Gamergate reached 1.8 million

[Thundercrack85]

I don't think anyone gives a damn about anything on this forum unless it involves a fictional character.

 

[Superwoman Prime]

@The Question: I think that's debatable.

How do we know for sure where the majority read/watch reviews?

 

[The Question]

@The Question: I think that's debatable.

How do we know for sure where the majority read/watch reviews?

I think the view counts on Let's Plays are a strong indicator.

 

[The End]

Ethics. Sure, maybe someone with a crappy game got reviews you don't agree with. And maybe there was some sort of dating nonsense that went on. Did ANY of the alleged actions justify or warrant the death threats and rape threats?

Of course not.

We also should be wise enough to realize that GamerGate is a movement in the tens of thousands and they cannot be held to account for every bad thing that is said by anonymous trolls online.

The women (and men too) of GamerGate also receive threats.

http://t.co/dy3GZxZAO4

http://t.co/xkHjpQQwfx


They have some pretty disgusting things said to them, on the regular.

This is a PG one that I can post.

http://ask.fm/lizzyf620/answer/120344244712

 

[The End]

Putting pretty music over a bunch of statements designed to deflect criticism for ****** behavior and attitudes doesn't make those statements any more valid.

Can you quote the ****** behavior, attitudes, statements of the participants of that video?

Gaming websites didn't report on these "ethical concerns" because there was no breach of ethics in the first place, making these "concerns" entirely baseless,

Your denial of it doesn't make it go away.

and those "concerns" came with a wave of spiteful noxious rhetoric that no one should be forced to deal with.

Additionally, no one is telling anyone that they're monsters for liking games. They're pointing out a trend of sexist harassment in the culture

And GamerGate is in part a backlash against that generalization.

If GamerGate is about sexism, it doesn't make any sense at all that the movement is so diverse and that many prominent members are women.

If you say they have internalized misogyny, I want you to show a specific example.

and they're pointing out a trend of sexist narrative devices in the production of games. That is all.

That isn't really 'all', when anyone that uses the GamerGate hashtag to voice their disagreement with such arguments is labelled as practically equivalent to the KKK.

If you're so defensive about people simply pointing things out and raising arguments that you misconstrue it as oppression, maybe you have to think about wether or not those criticisms hit close to home.

It bugs me that privileged middle class people are telling women that they're not womaning properly, and that people of colour are being mislead. It's all very patronizing.

In the name of 'critiquing narrative sexist devices', SJWs like Anita and McIntosh are making very regid what women characters are acceptable in games. Quinn Harman, a cool lady I follow on twitter, 'The more these misguided SJWs narrow the def'n of "appropriate" fem chars, the fewer fem protagonists there will be, as devs #GamerGate<
'> have far more storytelling freedom w/ male characters. (No one ***** a brick when males get brutalized.) '


To illustrate that point, you can look at what producer/writer for Women vs Tropes, privileged white man Jonathan Mcintosh, says about feminists he disagrees with, or compare what he says about Far Cry, and what the voice actress said about the same game.

 

[Victarion]

Surprise, surprise: the issue isn't as clear cut as we like.

 

[The Question]

Can you quote the ****** behavior, attitudes, statements of the participants of that video?

Pretending that the backlash against Quinn was about journalistic integrity. Aggressively denying the existence of sexist attitudes in the subculture. Ignoring and attempting to silence women who have come forward with their experiences with harassment in the community. Acting like they're being persecuted when media critics simply make suggestions.

Your denial of it doesn't make it go away.

It can't go away because it doesn't exist. Your claims about Quinn were debunked months ago. She never had a sexual relationship with anyone who ever reviewed one of her games. She dated exactly one journalist, and the only things he ever wrote about her was mentioning the fact that she existed, which happened several months before they started dating. There was no breach of ethics.

And GamerGate is in part a backlash against that generalization.

If GamerGate is about sexism, it doesn't make any sense at all that the movement is so diverse and that many prominent members are women.

If you say they have internalized misogyny, I want you to show a specific example.

They support a movement that started with the sexist harassment of a woman and actively deny that it happened.

That isn't really 'all', when anyone that uses the GamerGate hashtag to voice their disagreement with such arguments is labelled as practically equivalent to the KKK.

That's because of the hashtag's association with harassment. Don't use the hashtag. Problem solved.

It bugs me that privileged middle class people are telling women that they're not womaning properly, and that people of colour are being mislead. It's all very patronizing.

1: You think that only privileged middle class people are anti-GamerGate. This is demonstratively false.

2: It bugs me that privileged middle class people are ignoring stories from women about systemic harassment in their culture based purely on anecdotal evidence form their female friends who may simply have been fortunate enough to not experience it for themselves.

