about Eron Gjoni's character, just follow him around on Reddit for a bit and see how you feel about him after that.
posted by palomar at 5:08 PM on November 3, 2014 [1 favorite]


what really sucks is to be Eron Gjoni

I think this is true. It must suck to wake up every morning and still be Eron Gjoni with no chance of relief.
posted by Joey Michaels at 6:05 PM on November 3, 2014 [7 favorites]


If anyone had any questions left about Eron Gjoni's character, just follow him around on Reddit for a bit and see how you feel about him after that.

Apparently if you talk about him enough, he'll follow you around on Reddit. I imagine he's kind of like Candyman: say his name three times, and he'll stalk you, but instead of with bees it's, I dunno, ethics or something.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:23 PM on November 3, 2014


If anyone had any questions left about Eron Gjoni's character, just follow him around on Reddit for a bit and see how you feel about him after that.

I think I'd rather play in my own feces.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:27 PM on November 3, 2014 [2 favorites]


Apparently if you talk about him enough, he'll follow you around on Reddit. I imagine he's kind of like Candyman: say his name three times, and he'll stalk you, but instead of with bees it's, I dunno, ethics or something.

Hornets, actually.
posted by running order squabble fest at 7:03 PM on November 3, 2014


"oh god I said Bloody Gjoni into my monitor 3 times and now he won't stop messaging me on reddit"
posted by NoraReed at 9:00 PM on November 3, 2014 [1 favorite]




Was just coming here to post that picture.

I do miss the image tag here. I think all GG threads could be closed with this image because it really says it all.
posted by honestcoyote at 9:23 PM on November 3, 2014


it's missing the massive sewer leak under the treehouse dropping shit everywhere and the sniper keeping people from going home though
posted by NoraReed at 9:36 PM on November 3, 2014 [6 favorites]




Wow, Corinth, that's so wonderful and perfect. Apparently the artist who made the image is "Stup-Jam." (The "Treehouse" post is here.)
posted by taz at 12:40 AM on November 4, 2014 [2 favorites]


So, GamerGaters are being fooled by Eliza. I'd be depressed about that if they weren't getting exactly what was coming to them.
posted by JHarris at 1:00 AM on November 4, 2014 [5 favorites]


Why do you think they weren't getting exactly what was coming to them?
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:04 AM on November 4, 2014 [14 favorites]


Er, I did think they were? Getting what they deserve? That being, the ignominy of being fooled by a simple 60s AI that I once read source code for in David Ahl's 101 Basic Computer Games?
posted by JHarris at 2:16 AM on November 4, 2014 [3 favorites]


JHarris, tell us how you feel about That being, the ignominy of being fooled by a simple 60s AI that I once read source code for in David Ahl's 101 Basic Computer Games?
posted by rifflesby at 2:38 AM on November 4, 2014 [27 favorites]


Speaking of, if you play World of Warcraft, you may be interested to know that Automatic Goblin Therapist, which implements ELIZA as a chat addon, has just been updated.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:21 AM on November 4, 2014 [4 favorites]


Based Mombot
posted by NoraReed at 5:43 AM on November 4, 2014 [2 favorites]


Based Wombat
posted by taz at 6:15 AM on November 4, 2014 [2 favorites]


JHarris, tell us how you feel about That being, the ignominy of being fooled by a simple 60s AI that I once read source code for in David Ahl's 101 Basic Computer Games?

>You're not really talking about me, are you?
posted by JHarris at 8:44 AM on November 4, 2014 [12 favorites]


Ceci n'est pas une JHarris.
posted by lodurr at 11:26 AM on November 4, 2014 [3 favorites]


You're not really talking about me, are you?

would it bother you if we were talking about you instead of taco sauce and bowling?
posted by pyramid termite at 1:54 PM on November 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


Firefox's Open Standard blog published Yes, #Gamergate is an Ed-tech Issue, but apparently got some complaints, so they also posted the rebuttal Yes, #Gamergate is Everyone's Issue.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 2:11 PM on November 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


Someone made this image. It's cute!

Now picturing #GG as G.R.O.S.S. (Get Rid of Slimy girlS) from Calvin and Hobbes.
posted by Pink Frost at 2:24 PM on November 4, 2014 [2 favorites]


That rebuttal is some pretty weak sauce.
posted by Lexica at 2:27 PM on November 4, 2014 [5 favorites]


From the comments on the first Firefox link:
It's as if this author has just discovered trolling, but doesn't realize it's within the normal range of internet relations. Greater society can mock all it wants, but it can't change the fact that trolling is common, normal, and expected. If you don't understand, you're clearly very new to the internet. You're a newbie. Spend some more time, figure out that not every word should be taken seriously. Otherwise we're all just victims here, and that is a joke. Why would women be immune from trolling? Equality in trolling, that's what the internet gives you. By specifically singling out women's harrassment you are minimizing/ignoring men's harassment. Why aren't the articles about PEOPLE? Why must you divide us by gender? Why do you feed the trolls?
... which pretty much summarizes the problem in a nutshell: Some people are very, very happy with a status quo where "trolling is common, normal, and expected."

The rest of us want to live in a world that won't devolve into chaos if the clocks stop working right.
posted by lodurr at 5:11 AM on November 5, 2014 [5 favorites]


Lexica: That rebuttal is some pretty weak sauce.

What it is to me is a massive exercise in point-missing. Why, yes, a couple of high-profile gaters got threatened. What does that have to do with the piece that you're attempting to "rebut", which isn't in any way impacted by anything you're saying?

That's what a lot of #gamergate rhetoric looks like to me, especially a lot of the "anti-SJW" stuff: It's a combination of over-reaction, disinterest in reading at any deeper than a skim-level, high sensitivity to dog whistles -- all manifesting as missing the point. It starts to look willful after a short while, but in many cases I think it's just really bad training and poor self-regulation skills.

It reminds me substantially of the argument over "trigger warnings", which was mostly a bunch of people complaining bitterly that something super horrible might possibly happen if people went ahead and did this terrible awful thing that nobody in the world was actually trying to do.
posted by lodurr at 5:20 AM on November 5, 2014 [3 favorites]




(Spoilers: Actually, it's about ethics in video games journalism.)
posted by running order squabble fest at 6:16 AM on November 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


Someone dismantles the mansplaining, point by point.
posted by murphy slaw at 6:49 AM on November 5, 2014 [12 favorites]


Corinth: "#Gamergate Can't Tell Two Asian Men Apart (But they're pretty sure that one of them is a racist.)"

This is exemplifying to me the sort of internet interactions that I think allow something like GamerGate to continue as long as it has.

To explain: if a Gator thinks Arthur Chu is a neo-nazi, he's going to tell everyone. He's going to be shouting it from rooftops. If he discovers that he was mistaken, how much time and energy will he spend correcting the misinformation he's just spread?


A similar thing comes up in the TotalBiscuit post, "THIS CLAIM APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN MANUFACTURED SOMEWHERE DOWN THE LINE AND REPEATED ENOUGH TIMES THAT PEOPLE BELIEVE IT" though in that case it's fairly neutral misinformation. By neutral I mean I don't think anyone is making either pro-GG or anti-GG case based on it. It is just the distinction that Gjoni did not specifically accuse Grayson of reviewing Depression Quest positively. Something that oddly enough, I didn't believe. I believed that accusation came from the proto-gater BurgersAndFries crowd, but not from Gjoni himself. I guess my sources of information weren't repeating that particular manufactured claim as much as TotalBiscuit's were. But yeah, you keep telling me all about GamerGate, T.B.

And while the source of the accusation is neutral (unless you're really concerned about the character of Eron Gjoni, I guess) the accusation itself was a major rallying point for early GamerGate and would have followed a similar pattern of MANUFACTURED CLAIM REPEATED ENOUGH TIMES THAT PEOPLE BELIEVE IT, and like the "Arthur Chu is a neo-nazi" meme, when/if a Gator realizes there's no substance behind the claim, I doubt they put as much effort into correcting the falsehood as they put into spreading it. They just shift their efforts onto some new rationalization for GamerGate.
posted by RobotHero at 9:28 AM on November 5, 2014


Total Biscuit appears to have gone all-in with the Kool-Aid. Too bad. Ah, well, there's always Yahtzee.
posted by Justinian at 9:39 AM on November 5, 2014


Dear diary, today I read an article by a YouTube personality trying to explain the merits of literally the stupidest thing on the internet

Maybe it's time to find an outdoor hobby
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:42 AM on November 5, 2014 [8 favorites]


Total Biscuit's bullshit responded to point by point.

