Almost No One Sided with #GamerGate
August 19, 2015 5:32 AM   Subscribe

Almost No One Sided with #GamerGate: A Research Paper on the Internet’s Reaction to Last Year’s Mob An in-depth research project that suggests that the vast majority of people do in fact equate GamerGate with online harassment, sexism, and/or misogyny.
posted by papercake (89 comments total) 37 users marked this as a favorite
 
Great. This is like poking a hornet's nest with a stick. The SNR of half the internet is going to be decimated for at least a week.
posted by wierdo at 5:40 AM on August 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


In my rush to snark, I failed to mention that I am in fact happy that people have by and large seen through the BS. The GamerGaters will be throwing a huge tantrum again, though, and that kinda sucks. I had finally gone a good couple of weeks without having to hear their spew spread across every website on the Internet.
posted by wierdo at 5:42 AM on August 19, 2015 [5 favorites]


Thanks for this. I'm sure the GamerGaters will take issue with his focus on journalists and media outlets, and try to smear everyone who doesn't agree with them, but all things considered this seems pretty damning. It also makes the most sense. Normal people find harassment, rape threats, death threats and doxxing abhorrent, and that's what the movement was founded on, and is known for.
posted by zarq at 5:44 AM on August 19, 2015 [8 favorites]


You can't derive "what most people think" from a survey of published material. I think about the best you can really achieve is to say "most bloggers, journalists and other people expressing their opinions in published form equated GamerGate with online harassment, sexism, and/or misogyny". But it's certainly not a poll of attitudes in the general population, or even a poll of Internet users, so I'm not sure what this survey is meant to achieve, other than providing reassurance that good voices are drowning out bad voices in the fairly small section of the media where the word 'GamerGate' is something people would have heard of.

It's would be no surprise to find out that most people are pretty decent, though.
posted by pipeski at 5:53 AM on August 19, 2015 [13 favorites]


the vast majority of people journalists, bloggers, and others who write for high-traffic websites

An important distinction. It's very unlikely that this fairly narrow subset of professionals are representative of the whole population of "people who have an opinion about GamerGate." We can infer from Breitbart's support that there must be at least a large enough fringe to make supporting it appear bankable.
posted by belarius at 5:54 AM on August 19, 2015 [5 favorites]


I'm sure the GamerGaters will take issue with his focus on journalists and media outlets, and try to smear everyone who doesn't agree with them, but all things considered this seems pretty damning.

This is basically the source of my complaint about this, which is that it's pretty much preaching to the choir. We already knew all this, didn't we, really? But to a Gator, this is invalid, inherently, because their complaint from the very beginning has been The Media Is Against Us. They don't think that online media outlets are representative of how the actual population feels about the subject. So, everybody ends this feeling exactly the same way they felt before.

But it is interesting if nothing else just as a kind of general retrospective of the media coverage.
posted by Sequence at 5:57 AM on August 19, 2015 [4 favorites]


You mean it...it wasn't about ethics in games journalism?
posted by Enemy of Joy at 5:57 AM on August 19, 2015 [28 favorites]


The problem isn't that we know it was a sexist, misogynistic effort. It is that many of the young naive men sucked into it don't recognize this fact.

Why are you/they so angry?
posted by clvrmnky at 5:58 AM on August 19, 2015 [11 favorites]


I occasionally browse /r/all when I've got a couple (but only a couple) of minutes to kill, and stuff from KotakuInAction still shows up pretty high up in the feed. So there are still plenty of bozos upvoting this junk. Or bots, I guess.
posted by uncleozzy at 5:58 AM on August 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


Wow, that's a really thorough article and very well done. I'm glad that this wasn't just left as an "oh, that's a thing that happened", but is being actively studied and documented.

Yes, the study has limitations, but this is still important research and I think a reasonable methodology to the conclusions.
posted by meinvt at 5:59 AM on August 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


Sad LOL:

Even the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Journalism Ethics weighed in on how unhelpful GamerGate has been to their field
posted by almostmanda at 5:59 AM on August 19, 2015 [94 favorites]


We already knew all this, didn't we, really?

Depends on who "we" is, really. There's still people who are generally ignorant of the whole thing and are more likely to, say, go to KotakuInAction (or whatever subreddit) to find out what this GamerGate thing is all about than read the Wikipedia entry or Google it. And if you spend enough time in KIA, and don't know that Breitbart and the New York Times aren't two equal and opposite sides of a conversation, you can get a seriously warped idea of what the consensus on GamerGate is.
posted by griphus at 6:04 AM on August 19, 2015 [12 favorites]


We already knew all this, didn't we, really?

There's a lot of value in studies that, perhaps not surprising, set facts "we all know" on a solid foundation. We know roughly how big GG is (not very). We know who the mainstream actors are (a couple publications and a few outlier journalists). We know that the people who care enough to speak up against the trolls and misogynists get more than double the attention than the trolls can provoke.