 

[The End]

Pretending that the backlash against Quinn was about journalistic integrity. Aggressively denying the existence of sexist attitudes in the subculture. Ignoring and attempting to silence women who have come forward with their experiences with harassment in the community. Acting like they're being persecuted when media critics simply make suggestions.

I was actually asking for specific quotes from the people in the video that you accused of ****** behavior. Instead you're just regurgitating the same generalizations that you've been posting the entire thread.

It can't go away because it doesn't exist. Your claims about Quinn were debunked months ago.

Denied, not debunked. You deny that Grayson covering her game when they had a relationship and when he tested her game, is an ethics violation. Denial isn't debunking. Also to my knowledge you never addressed the issue of the IndieCade prize, or TheFineYoungCapitalists, or the board for suicidal males.


But months into GamerGate, WHY are you still talking about Zoe Quinn??

She never had a sexual relationship with anyone who ever reviewed one of her games. She dated exactly one journalist, and the only things he ever wrote about her was mentioning the fact that she existed, which happened several months before they started dating. There was no breach of ethics.

This is the same argument you've been bringing up the entire thread. 1. You are wrong about the timeline, 2. you are wrong about the extent of coverage, 3. You are ignorant of the fact that they knew each other when she was working on the game.

4. Why are you still talking about Zoe Quinn? I didn't bring her up; one wonders why this is a constant obsession with you.

Only a small percentage of tweets with the hashtag GamerGate mention Zoe Quinn.

GamerGate has moved on and I suggest that you do too.

They support a movement that started with the sexist harassment of a woman and actively deny that it happened.

There is literally no evidence that GamerGate has been involved in sexist harassment.

You know that you are making a fallacious argument - the genetic fallacy. Women's suffrage had racist origins. http://digital.library.upenn.edu/ebooks-public/pdfs/0195086929.pdf So what. It isn't related to what it is now, what the arguments and positions are of the prominent members and what the community overall says.

You are so intent on demonizing tens of thousands of people, you're stuck generalizing them. It isn't enough for you to disagree with someone, you have to believe that the whole group is tainted with sexism. This is the nature of your fallacious thinking. You don't think of these people as diverse human beings with diverse, nuanced views (which they are), you're intent of thinking of them as a sexist boogeyman. And that includes the women and people of colour that support the movement. And then you think of yourself as the progressive left.

That's because of the hashtag's association with harassment.

Where does that association come from? Because death threats haven't been linked to GamerGate. Where does the association come from? It comes from the outside, it comes from the outside attaching that unfounded link, and repeating it, and regurgitating it. Will Wheton quoted a troll insulting him as an example of GamerGate; it was pointed out to him that the account that insulted him had never used the hashtag gamergate. Something bad happens, blame gamergate.

Don't use the hashtag. Problem solved.

The onus is on you to correct your own generalizations.

Why would GamerGate stop using the hashtag, when it works so well? When they've eliminated so many advertisers from Gawker with e-mail campaigns? When the hashtag, months later, is still in the tens of thousands per day?

A person can stop using the hashtag, express the same opinions they've always expressed, but their voice can become lost in the noise of the internet. Under GamerGate, a movement that has become a community, their voice is retweeted and shared with hundreds, thousands.

Part of the whole point of GamerGate is as a backlash against defamation and vast attempts to demonize.

THIS is the problem with generalizations. Over and over and over again people tell the women of GamerGate that they don't exist BECAUSE of of the generalizations repeated by media. The media makes demonstrably false claims about GamerGate. When publications like the Guardian begin their articles with 'Gamergate is loud, dangerous and a last grasp at cultural dominance by angry white men', people unfortunately believe it.

https://***********/lizzyf620/status/528570067769122816/photo/1

People who are neutral become sympathetic to gamergate because they realize the media spin is baseless.

People like Meredith Placko:

https://***********/mplacko

'I have spoken to hundreds of people who are part of the GamerGate movement, and I have come to a single conclusion: they want to be heard.'

'"OMG MEREDITH YOUR SITE IS DOWN BECAUSE YOU TALKED ABOUT GAMERGATE." No, I just forgot to pay for it this month. Please stop blaming GGers.'

'Gdi GGers. You are making me tear up. So much support and yet so much pain from people who don't feel they have the right to speak up.'

'I am so sorry that anyone from my gender and or profession has made people feel they are not allowed to have a voice.'

1: You think that only privileged middle class people are anti-GamerGate. This is demonstratively false.

Don't put words in my mouth. When did I say only. However, sure is a lot of privileged people that proclaim that the women of GamerGate don't exist.

2: It bugs me that privileged middle class people are ignoring stories from women about systemic harassment in their culture based purely on anecdotal evidence form their female friends who may simply have been fortunate enough to not experience it for themselves.

I don't think they're ignoring those stories so much as that, it isn't the whole story, and people like Anita Sarkeesian use it as a shield from criticism. Who has quite frankly become a cult of personality, whom criticism of might as well be synonymous with sexism.