A lot of it's normal, factual debunking of crap that TB continues to spout uncritically, and it is quite long. So if you only read one bit, I would read the response to TB's exhortation to "not feed the trolls." It's really good, though the next response bit right after that is quite good as well.
posted by sparkletone at 9:49 AM on November 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


Ah, well, there's always Yahtzee.

This isn't GG-related, but um... About that...
posted by sparkletone at 9:59 AM on November 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


The whole mansplanation is completely incoherent. Seriously: it jumps from Zoe Quinn to somebody wrote a mean article about gamers to Anita Sarkeesian is uppity and I'm-not-saying-she's-lying-about-the-death-threats-but-you-have-to-wonder to what a tragedy it is that we can't have this important conversation about journalism in game ethics because all the media wants to talk about is the misogynistic harassment but how can misogynistic harassment really be the point of GamerGate when there remain some women in the industry who have not yet been driven out or received death threats, huh?

And the listed examples of the deeply troubling corruption/nepotism provide the shocking revelation that the online gaming press and the independent game developer scene comprise a small world indeed and that the people involved know each other and have connections. Holy shit, right? Call Woodward and Bernstein!

It's cute that the "reasonable moderates" (hold for dry, mirthless laughter) of GamerGate have discovered that journalistic objectivity is elusive and possibly mythical and are eager to fling handfuls of their own waste at all points of the compass in the hopes that it might somehow rectify this miscarriage of justice. One can only imagine the holy crusade they would have launched had they been born to a different era and discovered the terrible occult truth that Nintendo Power was published by Nintendo itself and gave suspiciously favorable coverage to Mario/Zelda/Metroid titles! The horror. In conclusion, fuck absolutely everything about GamerGate.
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:02 AM on November 5, 2014 [10 favorites]


And while the source of the accusation is neutral (unless you're really concerned about the character of Eron Gjoni, I guess) the accusation itself was a major rallying point for early GamerGate and would have followed a similar pattern of MANUFACTURED CLAIM REPEATED ENOUGH TIMES THAT PEOPLE BELIEVE IT, and like the "Arthur Chu is a neo-nazi" meme, when/if a Gator realizes there's no substance behind the claim, I doubt they put as much effort into correcting the falsehood as they put into spreading it. They just shift their efforts onto some new rationalization for GamerGate.

Pretty much! You can see this with things like the claims that Anita Sarkeesian didn't file a police report about her death threats, or the Zoe Quinn didn't donate the profits from Depression Quest to charity. Someone - usually someone who is not very clever, and as such is asking the wrong person, or asking the wrong questions - gets, or thinks they get, the answer that they want and immediately jizzes that information into the hate soup. It is reposted on Twitter, reddit, 8chan and the fringe news sites who have thrown in with Gamergate. When it is proven to be false, the first three don't bother updating, and the last posts an update to a now-dead story and doesn't link it out.

In that sense it is quite a lot like modern political discourse - the divide between the people who actually know what's going on and the people who don't care is pretty wide.
posted by running order squabble fest at 10:13 AM on November 5, 2014 [10 favorites]


sparkletone: "This isn't GG-related, but um... About that..."

The great thing about being able to recognise That Type Of Dude on sight (wordy; very pleased with himself; hat) is you can bet yourself a fiver that sooner or later their very important opinions on misogyny will come into play, and that they will be patent nonsense, and then even though you will be a little bit disappointed you will at least have had the foresight to bet yourself, and thus win from yourself, a fiver.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 11:29 AM on November 5, 2014 [12 favorites]


The more I read about "Gamergate" (Really? They think this is worth comparing to the Watergate break ins?), the bigger the tempest gets and the smaller the teapot seems.
posted by JHarris at 12:15 PM on November 5, 2014 [2 favorites]


running order squabble fest: "Pretty much! You can see this with things like the claims that Anita Sarkeesian didn't file a police report about her death threats, or the Zoe Quinn didn't donate the profits from Depression Quest to charity. Someone ... gets, or thinks they get, the answer that they want and immediately jizzes that information into the hate soup.

I touched on a similar thing in another thread though I may have been too quick to dismiss the rumour (about #GamerGate tweeters getting banned from Twitter) that provoked the thought there. The "Brianna Wu hates autistic kids" schtick fits what I'm talking about to a T, though.


In that sense it is quite a lot like modern political discourse"

It's certainly not exclusive to GamerGate. You can find a lot of hoaxes and chain letters on Snopes that have a clear ideological motive for why they spread.
posted by RobotHero at 12:20 PM on November 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


I don't know what to do with this, but here it is. Apparently someone killed a woman and posted about it on 4chan last night. I don't know whether the guy is a gator or not but this is what that kind of culture contributes to. Ugh.
posted by Corinth at 1:58 PM on November 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


Is this the story you meant to link to, Corinth?
posted by Lexica at 2:13 PM on November 5, 2014 [2 favorites]


Corinth, that article doesn't appear to have anything to do with 4chan or Gamergate?

The cause of the link problem might have to do with the weird article format NBC News is using on that page, where the articles seemlessly flow into each other on an AJAX-updating, infinitely scrolling page.
posted by JHarris at 2:14 PM on November 5, 2014


Oh, yeah, I got flummoxed by web 2.0 stuff. Here's a Jezebel article.
posted by Corinth at 2:24 PM on November 5, 2014


Someone... gets, or thinks they get, the answer that they want and immediately jizzes that information into the hate soup.

Like I said a while back, it's going to be pretty rich research material (requiring hazmat gear) because you can see in miniature how very specific lies and half-truths get transmitted and amplified. For more wide-ranging conspiracy theories, it's often hard to pin down the sources and amplifiers; the slenderest silver lining is that G*m*rG*t* may teach us how it happens.
posted by holgate at 2:34 PM on November 5, 2014


What I'm not going to do is attribute them [death threats] to a group without proof. I'm also not going to claim they were credible because well, Anita is still breathing. This is a silly accusation.
Said today by Totalbiscuit, not ex tempore, not live, not apparently under duress, but in a recorded statement. (About seven minutes in).
posted by running order squabble fest at 5:04 PM on November 5, 2014 [5 favorites]


I stopped watching anything involving TotalBiscuit awhile ago. It's getting to the point where I don't want to watch anything involving the others on his podcast because it's getting to the level of ick by association.
posted by MaritaCov at 5:10 PM on November 5, 2014 [2 favorites]


jizzes that information into the hate soup

This turn of phrase is making me shudder with disgust at its imagery and bounce with delight at its perfection at the same time.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:11 PM on November 5, 2014 [8 favorites]


Ok so maybe it wasn't a social experiment, but social engineering. Most of the more vocal GamerGaters have thrown in the towel... Right after the midterm American elections ended.

Yes, this is a crazy conspiracy theory and I'm a bit nutso.
posted by Yowser at 6:43 PM on November 5, 2014


Said today by Totalbiscuit, not ex tempore, not live, not apparently under duress, but in a recorded statement.

This may just be me being old, but the whole YT/Soundcloud thing reminds me that there's this thing which allows you to say things precisely in a way that reduces the possibility of mis-citation and also can be absorbed quickly, and it's called writing.

I mean, who has the fucking time? (Yeah, I know: underemployed single young men, but aren't they meant to be putting in marathon Call of Duty sessions as well?) If you have something to say on the internet and it doesn't require visual aids, write it fucking down.
posted by holgate at 6:56 PM on November 5, 2014 [6 favorites]


Seconded! In TotalBiscuit's defence, he did provide a transcript. It's a response to a response to a response, of course, because Internet, but the relevant passage is:
I already did give her the benefit of the doubt. I already stated I have no doubt they exist. What I'm not going to do is attribute them to a group without proof. I'm also not going to claim they were credible because well, Anita is still breathing. This is a silly accusation. I've never at any point expressed the opinion that she did not receive threats. I firmly believe that she did. What I do not buy is that it was part of an orchestrated harassment campaign by #Gamergate which is exactly what the mainstream media narrative has pushed.
But the preponderance of YouTube, in particular, is a really interesting part of this mess. So much sound is generated, and you'd have to have a huge amount of time to go through it all... someone just complained on Twitter that there are five Gamergate streams going simultaneously right now. Five! We may end up with a situation like poetry, where everyone involved in Gamergate spends all their time on YouTube or Twitch, livestreaming and commenting on each other's livestreams.