Perhaps we "knew" this already, but with this study we are closer to understanding it.
posted by bonehead at 6:05 AM on August 19, 2015 [7 favorites]


For those with access, this article is a great look at what happened when Gamergateers conflated DiGRA with DARPA.
posted by zenwerewolf at 6:07 AM on August 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


Not getting the "but this doesn't tell us what people think" vibe. There are over a thousand sources in this study and if there was an actual sizeable body of opinion in favour of GG then this would be reflected - distorted, of course, but it would be there.

Try finding any other area of public discussion where there's substantial public support for one side of the issue, and it not getting any recognition at all. Journalists like this stuff, they like quoting people who have strong, unfashionable opinions, and editors recognise that it's good shtick to put in the odd article or op-ed that winds the normal readership up.

Conversely, it's not as if there's any lack of publications willing and able to run some ferociously unpleasant lines - if there is a constituency for it.

Journalism is a product of and reflects society. It does so badly and piecemeal, and often it deliberately misrepresents, and the things it amplifies or diminishes are very often not those that many of us (writers and readers) would like to see treated thus. But it rarely ignores, and when it does - especially these days - there are plenty of people who will say so, loudly, and who will do a decent job of marshalling the evidence and presenting their case.

If that doesn't happen, and it hasn't happened with the proGG people, then why not - well, one obvious answer is that there aren't many of them.

That's not an obviously invalid conclusion
posted by Devonian at 6:23 AM on August 19, 2015 [10 favorites]


The article was marked as free content when I just accessed it, zenwerewolf.
posted by Harald74 at 6:26 AM on August 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


Dubious methodology aside, I find it easy to believe that most people can't sympathize with deranged, hateful man-children fighting to preserve their button-mashing hobby as an embodiment of their outrageously fragile toxic masculinity the only way they know how: by hiding behind their keyboards as they wage a sickening campaign of harassment against any woman who politely suggests that maybe their hobby doesn't need to pander so much to mindlessly angry sockfucking ratdicks.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 6:27 AM on August 19, 2015 [47 favorites]


The GamerGaters will be throwing a huge tantrum again, though, and that kinda sucks.

They are never not throwing a huge tantrum, so it's not really a reason not to do something.
posted by Artw at 6:28 AM on August 19, 2015 [24 favorites]


I'm sorry, I can't resist:

...sockfucking ratdicks.
posted by [expletive deleted]

posted by Etrigan at 6:28 AM on August 19, 2015 [9 favorites]


You mean it...it wasn't about ethics in games journalism?

The sad thing is that so many people were eager to get that particular topic rolling that GamersGate was able to co-opt a good portion of that segment that it set back that whole movement by years. There really needs to be a "discussion" on the relationship between entertainment media in general and video game media specifically and advertising, but any such attempt now is just going to be "poking a hornet's nest with a stick" as weirdo states. So we're going to have wait until GG is a distant memory before anyone takes a serious swing at it again.
posted by dances with hamsters at 6:37 AM on August 19, 2015 [5 favorites]


Breitbart sided with the gamergaters? No surprise there, really. The Venn diagram of GamerGaters, Sad/Rabid Puppies, and Fox News Republicans apparently forms a perfect circle.
posted by JohnFromGR at 6:37 AM on August 19, 2015 [17 favorites]


their complaint from the very beginning has been The Media Is Against Us.

no. their complaint from the very beginning was that websites where they usually got to sling all manner of shit said "no thanks" when they decided to up the ante and try to form hatemobs to attack one tiny indie developer because her abusive and controlling ex-boyfriend wanted them to. there's this weird trend i've been seeing lately where even places like polygon are rewriting the beginning of gamergate to be about angry gamers vs the media, but that was something that took a good two weeks to flesh out while burgers and fries jokes flew everywhere. and as a note, on the anniversary i saw a number of highly favoritied/upvoted/etc jokes in that exact same vein, so despite how they protest, they remember what the beginning was - it'd would behoove us to remember too.
posted by nadawi at 6:37 AM on August 19, 2015 [55 favorites]


GamerGate is a huge tantrum.
posted by shakespeherian at 6:37 AM on August 19, 2015 [7 favorites]


i think when people say brietbart is on their side they mean the scumfuck milo yiannopoulos, who writes for brietbart. they also got asshole reactionary, adam baldwin (who named gamergate if i'm remembering correctly - or at least popularized the name). fuckwads all the way down...
posted by nadawi at 6:40 AM on August 19, 2015


We can infer from Breitbart's support that there must be at least a large enough fringe to make supporting it appear bankable.