You're ignoring stories from the women and people of colour for whom, the sexism, racism and silencing they receive is from the people calling themselves progressive.

From a gay guy's twitter: 'If your feminism does not exactly match a tabloid blog narrative 100%, you're a subversive "misogynist" enemy to them. Freaking nutjobs.'

 

[The Question]

I was actually asking for specific quotes from the people in the video that you accused of ****** behavior. Instead you're just regurgitating the same generalizations that you've been posting the entire thread.

I never accused the specific people quoted in that video of ****** behavior. I was talking about the movement as a whole and what it stands for. I don't have to back up a claim I never made.

Denied, not debunked. You deny that Grayson covering her game when they had a relationship and when he tested her game, is an ethics violation. Denial isn't debunking. Also to my knowledge you never addressed the issue of the IndieCade prize, or TheFineYoungCapitalists, or the board for suicidal males.


But months into GamerGate, WHY are you still talking about Zoe Quinn??



This is the same argument you've been bringing up the entire thread. 1. You are wrong about the timeline, 2. you are wrong about the extent of coverage, 3. You are ignorant of the fact that they knew each other when she was working on the game.

4. Why are you still talking about Zoe Quinn? I didn't bring her up; one wonders why this is a constant obsession with you.

Only a small percentage of tweets with the hashtag GamerGate mention Zoe Quinn.

GamerGate has moved on and I suggest that you do too.

Hoo boy&#8230;

1: No, debunked. Thoroughly debunked. Completely debunked. I have read the only articles Grayson ever wrote that mentioned Quinn. You have posted screen caps of them on this thread. Neither of them were reviews. One of them was an article about a larger project that she was involved in and why that project did not come to fruition where he mentioned her by name once, and one of them was an article about steam signing a bunch of indie games where he listed her game as one of the three most prominent signings. Neither of these were reviews by any stretch of the imagination, and both of them were written before they entered into a relationship. This has been confirmed by everyone who knows them personally including the ex-boyfriend who wrote the damn Zoe Post in the first place. To say that there was a breach of journalistic ethics when there is no evidence of that at all and all of the supposed evidence has been debunked is absurd.

As for the other things you brought up&#8230;

The Issue of the IndieCade Prize: There was no issue about the IndieCade prize. Depression Quest has never won an award from IndieCade.

The Fine Young Patitalists/board for suicidal males: So GamerGate has donated to charity. So what? That does not absolve them of their sins.

2: I'm still talking about Zoe Quinn because GamerGate still actively denies that they did anything wrong and that's not okay.

There is literally no evidence that GamerGate has been involved in sexist harassment.

Except for all of the people who actively harass women under the banner of GamerGate, and the fact that supposedly "moderate" and "reasonable" GamerGaters refuse to do anything clean house (flagging tweets doesn't count because as it is extremely ineffectual), and those same "moderate" GamerGaters cooking up conspiracy theories about Anita Sarkeesian faking her harassment and being a "professional victim," and of course the very foundation of GamerGate which is refusing to admit that what happened with Quinn was wrong and had nothing to do with ethics in journalism.

You know that you are making a fallacious argument - the genetic fallacy. Women's suffrage had racist origins. http://digital.library.upenn.edu/ebooks-public/pdfs/0195086929.pdf So what. It isn't related to what it is now, what the arguments and positions are of the prominent members and what the community overall says.

An argument is only an example of Genetic Fallacy when, as you say, the origins of a thing have nothing to do with what the thing currently is. This is not the case with GamerGate. GamerGate still actively refuses to admit wrongdoing and is geared specifically at combating the perceived intrusion of feminist thought into gaming culture. The feminist movement has admitted that its racist history was wrong and has actively made efforts to make amends and correct itself. GamerGate has not done that, and in fact actively fights against doing that, so its origins are still relevant. Especially so since, unlike women's suffrage, the people involved in GamaerGate's dirty origins are also the people who are involved in it now. It's not like this was centuries in the past.

You are so intent on demonizing tens of thousands of people, you're stuck generalizing them. It isn't enough for you to disagree with someone, you have to believe that the whole group is tainted with sexism. This is the nature of your fallacious thinking. You don't think of these people as diverse human beings with diverse, nuanced views (which they are), you're intent of thinking of them as a sexist boogeyman. And that includes the women and people of colour that support the movement. And then you think of yourself as the progressive left.

1: I disagree with them because they are being sexist. That is my only dog in this race.

2: I never once denied that the members of GamerGate are diverse human beings with diverse nuanced views. I never said anything like that. I said that they are all supporting a movement that is fundamentally sexist and even though many of them are probably wonderful people they are providing ever for misogynist *******s by deny that said ashes did anything wrong.