Which, actually, would probably be fine!
posted by running order squabble fest at 7:26 PM on November 5, 2014


Oh man. After reading through that TotalBiscuit thing (or, actually, the fisked version), I realized something else that, in hindsight, seems so obvious. Even if GamerGate really was about ethics in games journalism, why should anyone listen to these yahoos? The specific examples they bring up and (more importantly) their way out of proportion response to these mostly weaksauce examples shows that we shouldn't have to take them seriously at all, even if we accept their stated motives at face value. It's like if you encountered someone who was super worked-up over the NFL's new policy on defensive holding penalties but then upon further discussion you realize that their only frame of reference for football was Tecmo Bowl.
posted by mhum at 8:44 PM on November 5, 2014 [6 favorites]


I hope it's okay if I keep posting these vines because they are my primary coping mechanism

thank you for telling me about where in the video to look, running order squabble fest, I hate having to listen to these jackasses for more than 30 seconds to find a good clip to make a screaming animal interrupt

posted by NoraReed at 11:01 PM on November 5, 2014 [6 favorites]


(I am loving the screaming animal interrupts so much.)
posted by running order squabble fest at 4:35 AM on November 6, 2014


Mefi's own Adam Savage spoke about Gamergate to Mother Jones.
posted by papercrane at 6:40 AM on November 6, 2014


Just in case you had some hope that GamerGate hadn't completely retreated up their own fundaments, I present A My Little Pony Strangling Nick Denton.

no i don't know what it means either
posted by murphy slaw at 6:55 AM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


I see from the comments that Adam Savage has now been outed as a Social Justice Warrior. I'm sure he'll be crushed.
posted by lodurr at 6:59 AM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


They must be on high alert in their comments section. At the moment all I see is someone cutting themselves with Occam's razor.
posted by papercrane at 7:05 AM on November 6, 2014


SomethingAwful: Do These Good Ethics
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:17 AM on November 6, 2014 [6 favorites]


Papercrane, yeah, that's what I was talking about. He had some boilerplate about how saage was part of the establishment.
posted by lodurr at 7:27 AM on November 6, 2014


The reviews at the end of that SomethingAwful link are beautiful pieces of flamebait:
Bayonetta 2
This game is a reminder that if you have a gaming PC, Wii U is still the only console worth buying right now, and that continues to make me laugh. 9/10
posted by Elementary Penguin at 7:33 AM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


He had some boilerplate about how saage was part of the establishment.

I see it now. There's a 'load more' button I missed. These gators really love their walls of text.
posted by papercrane at 7:39 AM on November 6, 2014




but what does that have to do with this thread
posted by Justinian at 8:49 AM on November 6, 2014


well, they use vivian james as a forum icon.
posted by lodurr at 8:54 AM on November 6, 2014


also: ick.
posted by lodurr at 8:54 AM on November 6, 2014


I love the pitter-patter of the little feet of rats leaving a sinking ship.
posted by murphy slaw at 9:04 AM on November 6, 2014 [8 favorites]


That gives me faint hope that this bullshit might end this year, or at least die back down to the normal level of hostility from before August.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 9:14 AM on November 6, 2014


I love the pitter-patter of the little feet of rats leaving a sinking ship.

Also, KingOfPol has called it quits, KiA was yelling at each other for 'tone policing' him out of the movement.
posted by papercrane at 10:10 AM on November 6, 2014


It would be appropriate for the entire movement to devolve into a rat king.
posted by malocchio at 10:15 AM on November 6, 2014 [3 favorites]


GamerGate is making Tim Berners-Lee sad.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:21 AM on November 6, 2014


Actually Berners-Lee said nothing specifically about GamerGate.
posted by 0 at 10:59 AM on November 6, 2014


If he hasn't heard about it let's not tell him.
posted by Artw at 11:18 AM on November 6, 2014 [6 favorites]


Actually Berners-Lee said nothing specifically about GamerGate.

Well, no, not specifically, but if the shoe fits...

"Speaking to BBC News, Berners-Lee said that it was 'staggering' that people 'who clearly must have been brought up like anybody else will suddenly become very polarised in their opinions, will suddenly become very hateful rather than very loving.'

Or perhaps maybe he didn't want, you know, numerous gamergators jumping on him with their cut-and-paste opinions about how actually it's about ethics in games journalism (to say nothing of the death threats, which, as we all know, no true gamergator would make).
posted by Doktor Zed at 11:24 AM on November 6, 2014


"This ability is that people in the human race can polarise and demonise each other."

Sounds like he sees more than one group being hateful.
posted by 0 at 11:36 AM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


Or perhaps he's speaking of, you know, the normal way the internet works these days?

Also I agree with Artw: if sir tim doesn't know about gamergate yet, let's not tell him.
posted by lodurr at 11:45 AM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


the normal way the internet works these days

Agreed, lodurr, he's speaking quite generally. Anybody saying he is referring to gamergate is just fantasizing.
posted by 0 at 11:53 AM on November 6, 2014


Agreed, lodurr, he's speaking quite generally. Anybody saying he is referring to gamergate is just fantasizing.

You realize that sounds like, "he's speaking about dogs, so anybody claiming he's talking about dachshunds is just fantasizing".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:59 AM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


0: “Sounds like he sees more than one group being hateful.”

So, to sum up: you don't think he's talking about #GamerGate; but if he is talking about #GamerGate, you want it pointed out that he's saying 'both sides are terrible.'

Whereas I will say: I don't know what he's talking about. I don't know what he knows or what he's hinting at. But if he thinks "both sides are terrible," then he is wrong.
posted by koeselitz at 12:02 PM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


I want it pointed out that the pit bulls saying the Alpha is barking at the dachshunds are full of shit.
posted by 0 at 12:06 PM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


Are you saying you find it tough being a harmless, well-intentioned dachshund in a city full of mean old pit bulls? How about dropping the plausible deniability and say what you mean.
posted by nobody at 12:14 PM on November 6, 2014 [4 favorites]


Tim Berners-Lee said nothing specifically about GamerGate.
posted by 0 at 12:24 PM on November 6, 2014


nobody, stop demonizing all pit bulls! you dachshundists are all alike, trying to marginalize us with your pro-dachshund agenda.

(Actually, it's about ethics in pet journalism.)
posted by lodurr at 12:27 PM on November 6, 2014 [3 favorites]


I'm a cat, I don't have a dog in the dachshund fight.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:28 PM on November 6, 2014 [5 favorites]


#readergate is a thing, and they're pretty spot on.
posted by papercrane at 12:52 PM on November 6, 2014 [12 favorites]


In the wake of all the drama the GG hashtag has lots of anons shouting "send moar emails!" and I wonder if they realize all advertisers have been made aware of the situation?
posted by Theta States at 1:05 PM on November 6, 2014


sorry if i missed this earlier but wu is offering $11k ($10k of that from an anonymous-to-us donor) for info on death threats.
GamerGate isn't just a distraction for me and Zoe, it's a distraction for every woman working in this field. What I want to do is help the rest of us get back to work...

When I leave our home I ask my husband to leave first, to check around the corner. But also my company needs a leader and I have done zero work for a month because I've been dealing with this.
posted by twist my arm at 1:18 PM on November 6, 2014


yes, but #readergate is a conspiracy!
posted by lodurr at 1:41 PM on November 6, 2014 [3 favorites]


Holy Moly, TouriqM just DESTROYED gamergate with this one KIA comment.