I'm not sure about that? I parsed the support of the right-wing sites that supported GamerGate, Breitbart especially, as politically rather than commercially motivated. They saw GamerGate as natural allies with a common enemy, and they hoped that they could shift the narrative to bring the gators into their fold.
posted by skymt at 6:41 AM on August 19, 2015 [4 favorites]


So you think you can refute this misogynist group's cover story that what they're really upset about is collusion among journalists to keep their side of the story from being published with a survey showing that nobody is publishing their side of the story?
posted by straight at 6:44 AM on August 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


Yeah the Breitbart/Gamergate connection is about 95% Milo having found a completely credulous and adoring audience for his particular type of rhetoric.
posted by griphus at 6:45 AM on August 19, 2015 [4 favorites]


Zenwerewolf and the link I provided intersect very well. There really is a core of angry and motivated men who are using an uninformed but vaguely unsatisfied majority to simply wreck everything for everyone.

Nice paper. Saved.
posted by clvrmnky at 6:46 AM on August 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


I saw that. probably not entirely unpredictably, the pro gamergate documentary film has been a clusterfuck of epic proportions with the director and producer turning on each other.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:50 AM on August 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


Reminds me of the old Vietnam War joke: "If he runs, he's VC. If he stands still, he's disciplined VC."

In the GamerGate case, it would be: "If it supports us, it's media. If it opposes us, it's biased media."
posted by theorique at 6:50 AM on August 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


Even if only 1% of the people in the world bought the GG schtick, they're still doing plenty to make up for the other 99%.

And even just one death threat over Twitter is too many, and if the guy who threatened to kill your kids and your parents and rape you while your husband watched got off scot-free, it's cold comfort to hear that "yeah, most people think the guy who said that was a douche."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:54 AM on August 19, 2015 [13 favorites]


oh man the Sarkeesian Effect drama and the heart-rending breakup of Canadian Non-Union Anton LaVey Equivalent and Yelly Bathtubman was the most delicious and guilt-free of schadenfreude
posted by griphus at 6:54 AM on August 19, 2015 [17 favorites]


So you think you can refute this misogynist group's cover story that what they're really upset about is collusion among journalists to keep their side of the story from being published with a survey showing that nobody is publishing their side of the story?

maybe not every response to these scumfucks has to be on their terms?
posted by kagredon at 7:00 AM on August 19, 2015 [16 favorites]


the idea isn't to refute their cover story. we have the proof of their cover story - the logs that show that they came up with "ethics in gaming journalism" and "not your shield" as a way to cover continued harassment of zoe (and anita and the list kept growing). we don't need to refute it. not everything has to be about proving something to those idiots or the angry anti-feminists that keep falling in with them. sometimes we can talk amongst the entire rest of the population and do studies on what happened.
posted by nadawi at 7:00 AM on August 19, 2015 [26 favorites]


it'd would behoove us to remember too

I certainly didn't mean to imply that it was their ONLY complaint and I'm well aware of where all this came from, that's not what I was saying. I just meant that there has been no point in all of this at which GG would have seen major media outlets as representative. The distrust isn't something that arose later. The only reason they trust Breitbart is that Breitbart went out of their way--well, his way, it was basically just Milo, wasn't it?--to pander to them as overtly as humanly possible, and that's their standard for reliable media. So, saying "every major media outlet thinks you're full of it" isn't going to convince anybody who's that involved with it at this point. And anybody who stumbles onto KiA before they actually look at major media outlets, I kind of suspect that they're coming from a very similar viewpoint to start with.

It's definitely not to say this wasn't about harassment from day 1. Just that nobody who stumbled in on day 1 or 5 or 300+ and enthusiastically took up the cause is going to be convinced of its wrongness because the New York Times said so.
posted by Sequence at 7:00 AM on August 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


Breitbart sided with the gamergaters? No surprise there, really. The Venn diagram of GamerGaters, Sad/Rabid Puppies, and Fox News Republicans apparently forms a perfect circle.

Donald Trump has tweeted support.
posted by Artw at 7:03 AM on August 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


And I definitely think talking about it from a perspective other than convincing them is worth something, but I think the specific focus of this particular survey does seem to have been focused on refuting a point--most people actually agree with GamerGate!--that only Gators have actually attempted to make. I'd love to see more people taking a serious look at this in terms of examining how movements like this operate.
posted by Sequence at 7:05 AM on August 19, 2015


i just think it's important to always point out what the beginning was and don't fall into the same trap polygon* fell into where you give slight veneer of respectability to it. i also really don't understand why people think this study needs to be reacted to as if its purpose is to convince the gaming wing of the manosphere.

*as a note, even when polygon gave these cretins that slight little win, which they won't stop crowing about, they prove again that it was never about ethics.
posted by nadawi at 7:07 AM on August 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


while i love the hilarity of trump tweeting support - i don't think it's obvious that he has any idea whatsoever what gamergate is and instead was just tweeting support at obvious assholes who supported him. it's pretty much his bread and butter.
posted by nadawi at 7:08 AM on August 19, 2015 [7 favorites]


I saw a great editorial from a week or so ago about how Downvote and similar buttons can get a vocal minority to reshape conversations and perceived community consensus, especially if they swoop in a discussion early. (since a handful of downvotes hides a comment at the very bottom of the page underneath an accordion button)

I can't find it, but the article proposed the solution would be a dislike button, which would quickly register disagreement but not actually change the way content is displayed.