Where does that association come from? Because death threats haven't been linked to GamerGate. Where does the association come from? It comes from the outside, it comes from the outside attaching that unfounded link, and repeating it, and regurgitating it. Will Wheton quoted a troll insulting him as an example of GamerGate; it was pointed out to him that the account that insulted him had never used the hashtag gamergate. Something bad happens, blame gamer gate.

1: Yes, the death threats have been linked back to GamerGate. People who participate in the movement and self identify as GamerGaters made those threats.

2: The first thing GamerGate did, before it was ever called GamerGate, was harass someone for no good reason. After people called them out on it, they came up with the lie about ethics in journalism (which was documented, there are chat logs of the thread where folks at the heart of harassing Quinn invented that PR spin and openly admitted that it was spin that I shared earlier in the thread) in order to deflect criticism of their ****** behavior.

The onus is on you to correct your own generalizations.

The onus is on you to prove your claims about Quinn and Sarkeesian, which you haven't.

Why would GamerGate stop using the hashtag, when it works so well? When they've eliminated so many advertisers from Gawker with e-mail campaigns? When the hashtag, months later, is still in the tens of thousands per day?

A person can stop using the hashtag, express the same opinions they've always expressed, but their voice can become lost in the noise of the internet. Under GamerGate, a movement that has become a community, their voice is retweeted and shared with hundreds, thousands.

Keep the name, but then stop complaining when people associate you with the crappy things done in that name.

Part of the whole point of GamerGate is as a backlash against defamation and vast attempts to demonize.

And herein lies the problem. You adamantly refuse to admit that what this movement did to Zoe Quinn in its larval stage was mindless sexist harassment with zero justification. You bought the lie about ethics even though it has been thoroughly debunked. That is why we can't come to a common ground, because at the end of the day you are providing cover for awful people and telling them they did nothing wrong. I cannot abide that.

THIS is the problem with generalizations. Over and over and over again people tell the women of GamerGate that they don't exist BECAUSE of of the generalizations repeated by media.

Other than a few isolated incidents, people are not saying that they do not exist. Not en mass. Not as a media wide trend. What they are saying is that they don't drive the agenda of the conversation, which I think is pretty obviously true.

https://***********/lizzyf620/status/528570067769122816/photo/1

People who are neutral become sympathetic to gamer gate because they realize the media spin is baseless.

Except for all of those confirmed instances of threats and harassment coming from GamerGate, you're right, completely baseless.

http://digg.com/2014/when-gamergate-hits-the-wrong-target

Don't put words in my mouth. When did I say only. However, sure is a lot of privileged people that proclaim that the women of GamerGate don't exist.

1: You implied it.

2: Again, people saying that the woman of GamerGate don't exist is not a huge trend. Most people recognize that there are women in the movement. They also recognize that the people setting the agenda for the movement are mostly men and that men are very much in the majority of the movement.

I don't think they're ignoring those stories so much as that, it isn't the whole story, and people like Anita Sarkeesian use it as a shield from criticism. Who has quite frankly become a cult of personality, whom criticism of might as well be synonymous with sexism.

1: No one said it was the whole story. What they're saying is that just because there are individual women who have not experienced harassment, that doesn't mean that harassment is not a trend the community. It just means those women are fortunate.

2: You know what else helps shield Sarkeesian from criticism? The fact that most of the criticism GamerGate sends her way amounts to baseless conspiracy theories.

3: Do you think that maybe, if every time you openly criticize a feminist academic, you are criticized of being sexist, isn't it possible, just possible, that you might be making sexist arguments?

You're ignoring stories from the women and people of colour for whom, the sexism, racism and silencing they receive is from the people calling themselves progressive.

I'm not ignoring them. That is part of the problem. The role of white allies and male allies in social justice causes is a precarious one, and can lead to dismissive ******** like the exchange you posted if not approached with humility and a lot of careful self examination. Instead of interacting with women and people of color who disagree with social justice causes from a place of understanding or, better yet, stepping aside and let someone with a little more ground to stand on take up the debate, sometimes you get leftist progressive men who get a little full of themselves and think they can tell women and people of color what's what. That is wrong. But it also doesn't prove the feminist stance wrong. It kind of proves them right. There is misogyny, racism, and unexamined privilege everywhere, even among the people who try to combat those forces. It's so ubiquitous that even some anti-sexist and ant-racist people are a little bit sexist and racist sometimes.

 

[Tempest]

To The End:

An anonymous person posed this question to Eron Gjoni:

And what do you say to the people who say that you really didn't have any right to name any of the people that she cheated on you with? I mean, you say that you don't think Zoe ****ing Joshua had anything to do with her getting hired, so how is his identity relevant to her being a terrible person? I could say the same for Robin and Nathan. Their sex lives didn't involve you, and you can talk about how Zoe endangered your health without specifying who they were.

To which he responded:

How was I going to address the fact that she fired me to go work for the man she was cheating on me with, while keeping his identity a secret?