I do think it's plausible, though, given the sudden abandonment of this issue and the blatant promotion of it by right-wing stalwarts, that GG may have been an effort to distract liberals from the crucial midterm elections. Liberals completely whiffed on getting out the vote, especially with young (Internet focused) voters.
posted by msalt at 3:05 PM on November 6, 2014 [4 favorites]


I think the fickle nature of the American Left and everyone being on a downer re:big national issues like the NSA and and Iraq dragging on probably had a bigger impact.
posted by Artw at 3:19 PM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


Youth voting rates weren't any different than any other non-presidential election year, anyway.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 3:24 PM on November 6, 2014


"Branches of government other than the president actual do quite a lot" and "hey, turn up for midterms, dumbass" are both lessons America will never, ever learn.

(also voter suppression and gerrymandering)
posted by Artw at 3:28 PM on November 6, 2014 [3 favorites]


Well, ISIS and Ebola (relentlessy hyped by Fox, and aided by Texas' Republican governor absurdly sending a helicopter to that cruise ship) were a big factor, too -- sucking oxygen out of the room when the economy was improving and the Dem's minimum wage issue - passed by voters in 5/5 inititative states -- was catching hold.
posted by msalt at 3:34 PM on November 6, 2014


Holy Moly, TouriqM just DESTROYED gamergate with this one KIA comment.

And yet the very first comment is a gamerghazi hammering his 95 theses to touriqm's door.

I mean, you're right, and so is he, but the very people who need to grasp what he's saying are also the very people least likely to do so.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:35 PM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


"Only 17% of Millennials voted. They’ve also stopped pressing the elevator close buttons, crossing fingers for luck, and kicking at the sea."

It's possible some of the right-wing people participated for this reason, but as a millennial who hangs out with a bunch of other millennials, I'm pretty sure most of the not-voting was because it's really hard to sell "turn out for a mostly futile activity that your hour(s) spent will not tangibly influence in order to make things slightly less awful, or get less awful than it would otherwise".
posted by NoraReed at 3:39 PM on November 6, 2014


My students who voted tell me that it took them hours because machines were broken or their registration was screwed up. Most of my students don't have two hours to wait around to vote between classes and part-time jobs, so most of them didn't vote.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 3:42 PM on November 6, 2014


I don't think that's typical. It took me about 5 minutes from start to finish.
posted by Justinian at 5:28 PM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


No, sorry, I didn't mean to portray it as typical, but if it takes some of them a long time to do it, and they are already barely motivated to vote anyway, it just discourages them further. The real problem is young people and liberals in general aren't really motivated to vote for anything except president.

But we've gotten off the subject, which was ethics in games journalism or something.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 6:02 PM on November 6, 2014 [3 favorites]


I kind of wonder at the way a bunch of their big names have all of the sudden gotten cagey about actually being affiliated with them. Perhaps this is just wishful thinking, but my pet theory of the day is that the feds (and possibly their overseas equivalents for the Brits) have actually started showing up at people's doorsteps and asking questions. Talking to people who have been identified as movers and shakers makes sense to me if they're trying to zero in on suspects. And even if these guys didn't know anything, a stern talking-to from the FBI or DHS or whoever about associating with the kind of people who send death and rape threats seems like just the kind of thing that would leave them quaking in their boots and promising to stop stirring up the pot. Like I said, wishful thinking, but it does give me hope that there's something going on behind the scenes that will take most of the wind out of this thing's sails.
posted by zombieflanders at 4:41 AM on November 7, 2014 [3 favorites]


Well, ISIS and Ebola

... are actually coming up in the gamerghazi conspiracy fever dream, I notice. Well, not ebola (yet), but ISIS, absolutely: Apparently (so I've been told, several times) ISIS and "the true caliphate" (whatever the fuck that is) are funding the anti-GG effort.

This is really a thing they're trying to put out there.

Seriously, could someone at least upgrade these guys' reading lists? They're obviously under the impression that The Overton Window is literature.
posted by lodurr at 5:05 AM on November 7, 2014


... are actually coming up in the gamerghazi conspiracy fever dream, I notice. Well, not ebola (yet), but ISIS, absolutely: Apparently (so I've been told, several times) ISIS and "the true caliphate" (whatever the fuck that is) are funding the anti-GG effort.

Unless this has mutated since, I think this is because, when #stopgamergate2014 was trending, it was picked up by a Twitter bot that sent out pro-ISIS messages with trending tags attached.

I have no idea whether anyone actually believed that this made it clear that opposition to Gamergate was a key plank of ISIS' policies, or if it was just something it was entertaining to say.
posted by running order squabble fest at 6:26 AM on November 7, 2014


It has mutated since, for sure. there are now multiple (and probably contradictory, I haven't bothered to parse them) claims involving the funding of anti-GG efforts. They seem to involve some degree of conflation of ISIS with the Saudi and/or Iranian regimes.
posted by lodurr at 6:30 AM on November 7, 2014


Seems legit. I mean, if there's one thing the Saudi and Iranian regimes are very much in favor of, it's women being able to speak out without fear against oppression.
posted by running order squabble fest at 6:34 AM on November 7, 2014 [12 favorites]


YouTube, Patreon, and the Rise of the Professional Victimizer is an essay-like Storify that's worth reading through, and possibly worth linking to whenever anyone brings up the "professional victim" nonsense.
posted by nobody at 6:45 AM on November 7, 2014 [11 favorites]


Can I just interject how annoying it is that you can't save Twitter-derived Storify posts in a readable form with Evernote?[/derail]
posted by lodurr at 7:08 AM on November 7, 2014


It occurred to me last night that this "professional victim" bullshit is just a re-appropriation of anti-semitic talking points (along with their use of the term "cultural marxism".) Not unsurprising considering the how much of this is rooted in /pol/.
posted by papercrane at 7:15 AM on November 7, 2014 [7 favorites]


It's probably a good illustration of how things don't have pure antecedents. The 'professional victim' concept has been around for a long time outside of anti-semitism, but yes the synergy is obvious. And sometimes even out in the open -- vis "jewkeesian" as an epithet for Anita.

(And accuracy be damned, of course: she's the child of Iranian immigrants, which would most likely make her, what -- Orthodox? Sunni? Sufi? Baha'i'? But Jewish? That would be surprising enough to be actually kind of interesting to me, though not in the way the anti-semites of reddit would think.) [/pedanticfilter]
posted by lodurr at 7:22 AM on November 7, 2014 [3 favorites]


(Iraqi, not Iranian, as a minor fyi - her parents are Iraqi-Armenians who emigrated to Canada.)
posted by running order squabble fest at 7:39 AM on November 7, 2014 [2 favorites]


Ah, thank you. Still, not likely to be Jewish. (As though that mattered. Which was probably part of the point.)
posted by lodurr at 7:42 AM on November 7, 2014


This is a very nice read from someone in gaming and gaming journalism.
So, corruption in journalism. Can I let you in on a secret?

We want to have that conversation. We all do, with maybe a couple of exceptions. This is a conversation we've tried to have, and wanted to have for years.

But why aren't we just sitting down and talking it over and smiling and playing games and shutting up about the feminisms? Basically, it's because we're having two completely different conversations. One's an insider conversation, informed about the industry. The other is an outsider conversation, based on half-truths, misunderstandings, and what we see as skewed priorities.

On our side, a lot of journalists hate the nepotism, and most importantly, they hate the relationship the industry has with journalism. Because a while back ago, "games journalism" was essentially coopted as a marketing arm for certain AAA publishers. At that point, AAA publishers became gatekeepers for success in games journalism. It's awful, because we want to be talking critically. We want to be looking at games in different lights. We want to approach these works of art as works of art, and not just as the next success or flop. But that can't happen on any large scale, because of that corruption, because of the commercialism of it all.

The way a lot of the Gamergate stuff looks to us really looks like some strange bizarro world where the games industry works completely different than it really does.
posted by phearlez at 8:45 AM on November 7, 2014




divabat: "A GarmerGater Openly Admits That It's Not About Ethics"

The title's a little misleading. He throws in a bunch of rationalizations so I wouldn't call that "openly."

His major thing is he's okay brushing off anything a AAA studio does because they aren't as easy targets as the indie stuff they've been focusing on, and it would require boycotting games he actually wants. Also Youtuber ethics don't matter because they get paid directly, and paying for good reviews only matters if it's a bad game.
posted by RobotHero at 9:34 AM on November 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


Gmargtaters: "It just happens to work out that punching down is easier. *shrugs* *resumes oppressing*."
posted by fleacircus at 10:17 AM on November 7, 2014 [5 favorites]


#readergate is a thing, and they're pretty spot on.