This is one of the worst parts of algorithms moderating a community instead of humans, since those who can game the algorithms best end up being pseudo-moderators and de facto censors. I believe this is why gamergate sticks around so long, even though everyone outside their circle sees them as a harassment mob.
posted by mccarty.tim at 7:08 AM on August 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


mccarty.tim: I can't find it, but the article proposed the solution would be a dislike button

I think this is it, "Gamergate is going after SXSW panels: how ‘the downvote’ gives power to the mob".
posted by papercrane at 7:14 AM on August 19, 2015 [4 favorites]


That's it, thanks!
posted by mccarty.tim at 7:17 AM on August 19, 2015


So you think you can refute this misogynist group's cover story that what they're really upset about is collusion among journalists to keep their side of the story from being published with a survey showing that nobody is publishing their side of the story?

But the burden of proof of collusion is on Gamergate, and they haven't provided any. Conspiracy theorists also say "Nobody is talking about chemtrails!!" as if it's evidence of a coverup. It's not. In absence of that proof, there's a much simpler explanation for why nobody sided with Gamergate.
posted by almostmanda at 7:26 AM on August 19, 2015 [5 favorites]


Here's the rub - GamerGate, like climate change skeptics, don't need to have public support to thrive. In fact, they thrive in the face of adversity, and they can make enough noise on their own that they draw some media attention. And when they get that attention, they get an inflated representation compared to their wide-spread support, just like climate change skeptics. It's not mathematically representative of the "debate" at hand, so someone who is unfamiliar with the issue might think "hey, both sides have equal weight and validity."
posted by filthy light thief at 7:31 AM on August 19, 2015 [5 favorites]


I think that's why it's so important to demonstrate that there aren't two sides (or two sides and 'neutrals') to the issue. There's GamerGate and those sympathetic to it, and then there's basically everyone else. "Anti-GamerGate" is a very convenient fiction for them, but it's still a fiction.
posted by griphus at 7:34 AM on August 19, 2015 [14 favorites]


In the GamerGate case, it would be: "If it supports us, it's media. If it opposes us, it's biased media."

Conservatives have been playing that bogus game since at least the Nixon Administration, and that's just within my own personal memory.
posted by Gelatin at 7:35 AM on August 19, 2015 [4 favorites]


If there is anything this whole cluster fuck has achieved is that it has helped me clear twitter and Facebook out of my life, along with cutting loose a few "friends" that have demonstrated a lack of subtly and an inability to see facts beyond their privileged male asses.

Good riddance to all of it.

My one regret is that ostensibly good folks I'd like to reason with -- usually young men in my trade who self-identify as "gamer" -- may have to go with them until they learn a bit more about the world.

I just can't involve myself in conversations anymore where I have to explain to them that they are minimizing, gaslighting, excuse-making, and otherwise participating in the worst form of online faux rhetoric. Some of these guys really think they are being clear headed moderates.

Having been one of these guys, I felt I had perspective. But I'm thinking more and more that this stuff needs to be worked out on your own. Maybe for years.

It's not my job to educate my gender.
posted by clvrmnky at 7:35 AM on August 19, 2015 [7 favorites]


Yeah, I hear you clvrmnky. GG helped me pretty much purge gaming from my life. I grew tired of having to explain ('No, I'm extremely leftist, volunteered at a shelter for rape victi-') myself. Remove distractions, work on the ol' trunk novel, etc.
posted by mrdaneri at 7:39 AM on August 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


"Anti-GamerGate" is a very convenient fiction for them, but it's still a fiction.

Whenever I make the poor decision of dipping into Twitter and seeing what's going around #GamerGate, I do see a handful of activists who could be accurately described as "anti-GamerGate" - handles like @a_man_in_black or @srhbutts or @iglvzx often seem to turn up, patiently educating people over long Twitter threads.

As I said in an earlier metafilter thread, I don't know what they get from repeating themselves over and over to the same trolls, but good for them, I guess?
posted by theorique at 7:42 AM on August 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


I saw that. probably not entirely unpredictably, the pro gamergate documentary film has been a clusterfuck of epic proportions with the director and producer turning on each other.