People would just go look up who she was working for. That&#8217;s not rocket science.
Nathan was a pressure release valve to direct discussions to journalism if **** went south.

Robin was partially &#8220;be consistent&#8221; and partially &#8220;he probably won&#8217;t care that much.&#8221;

But like, again, how are we defining &#8220;had no right&#8221; here? Who the **** decides what I do and don&#8217;t have a right to do?

(Emphasis mine)

Link: http://antinegationism.tumblr.com/post/101769143456/and-what-do-you-say-to-the-people-who-say-that-you

Do you understand that this was never about journalistic integrity? This was started because he wanted to ****-shame his ex-girlfriend. The angle of journalistic ethics was a way to cover his butt, not his ultimate goal.

 

[The Question]

Oh, and The End, I forgot to mention: You say that Quinn and Grayson new each other when he wrote about her, even if they weren't dating at the time.

My response is: So what?

Reporters know people in the industry they report on. There is absolutely no way that they couldn't and still cover said industry. You need to build relationships to get information.

Do you know what groups of people political reporters are most well acquainted with? Politicians and their staffs. The reporters in the White House press room actually work there and have that space as their office. They see members of The President's staff every day and they swap Christmas cards just like everyone else. It's part of how the whole system works.

 

[The Question]

Also, this tumblr is great:

http://actuallyethics.tumblr.com

 

[The End]

I never accused the specific people quoted in that video of ****** behavior. I was talking about the movement as a whole and what it stands for. I don't have to back up a claim I never made.

You seemingly don't have to back up anything. A consistent trend with you is that you just back up your opinion by regurgitating your opinion.

Hoo boy&#8230;

1: No, debunked. Thoroughly debunked. Completely debunked. I have read the only articles Grayson ever wrote that mentioned Quinn. You have posted screen caps of them on this thread. Neither of them were reviews.

WHY on earth is this point of semantics constantly repeated? He gave her positive coverage.

One of them was an article about a larger project that she was involved in and why that project did not come to fruition where he mentioned her by name once, and one of them was an article about steam signing a bunch of indie games where he listed her game as one of the three most prominent signings. Neither of these were reviews by any stretch of the imagination,

You think that by clinging to the semantic point of the word 'review', that this means there is no ethics violation when you're having a relationship with someone you are giving positive press to, without disclosing that relationship.

and both of them were written before they entered into a relationship. This has been confirmed by everyone who knows them personally including the ex-boyfriend who wrote the damn Zoe Post in the first place.

You continuously appear to be confused about the timeline.


Grayson and Quinn began a relationship within a day of the article.

http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2gab2v/another_long_timeline_of_gamergate/

As for the other things you brought up&#8230;

The Issue of the IndieCade Prize: There was no issue about the IndieCade prize. Depression Quest has never won an award from IndieCade.

Depression Quest won the IndieCade Night Games Selection, Robin Arnott was chair of the event.

The Fine Young Patitalists/board for suicidal males: So GamerGate has donated to charity. So what? That does not absolve them of their sins.

2: I'm still talking about Zoe Quinn because GamerGate still actively denies that they did anything wrong and that's not okay.[/quote]

1. You're unaware of Quinn's bullying of TFYC, and the board for suicidal males. That doesn't surpise me.

2. You haven't actually shown what it is that GamerGate has done wrong, other than just choosing to associate harassment with GamerGate.

Except for all of the people who actively harass women under the banner of GamerGate,

Like who? Which members of GamerGate are harassing women and how are they doing it?

and the fact that supposedly "moderate" and "reasonable" GamerGaters refuse to do anything clean house (flagging tweets doesn't count because as it is extremely ineffectual),

GamerGate does a heck of a lot more to clean their own house than anti-GamerGate does to clean theirs. There's the GamerGate harassment patrol, there are the people that IP tracked a harasser of Anita. There is hotwheels of 8chan, who wrote a recent article that was picked up by GamerGate about a GG spreading false info and breaking trust, and it seems to me if GG and 8chan were as bad as some say they are, they would not have said anything.

Nevertheless, short of policing the internet, can you actually give some practical examples of what more GG can do to clean house?

and those same "moderate" GamerGaters cooking up conspiracy theories about Anita Sarkeesian faking her harassment and being a "professional victim," and of course the very foundation of GamerGate which is refusing to admit that what happened with Quinn was wrong and had nothing to do with ethics in journalism.

I don't believe I've said that Anita fakes harassment, but that she certainly uses it as a shield from criticsm, and to bolster support. She advertises her harassment. It contradicts advise from authorities in regards to what to do with threats and harassment. She also conflates criticism with harassment.