Took long enough, but something good finally came out of GamerGate!
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:22 AM on November 7, 2014


Took long enough, but something good finally came out of GamerGate!

Actually this is better.

Twitter is working with an advocacy group to investigate the harassment of women
posted by papercrane at 11:01 AM on November 7, 2014 [5 favorites]


His major thing is he's okay brushing off anything a AAA studio does because they aren't as easy targets as the indie stuff they've been focusing on, and it would require boycotting games he actually wants.

Yeah: "Well I don't know how to find out this stuff, and i ain't seen any suggestions."

Maybe you need to upgrade from MS Paint? Well, like I said upthread, the AAA studios aren't dumb about their marketing practices, and that particular gator is just admitting that his movement is a sham. (I had seen the rationalisation on KiA that they'd turn their attention to the AAA studios as soon as the SJWs were purged from gaming. Yeah, won't hold my breath on that.)
posted by holgate at 11:10 AM on November 7, 2014


Speaking AAA studios... During his part of the opening ceremonies event for Blizzcon this year, CEO Mike Morhaime made a statement about online harassment that was pretty clearly about gamergate, though he didn't use the term itself.
posted by sparkletone at 12:41 PM on November 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


But did he say anything, specifically, about Tim Berners-Lee?
posted by uncleozzy at 12:44 PM on November 7, 2014 [4 favorites]


Morhaime confirmed afterward that yes, he was talking specifically about GamerGate.
posted by palomar at 12:47 PM on November 7, 2014 [4 favorites]


"I'd like to take a moment to talk about something serious," Morhaime began. "Over the past couple months, there's been a small group of people who have been doing really awful things. They have been making some people's lives miserable, and they have been tarnishing our reputation as gamers."

"It's not right," he continued, as the crowd broke into applause.


What's unfortunate is that the gators in the crowd were probably thinking "Yes! He's talking about SJWs and editors at Gawker Media!"
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:54 PM on November 7, 2014 [3 favorites]


What's unfortunate is that the gators in the crowd were probably thinking "Yes! He's talking about SJWs and editors at Gawker Media!"

"The mental gymnastics some are doing to make Mike Morhaime's statement 'not about GG' are impressive from a mental athletics point of view." -- Rami Ismail of Vlambeer an hour or two ago.

So apparently there are some people trying really hard to make that statement something other than what it was. Also, I'm really glad that Morhaime later clarified that yes, that's exactly who/what he was talking about even if he hadn't used the specific term on stage.
posted by sparkletone at 2:06 PM on November 7, 2014


I don't know any history about the actual people at Blizzard, but my first thought was that it makes sense that they would be the first major publisher to break ranks, because I had the impression that female WoW players were at least near parity with men. The only numbers I could find quickly (you have to scroll down) suggest otherwise: WoW actually has somewhat fewer female players than GTA.
posted by lodurr at 2:18 PM on November 7, 2014


(I had that impression because of the six or seven WoW players I personally know, all but one are women.)
posted by lodurr at 2:19 PM on November 7, 2014


Not only are the GG kids trying really hard to spin the Blizzard thing in their favor, they're doing the same thing over the statement from Literature and Latte, publisher of Scrivener, denouncing the movement after being sort of bullied into issuing a statement in the first place.

Full statement from Literature and Latte here.

In KiA they are trying to claim that they "won" because L&L isn't advertising with Gawker now. I had to put my head down on my desk and laugh silently for about 5 minutes over that one.
posted by palomar at 2:52 PM on November 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


Mike Vernovich does an AMA in KiA.

Pull quote:
How do you fight a mob? Great question. You don't.
Don't fight the mob.
Single out a member of the mob.
Then hit them hard.
Make sure each member of the mob knows he or she is not safe.
That will quiet the mob.
BUT ACTUALLY IT'S ABOUT ETHICS IN GAMING JOURNALISM.
posted by KathrynT at 3:11 PM on November 7, 2014 [10 favorites]


Well, it doesn't need to stay true. It just has to be true, or true enough to be said, for long enough to be said. See also "Anita Sarkeesian didn't report her death threat to the police", "Zoe Quinn didn't donate profits from Depression Quest to charity", "Nathan Grayson write a glowing review of Depression Quest". All disproven almost immediately, but that doesn't matter. This is about morale.
posted by running order squabble fest at 3:19 PM on November 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


I honestly doubt there were many gaters in the crowd at BlizzCon, btw. They represent such a tiny part of the overall gaming population, I'm not sure there would be enough at an event - even a very large event - to fill a trestle table.

The 8chan first birthday party was a specific event aimed basically at gaters, it took place in the most populous city in the US, it was free and it had about 30 people present.
posted by running order squabble fest at 4:13 PM on November 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


Well, it doesn't need to stay true. It just has to be true, or true enough to be said, for long enough to be said.

They've perfected the Gish gallop.
posted by brundlefly at 4:44 PM on November 7, 2014 [2 favorites]


The only numbers I could find quickly (you have to scroll down) suggest otherwise: WoW actually has somewhat fewer female players than GTA.

This has fluctuated over time I think. This 2009 link shows a much smaller disparity if I'm reading it right, at least using just the US population.
posted by sparkletone at 5:06 PM on November 7, 2014


she's the child of Iranian immigrants, which would most likely make her, what -- Orthodox? Sunni? Sufi? Baha'i'? But Jewish?

I don't know what we glean by speculating here, but it appears she's ethnically Armenian. (Her last name is almost the same as Cher: Sarkisian. The -ian or -yan suffix is common to most Armenian surnames.) Most Armenians belong to the Armenian Apostolic (Christian) church, which if you must know, predates the Schism of Chalcedon. Her parents emigrating from Iraq (not Iran) also suggests this as the Kurds and Armenians -- both predominantly Christian groups -- were among those with whom Saddam Hussein had the most antagonistic relationship. (Thousands of Armenians had fled to Iraq, historically part of their trading relations, during the Armenian genocide.)
posted by dhartung at 6:17 PM on November 7, 2014 [4 favorites]


Well, it doesn't need to stay true. It just has to be true, or true enough to be said, for long enough to be said.

QFMFT.

I think one,of the issues that bothers me most in all this is that there is so much misinformation and biased reporting surrounding the Gamergate fiasco that it is hard to get your own facts straight even when you are the type to actually make an effort to do so!

I even messed up myself with a Brianna Wu comment in another thread (and was pissed off at myself for falling into the truthiness trap!).
posted by misha at 7:04 PM on November 7, 2014


... which if you must know, predates the Schism of Chalcedon.

Oh, I must, I must!

Seriously, you did remember this was MeFi and you had to ask?!
posted by lodurr at 3:41 AM on November 8, 2014


They represent such a tiny part of the overall gaming population....

Thank you for reminding us of that. That, and things like the fact that Keith at Scrivener had literally never heard of it*, are important things to remember.

And just the very idea of spinning anything about Literature & Latte is weird, but as I think more about it, it makes a kind of sense. They make software for WRITERS, for fuck's sake -- well, translate that through the filter of someone who self-identifies with an anti-intellectual** subculture, and it comes out as 'look we tricked the wimps into agreeing with us.'

But Keith's right: Scrivener is so niche, the vast majority of people I know who aren't WriMos have never heard of it. And it's not a game, it's a tool people use to do work. It's roughly the equivalent of getting Black & Decker to take a side.

--
*though to be fair, he'd never heard of Gawker, either, which raises the possibility that he's a downright hermit.
**their brand of pseudo-intellectual wanking is really pretty anti-intellectual. the best term I can think of for it is R. Emmet Tyrell's old projected epithet for anyone thoughtful anywhere to the right of Goldwater: "intellectualoid."
posted by lodurr at 4:03 AM on November 8, 2014


(Post-edit, 'Makita' would have been better than 'Black & Decker.')
posted by lodurr at 4:04 AM on November 8, 2014


Morhaime confirmed afterward that yes, he was talking specifically about GamerGate.