I think it's hilarious that, rather than use the traditional Lorem Ipsum text for their unfinished live site, they used text from the wikipedia article about Lorem Ipsum. It feels like a metaphor.
posted by almostmanda at 7:44 AM on August 19, 2015 [18 favorites]


Breitbart.com has long made a habit of publishing bitter complaints from conservative actors and artists (Adam Baldwin, cartoonist Bill Willingham (who recently covered himself in glory, or, well, something, at GenCon)) who whine about how much they're discriminated against as conservatives in Hollywood/the media/whatever, despite being pretty successful in their fields. They're career haters who think that they're the ones being unjustly hated on.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:44 AM on August 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


I do see a handful of activists who could be accurately described as "anti-GamerGate"

There are definitely people who are against GamerGate, but the phrase/concept "anti-GamerGate" itself is a GG dogwhistle. The narrative they push is that of a sort of Allies/Axis situation with two organized camps duking it out for supremacy, which is very much not the case. The people they lump into "anti-GamerGate" on the whole did not pick a side, they just reacted sensibly to a coordinated harassment campaign by trying to stop it and educate people who didn't know what was happening.
posted by griphus at 7:49 AM on August 19, 2015 [14 favorites]


i love this site : what is gamergate currently ruining.
posted by nadawi at 7:58 AM on August 19, 2015 [17 favorites]


Donald Trump has tweeted support.

Closeted man-babies are a core Trump demo.
posted by bonehead at 7:59 AM on August 19, 2015 [4 favorites]


Shared this article on Twitter, immediately got some Gator I've never heard of replying with screenshots that are supposed to prove...something? I decided it wasn't worth trying to figure out how their archive "proves" bias or bad science or whatever. And naturally there's a long trail of "haha they don't know we can find old stuff" comments along the way.

They're still vigilant and vehement after all this time. Ugh.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:06 AM on August 19, 2015


I do not really engage with the GG crowd on Twitter, but I installed GGAutoBlocker anyway and I've noticed that I will be reading a thread that has nothing to do with video gaming, and people will be replying to some total idiot, but I can't see the idiots tweets because I have them blocked. It has made my whole Twitter experience so much better.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 8:13 AM on August 19, 2015 [9 favorites]


Reminds me of the old Vietnam War joke: "If he runs, he's VC. If he stands still, he's disciplined VC."

There's a similar quote in the movie Full Metal Jacket, a film whose cast included... that's right—Adam Baldwin.
posted by Atom Eyes at 8:24 AM on August 19, 2015 [3 favorites]



It's not my job to educate my gender.


I understand the sentiment and your frustration. It is worth mentioning, though, that if you're not doing the educating, someone else has to. And that someone else is usually from the other gender and because of that gets way more scary, hate filled response than you would. And also she gets believed and taken seriously even less than you would, so her effectiveness is lower.
Saying "it's not my business", while true for all of us, is not really an option for women because it means that the world remains an unacceptably shitty place for us. It's not like the moderate gators would work it out for themselves eventually, without someone opposing them.



So yeah, I understand opting out of the discussion, but it does mean someone else has to opt in.
posted by Omnomnom at 8:25 AM on August 19, 2015 [36 favorites]


It's not my job to educate my gender.

It kind of is, though -- for all of us. Remaining silent means tacit acceptance of the status quo, and knowingly doing nothing to change things for the better. Don't we have a moral responsibility not to dump that responsibility on women, for whom (as Omnomnom points out) it's a much harder burden?
posted by zarq at 8:49 AM on August 19, 2015 [8 favorites]


There's a similar quote in the movie Full Metal Jacket, a film whose cast included... that's right—Adam Baldwin.

That's probably where I got it from. Seems too clever and "raw" to be in news footage of the war.
posted by theorique at 8:59 AM on August 19, 2015


That's probably where I got it from. Seems too clever and "raw" to be in news footage of the war.

I don't remember if it's in the book, but some of the dialogue in the film comes from Michael Herr's Dispatches, so that may be the source material. If memory serves me correctly, the "you just don't lead 'em as much" door gunner is from that book, too.
posted by Gelatin at 9:03 AM on August 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


Ahhh I am so grateful I followed through with my new year's resolution to just block anyone on twitter speaking positively about gamergate.
posted by Theta States at 9:07 AM on August 19, 2015 [4 favorites]


Perhaps I didn't make myself clear: you cannot educate those who refuse to listen. These boys will have to sort it out themselves, after years of smashing into friends and acquaintances over what is so clearly something they are right about.

This does not mean I, as a fucking hard core silverback radical feminist dad, will not be one of those immovable objects such boys will find themselves shipwrecked upon. In my personal life, I will wield the tender mallet of truth with abandon. But I will wield it where it does most good.

It means I refuse to be mediated by twitter and Facebook and whatever God forsaken shitty antisocial media bullshit artists like to recruit from.

At the end of the day, my ability to separate myself from what the zen dudes call "wrestling the tofu" is going to make me a better ally.

If this leaves others to the tender mercies of Twitter and Facebook, so be it. This is twitter and Facebook's problem, not mine. That is, another wry comment or flame war or unending comment stack does nothing for any progressive cause.
posted by clvrmnky at 9:42 AM on August 19, 2015 [5 favorites]


It's not my job to educate my gender.