An argument is only an example of Genetic Fallacy when, as you say, the origins of a thing have nothing to do with what the thing currently is. This is not the case with GamerGate. GamerGate still actively refuses to admit wrongdoing and is geared specifically at combating the perceived intrusion of feminist thought into gaming culture. The feminist movement has admitted that its racist history was wrong and has actively made efforts to make amends and correct itself. GamerGate has not done that, and in fact actively fights against doing that, so its origins are still relevant. Especially so since, unlike women's suffrage, the people involved in GamaerGate's dirty origins are also the people who are involved in it now. It's not like this was centuries in the past.

Cite examples.

1: I disagree with them because they are being sexist. That is my only dog in this race.

2: I never once denied that the members of GamerGate are diverse human beings with diverse nuanced views. I never said anything like that. I said that they are all supporting a movement that is fundamentally sexist and even though many of them are probably wonderful people they are providing ever for misogynist *******s by deny that said ashes did anything wrong.

Cite examples. Examples that you can actually link to GamerGate.

1: Yes, the death threats have been linked back to GamerGate. People who participate in the movement and self identify as GamerGaters made those threats.

When/where? Who are these participants in the movement? Are they actually participants, or lone anonymous trolls?

[

The onus is on you to prove your claims about Quinn and Sarkeesian, which you haven't.

Regarding Sarkeesian, I'm not sure how I can 'prove' a victim narrative short of a confession, all I can do is point out a pattern of behaviour that goes back years. I can show you how, Anita will take to twitter and use a recent shooting tragedy, on the back of that tragedy blame 'toxic masculinity', and then later comment that she is receiving 'hatred' for the comment.

And herein lies the problem. You adamantly refuse to admit that what this movement did to Zoe Quinn in its larval stage was mindless sexist harassment with zero justification. You bought the lie about ethics even though it has been thoroughly debunked.

You aren't even aware of half the issues surrounding Quinn.

That is why we can't come to a common ground, because at the end of the day you are providing cover for awful people and telling them they did nothing wrong. I cannot abide that.

Anyone that sent death threats or harassed was wrong. Anyone that colluded on chat logs to harass was wrong.

I don't believe these things represent GamerGate.

Other than a few isolated incidents, people are not saying that they do not exist. Not en mass. Not as a media wide trend. What they are saying is that they don't drive the agenda of the conversation, which I think is pretty obviously true.

I considered for a while, responding to this point, and this point alone. Everything we're talking about may be noise that will be 'tl;dr' by any outside observers. That point you just made about a 'few isolated incidents' is so key.

Apply the same reasoning to GamerGate.

What's funny is that,with GamerGate, your evidence of harassment and threats linked to GamerGate REALLY is isolated incidents, of anonymous trolls that certainly don't represent the tens of thousands.

What's ironic is that the media IS saying the women and minorities of GamerGate don't exist. Not some anonymous troll. The media is saying that. Guardian article:

The Guardian: 'Gamergate is loud, dangerous and a last grasp at cultural dominance by angry white men''

Prominent people insist the women and minorities of GamerGate are sockpuppets.

Rebecca Watson said they are sockpuppets.
Brianna Wu said they are sockpuppets.

I can fill the next few pages of this thread with examples of the women and minorities of GamerGate having to post photos of themselves to people that insist they are sockpuppets.

You say that the minorities aren't driving the agenda of the conversation. This demonstrates how insular your view is. Many of THE most prominent, most widely followed members of GamerGate are the women and minorities.

I think your comment demonstrates a level of hypocrisy and dishonesty, its es the reason I cannot take you seriously. You can pick and choose when to believe bad behaviour is 'a few isolated incidents', you choose to believe that when it comes to anti-gamergate despite bad behaviour being linked not to anonymous trolls but to media and prominent people. You simply choose not to believe it when it comes to gamergate. It's more about an agenda for you, rather than being honest.

2: Again, people saying that the woman of GamerGate don't exist is not a huge trend.

I most certainly disagree. It's a trend driven by the media, and prominent individuals from the anti-gamergate camp. The women of gamergate are told on a daily basis that they are not women.

Most people recognize that there are women in the movement.

That's not been my experience. The stereotype that gamergate is white male misogynists is popular.

They also recognize that the people setting the agenda for the movement are mostly men and that men are very much in the majority of the movement.

See, you're doing it. You're not saying they don't exist, no, but you're saying their voices don't matter.

If they were here, they'd give you such hard eye rolls and facepalms. Your view point really does come from an insular echo chamber, and not from actually listening to the popular and prominent women of gamergate, who very much have a big say in the overall discourse.

The irony of the whole matter is, the racism and sexism of 1. Ignoring that women and minorities whom disagree with you exist. 2. Insisting that their voices don't matter.

That's not GamerGate. That is anti-GamerGate. And you're doing 2.

There are **** loads of women in GamerGate. I don't have exact numbers, I don't think anyone does, but there are LOTS of them.