And then last night, in a complete coincidence, an executive at Bungie (which is partnered with Blizzard's parent company, Activision) got SWAT'ed. But that's got to be totally unrelated because, as we all know, No True Gamergator engages in harassing game developers.
posted by Doktor Zed at 4:17 AM on November 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


this is over a year ago but it shows the context in which gg has come up

there are seriously rabid, crazy people out there
posted by pyramid termite at 6:02 AM on November 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


Oh goodness, Cracked appears to not be very pro-GG.
posted by palomar at 9:41 AM on November 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


Meanwhile, Eron Gjoni continues to be awful.
posted by palomar at 9:57 AM on November 8, 2014


gjoni: 70 is the percent of surgery related deaths or injuries carried out by novice surgeons that would have been prevented en masse as a result of the R&D you just dropped into limbo.

Oh, he's not full of himself at all...

A lot of this boils down to the epic hero myth, and this is just another example: Eron is so important to this project that he can't be replaced, and his ego is so fragile that the idea they could get along without him is intolerable -- so he donates his time.

How noble.

What bullshit.
posted by lodurr at 10:08 AM on November 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


gjoni: 70 is the percent of surgery related deaths or injuries carried out by novice surgeons that would have been prevented en masse as a result of the R&D you just dropped into limbo.

By this moral calculus, anyone who works at a pharmaceutical company gets a free pass to be a serial killer, right? Because they're involved in saving more lives than are being harmed. Nevermind that on both sides of the equation we're only talking about potential lives and deaths.
posted by Andrhia at 10:22 AM on November 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


"#gamergate is all about ethics in games journalism"

AHAHAHA so GamerGate has a “Bill of Rights” now. It includes: “If the act of reviewing a game causes you to write a page and a half decrying its content, maybe that game isn’t for you. Please consider passing that review off to a member of your team who might be better suited to evaluate the content, whose views may be closer to the intended audience of the game. ”

REMEMBER: It is only ethical that all games get good reviews from people that like them, never critical ones! From here:


I've made similar declarations before but this is their smoking-gun self-confession that "#gamergate is all about PREVENTING ethics in games journalism". I don't engage in any interplay with #gg types, but if I ever have to, that's going to be my main weapon. I recommend Biblio tell it to her misguided son, just to see if he is capable of being set right.

Cracked has been solidly anti-gamergate from day one, starting with publishing an article from Gater Enemy #1 Zoe Quinn. My respect for Cracked has been on the upturn for some time before that, but I still hate why EVERYTHING written there HAS to be formatted (or edited) into a listicle.

Referring back to nobody's link about "Professional Victimizers", I can't help but wonder how much $$$ Eron Gjoni has banked from turning his little personal butthurt into a public crusade.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:14 PM on November 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


The GamerGate bill of rights now apparently redirects to a page of "harassment" in line with GamerGate's newfound primary purpose of defending GamerGate.
posted by RobotHero at 12:29 PM on November 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


Oooh, they're getting good at this... just increases the likelihood that they've got Karl Rove consulting them.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:33 PM on November 8, 2014


(Note, some examples of "harassment" may be indistinguishable from "mockery")
posted by RobotHero at 12:35 PM on November 8, 2014


It really doesn't take much discussion -- even in /r/kotakuinaction -- to get people to admit it's not really about ethics in journalism.

The deep irony is that this group, which cries so much about "censorship", is fundamentally aiming to censor review opinions they don't like. They even have a list of approved information sources.
posted by msalt at 12:40 PM on November 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


I wonder how many of those approved news sources would object to being on that list....
posted by JHarris at 12:53 PM on November 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


a list of approved information sources.
Because their list of disapproved sources had gotten way too long. Still, a nice source for a boycott list for basically decent people.

I had to go back to Escapist to check out Yahtzee's latest Zero Punctuation rant and seeing it was about 'Bayonetta 2' had high hopes that were thoroughly disintegrated. His fast-talking blather was at its blatheriest and when it touched on actual issues went more incoherent than his usual incoherence with suspicions that he's pre-submitting his rant scripts to a #GG-friendly editing committee to make sure he avoids giving any Real Gamers a butthurt. But then I realized that was really pretty much part of his act all along which was one of several reasons why I'd stopped watching his schtick some time ago. But what's most incredible is how watching only one five-minute ZP video suddenly makes my own writing style more like a Yahtzee rant when my normal style would be to break up the run-on sentences with commas, semi-colons, em-dashes and parentheses (LOTS of parentheses).
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:06 PM on November 8, 2014 [4 favorites]


Gamergate’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week is a good collection of recent setbacks (some already mentioned here, but some not).

I'm not sure I understand why they're having a harder time overcoming these recent events with the same lockstep self-denial they've been mobilizing for three months now, but it's obviously a welcome change.
posted by nobody at 2:03 PM on November 8, 2014 [7 favorites]


I can't help but wonder how much $$$ Eron Gjoni has banked from turning his little personal butthurt into a public crusade

Honestly? Probably not very much. Though I think he's working on that. He seems to be unemployed*, but he's supposedly working on some kind of grandiose legal strategy that he's sure** will pan out to do... something, he's being coy about what.

Gjoni is an ... interesting ... character. In some weird way, I feel like I know him -- like I've met him. Several times. Not literally, of course, but here's what I've seen so far: He is super, super impressed with his own intellect. There's a degree of grandiosity in his self-aggrandizement that you don't find every day. For example, that he thinks it obvious that Lives Will Be Lost if he doesn't do important work on this surgical robotics project he was employed to work on, before that was disrupted by this shitstorm of his own making.

I actually think he's probably not of sound mind. His way of speaking reminds me just way too much of a number of people I've dealt with who were schizotypal -- full of big, grandiose ideas, insanely clever about how to manipulate people and often quite clever enough to keep ahead of debt collectors or probation officers, but not really able to pull it together into a coherent big-ticket scam.

--
*The clever fellow seems to have finally figured out that people are using archive links to get to his site, and has disallowed indexing in robots.txt. It's almost as though he didn't want people to see when he's changed things!
**Apparently in addition to being God's gift to surgical robotics and the world's greatest authority on utilitarian ethics, he's now also an expert on tort law.
posted by lodurr at 5:38 PM on November 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


(also thanks to palomar for those links.)
posted by lodurr at 5:38 PM on November 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


Lots of drama in Wikiland.
posted by Artw at 7:19 AM on November 10, 2014 [8 favorites]


>As repeatedly discussed here, the fact that the worldwide controversy over GamerGate is about misogyny and harassment of women is indisputable. The New York Fucking Times didn't run a front-page article about "but ethics," it ran a front-page article about GamerGate supporters harassing and threatening women in gaming. We mention GamerGate supporters' assertion that their movement is about ethics, but the public controversy has entirely ignored their claims. Therefore, it is entirely neutral to state that the controversy is about misogyny and harassment. "Neutral" does not mean "balanced" — if the reliable sources overwhelmingly agree on something, then our articles reflect that weight.

>But we don't agree with them.

>Well at least you're being honest in specifying that your disagreement is with what reliable sources are saying rather than how we represent reliable sources.
All the lols, right there.
posted by winna at 7:34 AM on November 10, 2014 [12 favorites]


Who The Hell Keeps Calling Me?
posted by rory at 8:37 AM on November 10, 2014 [10 favorites]


Wow, wikiwars are pretty much always sad and comic. But that is just... Words fail me.
posted by phearlez at 9:20 AM on November 10, 2014


More from Cracked: Six Tips For Angry Internet Commenters.

Threatening online violence is also legally actionable! Your goal is to tell that idiot how much they suck, and you won't be able to do that from jail. Which is beginning to happen! The Internet is part of real life, not an alternative to it, and screaming sexually violent threats is becoming more prosecutable. For example, this guy got sent to jail for twittering rape threats! That's awesome! Why, it's almost like broadcasting a threat of sexual assault to the entire planet, in a way permanently recordable and provable, is nearly as real as shouting it at a person in the street!
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:26 AM on November 10, 2014 [7 favorites]


I liked this bit too, jenfullmoon.