It's not your job, in the sense that you don't get paid for it, you were not assigned to it, but it is your social role, and in that sense it is just as much your responsibility as any other social obligation. It's not your job in the same way that giving a birthday present is not your job. More so, because unlike giving birthday presents, educating your gender is impossible to avoid.

People learn how to be people by socializing with people. They learn their gender from observing their gender in action. People learn how to be men by socializing with men. They learn how to be women by socializing with women. Everything you do that a person observes is teaching them what it means to be your gender. Even avoiding all social contact and living self-sufficient in a cabin in Montana is educating your gender, because that's a very "masculine" thing to do.

tl;dr: It takes a village to raise a child.
posted by yeolcoatl at 9:43 AM on August 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


To that end, I will point out I do have a radical feminist Tumblr I use mostly to amplify women's voices, with minimal editorializing.

Given that the primary job of an ally should be to shut up and listen, and not add to the chorus of "But, not all x".
posted by clvrmnky at 9:45 AM on August 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


Back to the main topic, pretty much everything I have to say about GamerGate can be summed up in this comment.
posted by yeolcoatl at 9:51 AM on August 19, 2015


At the end of the day, my ability to separate myself from what the zen dudes call "wrestling the tofu" is going to make me a better ally.

The zen dudes may call it "wrestling the tofu", but from where I'm sitting it looks more like "preaching to the choir". And that doesn't make for as good an ally as you think.

If this leaves others to the tender mercies of Twitter and Facebook, so be it. This is twitter and Facebook's problem, not mine.

No - it's the women being flamed's problem.

To that end, I will point out I do have a radical feminist Tumblr I use mostly to amplify women's voices, with minimal editorializing.

And just how much traffic do you get from guys who don't already agree with you?

Given that the primary job of an ally should be to shut up and listen, and not add to the chorus of "But, not all x".

There are secondary jobs allies can do, which include "yo, dude, you're being a jerknob" comments to other guys who are indeed being jerknobs.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:57 AM on August 19, 2015 [4 favorites]


That's a great phrase, "wrestling the tofu".

Due to it being both intriguing and ambiguous, I searchengined it. It looks like more people are literally wrestling tofu than explaining the metaphor. Is this something like it, clvrmnky?
posted by davemee at 10:05 AM on August 19, 2015


maybe we can get back to the topic of the thread and away from one person's actions and interpretations of being an ally?
posted by nadawi at 10:26 AM on August 19, 2015 [13 favorites]


The people they lump into "anti-GamerGate" on the whole did not pick a side, they just reacted sensibly to a coordinated harassment campaign by trying to stop it and educate people who didn't know what was happening.

Yeah, I'm not really anti-GamerGate so much as anti-death and rape threats, anti-harassment and anti-internet mob.
posted by Gygesringtone at 10:48 AM on August 19, 2015 [4 favorites]


Calling them out on their douchery is about as effective as pissing into the wind in the dark.

I disagree. The extent and depth of an organization's popular support and influence can go a long way toward determining how effective they will be when they lobby advertisers, for example. No one will pay attention to a lone voice. But if many band together, then larger corporate entities mindful of brand image will be more likely take notice and consider their arguments valid.
posted by zarq at 10:49 AM on August 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'll try to clarify one more time: I refuse to be mediated by social media. And it certainly is the responsibility of Twitter, et al, to manage their douche bag users, not me. It is their lack of tools for recourse, and their corporate needs that are at odds with how people expect to use their services that is broken, not my expectation of some sanity in my non work life.

It does no good to participate in those forums because they punish thoughtful engagement and reward hate amplification. Practically by design. The game is rigged, and I won't play.

If I'm to be an ally, I will continue to do that where it does the most good: in my immediate locale, where I will continue to directly call out bullshit.

I apologize if this sounds defeatist, but I have been doing this a long time. And it is not getting better. What is this? The third backlash since the 70s?

All we have are more entrenched positions and easier to use tools to spread hate. I'm that guy who is telling you that it isn't going to get better.

That doesn't mean I've stopped trying. It means I'm trying smarter.
posted by clvrmnky at 10:57 AM on August 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


Yeah, I'm not really anti-GamerGate so much as anti-death and rape threats, anti-harassment and anti-internet mob.

Possibly of lesser importance but is add anti-stupid conspiracy theory to the list of things that'll put you on the other side from them.
posted by Artw at 11:03 AM on August 19, 2015


Listen I think we can have a reasonable discussion on this without implicating the entire domain of stupid conspiracy theories.
posted by griphus at 11:08 AM on August 19, 2015 [6 favorites]


#notallchemtrails
posted by griphus at 11:08 AM on August 19, 2015 [24 favorites]


They'll ruin Chemtrails yet.
posted by Artw at 11:09 AM on August 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


Donald Trump has tweeted support.