Your sense of moral superiority is false; destroyed by your own innate hypocrisy.

I think it bothers you that minorities side with GamerGate. That's the real crux of the issue in insisting that their voices don't matter. The existence of women that adamantly disagree with the SJW narrative is as much a source of cognitive dissonance to that narrative, as is the existence of atheists for religion.

1: No one said it was the whole story. What they're saying is that just because there are individual women who have not experienced harassment, that doesn't mean that harassment is not a trend the community. It just means those women are fortunate.

Listen to women. But only some women. When there are women that tell you gaming culture is inclusive and is not a hot bed of misogyny, they are just fortunate; only the experiences of the women victims are valid. It can't be that harassment is an inherrent issue with the internet and anonymity, but a problem with gaming culture.

2: You know what else helps shield Sarkeesian from criticism? The fact that most of the criticism GamerGate sends her way amounts to baseless conspiracy theories.

3: Do you think that maybe, if every time you openly criticize a feminist academic, you are criticized of being sexist, isn't it possible, just possible, that you might be making sexist arguments?

No, its a shield from criticism. It's one of the reasons #notyourshield exists.

The inherent issue with defamation is that it puts the defamed person on the defensive. When the denial becomes the evidence for the accuser, you're engaging in a witch hunt. 'Your denial is just further evidence that you ARE a witch!' It's irrational.

I'm not ignoring them. That is part of the problem. The role of white allies and male allies in social justice causes is a precarious one, and can lead to dismissive ******** like the exchange you posted if not approached with humility and a lot of careful self examination. Instead of interacting with women and people of color who disagree with social justice causes from a place of understanding or, better yet, stepping aside and let someone with a little more ground to stand on take up the debate, sometimes you get leftist progressive men who get a little full of themselves and think they can tell women and people of color what's what. That is wrong. But it also doesn't prove the feminist stance wrong. It kind of proves them right. There is misogyny, racism, and unexamined privilege everywhere, even among the people who try to combat those forces. It's so ubiquitous that even some anti-sexist and ant-racist people are a little bit sexist and racist sometimes.

I think it just proves that their sense of moral superiority is false and full of hypocrisy.

I also think its absolutely fascinating how you'll demonstrate such understanding, for the ***** behaviour of anti-gamergate, but choose not to extend that understanding to gamergate.

Arthur Chu and Jonathan McIntosh are not anonymous trolls, they're not hiding on some chat log, they are public, prominent figures. McIntosh is the writer/producer for Anita Sarkeesian.

Amazing that your understanding extends to them, but not to GamerGate.

Do you understand that this was never about journalistic integrity? This was started because he wanted to ****-shame his ex-girlfriend. The angle of journalistic ethics was a way to cover his butt, not his ultimate goal.

I think he did it because she abused him. I have no illusions that his interest was about ethics. She treated him horribly.

[YT]n_UKErD0uGQ[/YT]


Let me take a moment to emphasize WHY people are so passionately opposed to 3rd wave feminism directing the course of gaming culture. The term SJW, describes a particularly rigid view point in regards to what is and what isn't acceptable in public discourse, in art and entertainment, and so on. It describes an extreme ideologue view, a false moral superiority, and hypocrisy.

FOR EXAMPLE: Since we're on the subject of Zoe Quinn. Zoe Quinn has been quoted as saying that cheating violates the concept of consent, that cheating is rape. She cheated on her boyfriend with 6 different guys, while lying to and manipulating and emotionally abusing him. Criticism of Zoe's behaviour has been called **** shaming.

Another example. Lena Dunham molested her younger sister, this behaviour continued until Lena was 17. The people I see most predominantly excusing this are SJWs.

Rebecca Watson; engages in doxxing, accuses the minorities of gamergate of being sockpuppets.

Polygon hired an open misandrist

Brianna Wu; accuses minorities in gamergate of being sockpuppets, created a sockpuppet to slander gamergate, flipped out at Pakman for asking about the sockpuppet then sicked the mob on him.

Elizabeth Simins, employee of Kotaku: 'can we just cut the ******** and start a new games industry where cis men LITERALLY ARE NOT ALLOWED IN?'
'political stance: I am pro-exclusion of cis men'

Her timeline is full of questionable statements.

This is a clique of SJWs in gaming. And ya have Anita Sarkeesian; with videos full of cherry picking, fallacies, vast generalizations, conclusions of cause/affect between gaming and sexism in reality not backed by research, who's statements are not interrogated on any level whatsoever by the media.

I don't want Jonathan McIntosh, or any of these individuals, to have the prominence they have enjoyed in dictating the course of gaming. We recognize this extreme ideology for what it is. We recognize that their influence means being called a misogynist for disagreeing with them, we don't want these ideologues thought policing the gaming community, or society for that matter.

 

[Feenix]

Edit

 

[Anita18]

I am flabbergasted that The End is still here, writing crazy-long posts. Is this seriously what you do all day?