Okay, you and I know both know that the marsupial commission is puppeting the reptilians through fluoride leaked into the under-earth water table via chemtrails in the inner-sky of the Hollow Earth. I [Caps Lock button] should know, I've been used for the entirety of every single manifesto against them. But some people don't live in an self-censored echoing hatechamber where of the evil of the enemy is so obvious that they don't deserve proper nouns anymore. And when they see something like "Nobama," they know they're not going to hear anything useful for the next 15 spittle-flecked minutes.
posted by winna at 10:56 AM on November 10, 2014 [1 favorite]


Holy cats, I learned today that Zoe Quinn and I were part of the same gaming community a few years back. I think she recommended some music to me but I can't recall any other interactions. Many of the rest of the members of the community and she had something of a falling out and there's still some bad blood, but the former members of my community are all saying "she's not a nice person, but she doesn't deserve any of this bullshit."

...which is actually heartening. You shouldn't have to live like a saint for people to agree you don't deserve to be harassed and threatened.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:06 PM on November 10, 2014 [12 favorites]


I'm appreciating A Man In Black's stuff. ( Even if he is treating Twitter like a blog. ) He lays out a reasonable case for anything he says. He doesn't give in to the ( very strong ) temptation to just mock and ridicule the GamerGaters but doesn't excuse their behaviour either.

He did the previously mentioned bit on the "professional victimizer"
posted by RobotHero at 5:23 PM on November 10, 2014 [1 favorite]


Well, Bioware is now facing blowback, not for the keynote speech that #gaters can deny is about them but for a tweet "Every one of us has a role to play in stopping sexual assault." Because REAL gamers don't ever want to stop sexual assault.

#GamerGate... where rape IS good ethics.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:32 PM on November 10, 2014 [9 favorites]


You shouldn't have to live like a saint for people to agree you don't deserve to be harassed and threatened.

If I could figure out the day I learned this it would mark a major milestone in my process of growing up.
posted by lodurr at 6:43 PM on November 10, 2014 [6 favorites]


Artw: "Lots of drama in Wikiland."

Oh man. The GamerGaters are going to have a hard row to hoe with that one. For better or worse, there may not be another organization/institution that is better prepared for the onslaught of a horde of angry, opinionated people who want nothing more than to argue on the internet than Wikipedia.
posted by mhum at 7:14 PM on November 10, 2014 [16 favorites]


amen. and the original monsters knew it would be that way, too: you will note that they conspicuously omitted wikipedia from their initial plan of attack.
posted by lodurr at 5:03 AM on November 11, 2014


(also, flagged for correct usage of 'row to hoe.')
posted by lodurr at 5:04 AM on November 11, 2014 [1 favorite]


Intel has resumed advertising on Gamasutra.

Real life actual gator comment responding to someone saying they're switching to AMD: "Upvoting this, because gamers who buy AMD CPUs are an underrepresented marginalised group."
posted by Corinth at 1:30 PM on November 14, 2014 [4 favorites]




Is there any reason not to believe that comments like "upvoting this, because gamers who buy AMD CPUs are an underrepresented marginalised group" aren't just trolling satire? I feel Poe's Law has to come into effect at some point.

I mean, heck, I've trolled MRA types using the same sort of clearly loony statements.
posted by five fresh fish at 4:19 PM on November 14, 2014 [1 favorite]


is it really still trolling if you expect them to agree with you? [/enquiring-mind]
posted by lodurr at 4:43 PM on November 14, 2014


Usually with gators, even if you can't tell if the initial comment is a troll or not, there are people responding who sincerely believe it and agree with it.
posted by Corinth at 7:31 PM on November 14, 2014


I've just been thinking about the term 'troll' lately, as a result of the whole RequiresHate fiasco. It's the best term we've got, I guess, but it feels inadquate to describe the whole taxonomy of baiting, abuse and Poe's Law execmplification.
posted by lodurr at 9:52 AM on November 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


Goddamnit, now these human mosquitoes are swarming all my favorite women scientists on twitter over #shirtstorm. It's almost as if Gamergate is a semi-organized harrassment campaign against women!
posted by dialetheia at 11:57 AM on November 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


Which women scientists are they harassing?
posted by homunculus at 12:53 PM on November 15, 2014


@jacquelyngill, @astrokatie, @mammals_suck, @kejames, and @docfreeride have all been under attack over the last few days since they commented on the sexist shirt that Rosetta scientist was wearing. I'm sure there are more, these are just the names I see frequently on my feed. Some of them didn't even comment on the shirt initially, just on the dismissive and harassing responses to others commenting on the shirt, and they're all still getting sealioned and harassed.

The #shirtstorm response is ridiculously terrible. The guy wearing the shirt made a very heartfelt apology and at this point I feel kind of bad for him since this has escalated so terribly, but I'm extremely grateful for everyone who pushed back against it in the first place because allowing stuff like that in the workplace absolutely does create a hostile environment for women. It's not even the guy in the shirt himself, it's that he exists within a culture that would allow him to get him this far in his career without anyone making it clear that this sort of thing wasn't OK. Not to mention the media response, acting like he must be some rock star because he's wearing such an "edgy" shirt.

But the dismissive, harassing pushback against the women who called it out has been ten times more disturbing. Gater-types have been going around calling these brilliant women "professional victims," saying they're pathetic and weak for being offended in the first place, implying they must be stupid bad illogical scientists... just ugh. It turns my stomach. Poe's law in action, I suppose.
posted by dialetheia at 1:26 PM on November 15, 2014 [8 favorites]


The spillover is making me a little ill as I write this. I really want to believe that gamergate is something that can be over, but I see it spilling over into mainstream life, and the RequiresHate nonsense is just what I see as the same basic thing in more erudite clothing.

Because much as women are the main targets for this abuse, what it's ultimately about is the cult of force -- i.e., it's about the idea that the most forceful actor deserves to win.
posted by lodurr at 3:17 PM on November 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


FFS. Just as it seemed to be burning out, now this.
posted by homunculus at 4:54 PM on November 15, 2014 [1 favorite]




The spillover is making me a little ill as I write this. I really want to believe that gamergate is something that can be over, but I see it spilling over into mainstream life, and the RequiresHate nonsense is just what I see as the same basic thing in more erudite clothing.

Because much as women are the main targets for this abuse, what it's ultimately about is the cult of force -- i.e., it's about the idea that the most forceful actor deserves to win.


lodurr, I'm really having trouble understanding the connection you are making here. I hear you saying that forceful people bullying others is an example of a poisonous ideal that "the most forceful actor deserves to win", and I understand that point and agree with it.

But I really do not understand the parallel you are drawing here in order to put that point forward. How is RequiresHate, a young lesbian Thai writer, bullying other writers analogous to gamergate in any way? I guess I don't understand what the "it" refers to in your comment's last sentence. Are you suggesting that bullying is "spilling over into mainstream life" because of gamergate? Or that gamergate's influence is "spilling over into mainstream life"?

Either way I parse that, it still doesn't make sense, given that RequiresHate's bullying campaign goes back years. She was spreading her vitriol and threats long before gamergate was ever conceived; the time-tables of what influenced each of them are completely different, even though we are coincidentally hearing about both of them now.
posted by misha at 6:57 PM on November 15, 2014


What's analogous is not the actions of RequiresHate (who incidentally has so many aliases that we don't really know for sure "what" she is), but of her supporters, and their histories. Some of her supporters have long histories of abusing power to get what they want (and there's at least one who's quite proud of his personal history in that regard). That's most publicly manifested itself in ways that a lot of people involved in SF/F favored (e.g., the expulsion of Vox Day), but they have less public histories of abusive, manipulative behavior.

But they talk about it more cleverly. They're not cargo-cultists -- they're writers, they know what the words mean, so they know how to abuse them really well. It's the difference between a magician and a sorcerer, I suppose.
posted by lodurr at 6:05 AM on November 16, 2014


Um, wasn't Vox Day expelled from the SFWA for spamming their Twitter feed with race hate screeds? No grand conspiracy required there.
posted by Artw at 8:00 AM on November 16, 2014


That's a radically simplified version of a shitstorm that left a lot of people feeling dirty. But yes, those were the stated and materially sufficient reasons for kicking him out.
posted by lodurr at 8:47 AM on November 16, 2014


I'm not going to pursue this further on this thread. I just saw it as a parallel, that some of the people involved in defending RequiresHate are arguably the skillfully machiavellian characters that gamergaters think themselves to be.
posted by lodurr at 8:52 AM on November 16, 2014


And that the larger unifying theme is a cult of power. Actual social justice advocates work to undermine that cult of power, but it's seductive because it allows you to get things done. And people like Eron Gjoni and MRAs and the core gater crowd learn to dress themselves in the rhetorical clothing of social justice* -- we've discussed all this. They do actually live on both sides, and that gives self-identified "shit-stirrers" like Mamatas leverage when they want to deploy more subtle, less cargo-cultish judo to rationalize their aggrandizement of power as an end.