Oh, to return to the good old days of 2012 when videogames were creating monsters.
posted by sparkletone at 12:46 PM on August 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


They've got Jack Thompson On board as well, which is just mindbending.

I guess the rule of thumb is that if you are an opportunist and a horrible person and want to pander to them they will embrace you absolutely.
posted by Artw at 12:51 PM on August 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


When I was paying closer attention to GG a little while back, one thing that struck me was how incredibly sensitive they were to how they were being perceived. As far as I could tell, they desperately wanted to be seen as good-guy crusaders for ethics in journalism (pfft whatevs) or some kind of consumer revolt (what does this even mean?) and not just a bunch of reactionary, misogynistic harassers. And yet, for the most part, they were completely unwilling to abandon the Gamergate banner to improve this perception. Kind of a weird irony.

Anyways, while I doubt that this article will be able to penetrate the layers of cognitive dissonance and self-justification that GGers have built up, I hope at the very least that it highlights the fact that whatever GG might think of itself, the rest of the world thinks that they're just terrible. Of course, we probably didn't need such an exhaustively researched article like this to know that -- when Felicia Day is on one side and Vox Day is on the other, the question should answer itself.
posted by mhum at 2:18 PM on August 19, 2015 [3 favorites]


it has helped me clear twitter and Facebook out of my life

I was lucky to have cleared my life of those (also Reddit, ESPECIALLY Reddit) before this all started. Facebook is for being 'social' while building your own self-affirming bubble (the only Facebook page I EVER go to is Berkeley Breathed's Bloom County Gallery and my opinion of him dropped 3 points for his choice of outlet) and Twitter (also Reddit, ESPECIALLY Reddit) is designed to amplify the voices of assholes like the Gameygators.

It's not my job to educate my gender.

I'd consider taking up that cause if I thought I could be listened to, but I'm already solidly identified as a traitor to my race/gender/country enough that I would probably be shot on sight if I come within 100 yards of Donald Trump.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:18 PM on August 19, 2015


There really needs to be a "discussion" on the relationship between entertainment media in general and video game media specifically and advertising,

Yeah, they picked a good cover story, basically. There really are lots of problems with the relationship between companies and journalists.

It's just that the actual GG movement doesn't really care about that, and was started based on personal feuds and misogyny. If they actually cared about the topic the focus would have been on the financial relationships between the companies, not who slept with who and so on.

But the cover story is plausible, and many people would agree with the idea that there are huge issues with games journalism. Its just that most of those people, once they see what GG actually does, are repulsed by the focus on women and anti-feminism and the tactics.

And it means the cover story topic they used is now radioactive, even though GG themselves don't actually care about it.
posted by thefoxgod at 3:20 PM on August 19, 2015 [3 favorites]


You know who have talked about actual issues in game journalism a whole bunch? The people they are attacking.
posted by Artw at 3:27 PM on August 19, 2015 [10 favorites]


I kind of want the headline of this post to be a Randy Newman song.


"Almost No One Sided With GamerGate"
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 5:16 PM on August 19, 2015 [3 favorites]


well, i've spent my evening locking down accounts because i was retweeted by a prominent gamergator. hopefully this just blows over...
posted by nadawi at 7:07 PM on August 19, 2015 [5 favorites]


Drop twitter and Facebook? Gee, must be nice to be a guy who desn't have to depend for their livelihood on a public internet identity.

The upshot is that people know are still being harassed by GamerGaters, and they CAN'T run off and hide, because they have online businesses. Others, especially artists, have restricted their contact circles to people they can trust, crippling their ability to get commissions. And still others, artists and designers and writers have dropped out entirely, forced to create new careers.

Every day people I know are living with fear of this crap. So I honestly don't want to hear people self-congratulate themselves about how they aren't involved and yet are still allies.
posted by happyroach at 10:21 PM on August 19, 2015 [14 favorites]


well, i've spent my evening locking down accounts because i was retweeted by a prominent gamergator. hopefully this just blows over...
posted by nadawi at 7:07 PM on August 19
[1 favorite +] [!]


Oh no! I hope you'll be all right, nadawi.
posted by Omnomnom at 3:52 AM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


You know who have talked about actual issues in game journalism a whole bunch? The people they are attacking.

clvrmnky's link address this and other relevant points brought up in this thread. It's really good; so good that I watched the six part videos twice yesterday. GG makes so much more sense knowing that the core people organizing also knew it had nothing to do with ethics. It was their intentional smokescreen for misogynistic harassment, and it appealed to a bunch of man-babies that didn't want to consider they might be complicit to how women are treated poorly.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 10:09 AM on August 20, 2015


Why are you/they so angry?

yeah, clvrmnky's link was good. the guy, ian danskin, had a followup after a twitter conversation with zoe quinn and lindsay ellis. (it's a long interesting conversation and i drew out some threads and combined some tweets.)
ian danskin: Have to research where the happy medium is between engaging and riling up is, if such medium even exists.

zq: I honestly don't think it does. Especially not on social media, public platforms

le: Yep. That's the rub. You can't win. You can talk about them, not to them. And even then, you'll rile.

zq: and then there will be collateral damage. Many other GG targets' attempts at "dialog" indirectly hurt me. they were also immediately weaponized - "See, THEY'LL talk to us unlike that WHORE"

le: There is quite literally nothing you can do that won't be weaponized. Attention only makes it worse. This is not to say they shouldn't be discussed, but they can't be engaged. Engagement harms ppl like us. And this is not to say you are doing ill, ultimately, but it is an unavoidable side effect.

....

id: Is the best option, then, to unpack an argument on your own turf, and leave the problem person out of it? ... But I worry that if I unpack that argument off-site, I'm abandoning that community to that rhetoric.

zq: yeah but they're not going to listen to that unpacking from someone they aren't actually listening to ... the only success I've seen or heard from with this stuff comes from two major places: either the person wakes up by realizing their targets are human which is complicated/difficult to induce OR someone they already hold in high respect like a friend or boss or hero tells them to knock it off. fwiw my data is from talking to 300+ reformed "trolls" about what changed them

...

le: I think people *want* to think they can reason with them, but at this point it's like conspiracy theory. I've noticed that a lot of men have a sort of "there but for the grace of god go I" investment. And I think that makes them more hopeful about "winning them over" than is realistic.

...

id: Sounds like the best advice, then, is "talk to proto-Jack, but leave Jack out of it"? The crux of the videos was "use Jack to talk to proto-Jack" - sounds like that was off-base

zq: "talk to proto-jack if he is indeed engaging in good faith, do so privately, create things that stand on their own to inform & spread truth, don't signal boost lies, EVEN if your intention is to address those lies. unless, of course, Jack is a friend of yours. Then get real as fuck with jack in private. also sometimes, you have to be the thing they lose"
not to drag clvrmnky back into this, but he did say he doesn't waste time on internet strangers or true believers and instead focuses on IRL people. i think that's exactly in line with what the two women are saying, using that personal relationship where there is hopefully already a level of respect you can leverage to get your point across without being preemptively dismissed.

you can be an ally without making your hill twitter and FB, who should've taken harassment seriously a long fucking time ago.
posted by twist my arm at 10:29 AM on August 20, 2015 [7 favorites]


Yeah, in addressing violence against women there are two levels or stages that need to be paid attention to.

In the long run, men need to be having general (not necessarily reactionary to a specific incident) conversations with other men in order to change the entire culture of violence. Violent men need to know that other men are paying attention, do notice their misogynist violence, and disapprove of/condemn it. Other men need to take a stand against rape jokes and casual misogyny in locker room/boys club type settings, for example.

But for a given individual incident, just calling out a man's violence against a specific woman in the absence of pre-arranged supports for the target of the violence can escalate the danger to the woman. Gamergate is not a form of this that we may be more used to seeing; I was uncomfortable with zq and le's insistence on not engaging gamergaters in the conversation transcribed above, until I realized that I was framing the situation incorrectly. I had been thinking of gamergate as the sort of generalized hate and misogyny that crops up so often, but it is a specific campaign of violence targetted at specific women. In that situation, the safety of individual women is a more immediate concern and should be attended to while we make plans to address the larger, foundational problem of misogyny.

I think that it is still important for men to engage other men online, to do the work of general culture change online as well as irl. I remember reading (and posting here) articles from people associated with Black Lives Matter requesting that their white friends engage rather than unfriend people making racist comments on facebook, for example. How you engage is important, of course. As Jay Smooth recommends, it's better to address the action than comment on a person's character. Coddling is unhelpful, but belittling someone also leads to them entrenching their harmful viewpoint in a defensive response. In responding to a specific comment or infraction, a simple "that's not an acceptable thing to say/way to treat others online" or "I don't support that viewpoint/those words/actions", and leaving it at that and not getting sucked into a long debate is helpful in making the point that those engaging in misogyny (or racism, or whatever) don't have the social support they think they have, while avoiding escalation and entrenchment as much as is feasible. Reaction to specific incidents has to be combined with proactively promoting alternative, non-misogynist viewpoints and actions consistently and continually, so that those holding a misogynist worldview are not only confronted with alternatives in confrontational settings.

(This is what frustrates me about recent research claiming that you can't change people's minds based on actual facts, and doing so just entrenches their inaccurate beliefs. The situations described in the research methods always seem to be ones that I look at and go, "well yeah, that's obviously a poor learning environment due to confrontational and other higher stress settings. Of course you're getting poor learning outcomes." There's an entire academic field (education) with decades of research and expertise on how to best promote learning that goes completely unheeded in those studies. Or, at least, the conclusions in pop science descriptions of the studies are inaccurate. /rant)
posted by eviemath at 7:17 AM on August 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


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