Gamergate is bigger, more openly vicious, and will have a much larger impact (as we see now with their branching out into harrassment of women in STEM). So imagine what would have happened if they'd actually been good at the rhetoric.

--
*(Stylistically it's akin to peace activists dressing in military garb, which used to piss me right the hell off back in the '70s before I had actually tried to understand where they were coming from.)
posted by lodurr at 8:59 AM on November 16, 2014


That's a radically simplified version of a shitstorm that left a lot of people feeling dirty. But yes, those were the stated and materially sufficient reasons for kicking him out.

Although, and again relevant for Gamergate, a bunch of right-wing scifi writers decided to pal around with him during their attempt to get a block vote for right-wing writers at the 2014 Hugos. People like Correia and Torgerson then made sententious blog posts about how their willingness to come to the table with someone expelled from the SFWA for race and gender-based harassment made them morally better and more reasonable than those who supported hose who were harassed.

And, of course, basically the same merry band have been glomming onto Gamergate.

It was posited elsewhere that maybe there is an element in the human eye, like rods and cones, that allows people to see harassment of women and PoCs. If you don't have that element, you just can't see it.
posted by running order squabble fest at 9:48 AM on November 16, 2014 [1 favorite]


It's funny how whackjob conspiracy theorists like nothing better than setting up lame conspiracies - except maybe shouting "both sides" at the top of their lungs when called on anything.
posted by Artw at 10:05 AM on November 16, 2014


I've personally encountered Gaters pushing the "SJWs are the true bullies" and "we've already lost skiffy, comics and atheism" memes who cite not just Beale, but "moderates" like post-Racefail Will Shetterly.
posted by structuregeek at 2:34 PM on November 16, 2014


The song a day guy has been fantastic with all this.
posted by Corinth at 2:52 PM on November 16, 2014


The 'both sides' canard gets traction because you can point to manipulative assholes on both sides. They're really there. (Less so in gamergate, for sure, which is part of my point.) Are there conspiracies? Usually not. When conspiracies are really there, they can usually be found and clearly traced (it's the internet, after all). But the nature of paranoid conspiracy theorists is that you need very, very little evidence to convince them that there's a conspiracy. (And as we've discussed again and again, sometimes the absence seems like evidence, to them)

I started writing this earlier, but didn't see the point -- but it's relevant, now: One of the most important things working against the gaters has been that of all their real targets, none have 'played dirty' -- none have played victim cards, engaged in retributive hate campaigns, etc. There have been cases where people harassed or abused gaters (we ought to be able to acknowledge that here, because this is a place where we ought to be able to recognize that acknowledging it doesn't excuse abuse) -- but as we all well know, there have been far fewer of them. And they have not been in any way connected with the people who have become the primary targets of abuse. There have been cases where people went for the gater's bait (e.g. #notyourshield), and those have hurt -- but people are starting to figure out they were used.

There's been no documentable conspiracy, in other words, on the anti-GG side.

Again, this is the internet. If there was really a there, there, we'd pretty much know it. We knew it quickly enough about GG, after all. (Though, to be fair, they were pretty piss-poor at it.)

I think if you're a really smart victimizer, you probably want to pick someone who will fight back in a way that's useful to you. And for the most part, the people GG is trying to victimize have fought back in ways that are not helpful to GG. Anita in particular has largely done exactly what she's always done, which is document problems and talk about them. (and I'll say again, my respect for the woman does nothing but grow since this started, because there's no way I'd be able to keep that going.)
posted by lodurr at 3:15 PM on November 16, 2014


On a lighter note, I though Conan O'Brien's self-styled "clueless" review of Assassin's Creed: Unity was hilarious.

And just to lighten the fighty mood, I posted it to KiA. Guess what, guys? The local denizens did not (with a couple of exceptions) find it amusing, and several posted about it being corrupt, paid placement by Ubisoft, etc.
posted by msalt at 6:59 PM on November 16, 2014 [2 favorites]


God, #shirtgate alone deserves it's own facepalming FPP. What a clusterfuck.
It also perfectly illustrates how gamergate is NOT about video games, since the same people who care about it are the ones raising the same huge fuss that SJWs would DARE criticize this guy.
posted by Theta States at 5:55 AM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Oh wait, there is a FPP on "the shirt"!
posted by Theta States at 6:18 AM on November 17, 2014


He did have a shirt made up of GamerGate Twitter avatars...
posted by Artw at 6:20 AM on November 17, 2014


wait, seriously?

dude, we're living in a post-Poe's-Law singularity. You have to signal these things.
posted by lodurr at 8:11 AM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


(May have just been random sexy Anime characters, difficult to distinguish)
posted by Artw at 8:30 AM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


I hate this post-singularity reality, because that could have actually been pretty funny if I didn't have to work so hard to parse the significance.
posted by lodurr at 8:38 AM on November 17, 2014


Someone should make that shirt so the worst possible people have something to flag themselves with.
posted by Artw at 8:44 AM on November 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


msalt: "On a lighter note, I though Conan O'Brien's self-styled "clueless" review of Assassin's Creed: Unity was hilarious.

And just to lighten the fighty mood, I posted it to KiA. Guess what, guys? The local denizens did not (with a couple of exceptions) find it amusing, and several posted about it being corrupt, paid placement by Ubisoft, etc.
"


It does have all the hallmarks of someone providing them with a checklist of stuff like, "Make sure you mention that you can customize your outfit," basically like the Shadow of Mordor Youtuber thing.

But because the game is Assassin's Creed and not Gone Home, I do not anticipate a big letter-writing campaign to come out of it.
posted by RobotHero at 11:29 AM on November 17, 2014


It is interesting to watch GGers respond to "ethics in journalism" situations that have no feminist content. (As near as I can tell, there is only one female in Assassin's Creed, a stepsister who disappears during the intro.)

Some went through the motions of complaining, but there was a distinct lack of passion.

I honestly did not intend to provoke or test anyone, I thought it was a funny review everyone on both sides could enjoy. Silly me.
posted by msalt at 1:27 PM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


"I've looked at games from both sides now
Leveled up and down and still somehow
I'm accused of chauvinism
But its really about... ethics in game journalism...."
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:04 PM on November 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Is no one going to mention that Jack Thompson is apparently a supporter of GamerGate now? Because I officially give up. It's just surrealism now.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 1:27 PM on November 18, 2014 [5 favorites]


From KiA:
Jack Thompson is now agreeing with us.

Welcome to the Twilight Zone people.

Along with rapists and neo-Nazis, you've built quite a community for yourselves.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:36 PM on November 18, 2014 [4 favorites]


But... I thought Zoe Quinn was the new Jack Thompson? What? Urrr?
posted by Artw at 1:38 PM on November 18, 2014


From that KiA thread:
If any anti-GG people reads this comment, i'd appreciate it if you could explain to me how you are different from Jack Thompson.

You both want to change gaming to fit your political agenda, leaving those that disagree behind.
Thompson has actually tried to censor games. So there's that.
posted by brundlefly at 1:44 PM on November 18, 2014


That's what is go for, yup.

It does make a kind of sense on that GG are incredibly pro-censorship, also utter dicks.
posted by Artw at 1:52 PM on November 18, 2014


I'm tempted to respond. But then I'd have to engage with them. And fuck that.
posted by brundlefly at 1:56 PM on November 18, 2014 [1 favorite]


gamergate are not taking the presence of Amita Sarbeesian very well.
posted by Theta States at 6:17 AM on November 19, 2014 [3 favorites]


No better argument for the moral bankruptcy of #gamergate than the realizations of an ex-gater: "Redditor explains why they left #GamerGate. (tl:dr: The raging hypocrisy.)"
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:04 PM on November 19, 2014 [5 favorites]


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