 

[Black Narcissus]

I am flabbergasted that The End is still here, writing crazy-long posts. Is this seriously what you do all day?

This is what he does.

What evah happened to just playing video games and shutting the hell up?

 

[DarkSovereignty]

Hey Sam Jackson, did the end ever fix your VCR?

 

[Black Narcissus]

Hey Sam Jackson, did the end ever fix your VCR?

He did not.

I told him my clicker tv doesn't have any rca holes in the back, he put me on hold.

 

[The Question]

I can see that this back and forth is just not going anywhere. I will still post things about why GamerGate is horrible, but I've already made every possible point I can make against The End's awful little excuse for a movement, so there's no point in continuing to repeat myself.

 

[The Question]

I will, however, say this, because I really think it's important:

FOR EXAMPLE: Since we're on the subject of Zoe Quinn. Zoe Quinn has been quoted as saying that cheating violates the concept of consent, that cheating is rape. She cheated on her boyfriend with 6 different guys, while lying to and manipulating and emotionally abusing him. Criticism of Zoe's behavior has been called **** shaming.

She received torrents of harassment from people calling her a **** and threatening to rape and murder her. She has been stalked repeatedly since this whole thing started. Someone doing something wrong does not then justify other people doing wrong things to that person.

Another example. Lena Dunham molested her younger sister, this behaviour continued until Lena was 17. The people I see most predominantly excusing this are SJWs.

SJW is a term and a category that GamerGate invented. There is not a homogenous group of people who self identify as SJWs. Saying that Dunham's defenders are "SJWs" is meaningless, as GamerGate are the ones who decide who is and who is not an "SJW."

Some self identified feminists defend Dunham. Others do not. Others don't know what side they come down on as they are not sure who to believe or how to interpret the evidence that exists. And others simply have no opinion at all. It is a thoroughly mixed bag.

Rebecca Watson; engages in doxxing, accuses the minorities of gamergate of being sockpuppets.

Polygon hired an open misandrist

Brianna Wu; accuses minorities in gamergate of being sockpuppets, created a sockpuppet to slander gamergate, flipped out at Pakman for asking about the sockpuppet then sicked the mob on him.

Elizabeth Simins, employee of Kotaku: 'can we just cut the ******** and start a new games industry where cis men LITERALLY ARE NOT ALLOWED IN?'
'political stance: I am pro-exclusion of cis men'

Her timeline is full of questionable statements.

This is a clique of SJWs in gaming. And ya have Anita Sarkeesian; with videos full of cherry picking, fallacies, vast generalizations, conclusions of cause/affect between gaming and sexism in reality not backed by research, who's statements are not interrogated on any level whatsoever by the media.

I don't want Jonathan McIntosh, or any of these individuals, to have the prominence they have enjoyed in dictating the course of gaming. We recognize this extreme ideology for what it is. We recognize that their influence means being called a misogynist for disagreeing with them, we don't want these ideologues thought policing the gaming community, or society for that matter.

None of these people have the influence that you say they do. None of them are dictating the course of gaming. None of them have had any appreciable impact on gaming. None of them have any kind of authority for any kind of "thought policing." They're just people with microphones publicly sharing their opinions. There is no evidence of any kind that they wield any special influence over the community or the industry.

"Of 130,524 articles from 23 game outlets in a 12-month period, only 0.41% referenced feminism, sexism, or misogyny."

https://storify.com/MorganRamsay/how-often-do-video-game-journalists-write-about-fe

You are tilting at windmills.


And that's all there needs to be said about that.

 

[The Question]

Anyway, here is an article containing 4chan chat logs which prove pretty definitively GamerGate's origin as a disingenuous PR campaign, as well as the various twitter accounts that spam the #notyourshield has tag which have been proven to not belong to the people who's pictures they post:




Chat logs show how 4chan users created #GamerGate controversy
"I think all the sleeper cells are hard at work."

by Casey Johnston - Sept 9 2014, 7:20pm EDT

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/...pushed-gamergate-into-the-national-spotlight/

A set of IRC logs released Saturday appear to show that a handful of 4chan users were ultimately behind #GamerGate, the supposedly grass-roots movement aimed at exposing ethical lapses in gaming journalism. The logs show a small group of users orchestrating a "hashtag campaign" to perpetuate misogynistic attacks by wrapping them in a debate about ethics in gaming journalism.

The saga grew from a single blog post written by an ex-boyfriend of Zoe Quinn, a game developer who designed Depression Quest. The post was a lengthy diatribe filled with details about Quinn's alleged relationships with men, including a tryst with a gaming journalist who works for Kotaku. Anonymous users on reddit and 4chan spun this material into a story about how Quinn allegedly slept with multiple gaming journalists in return for coverage, though the allegations did not support such a claim. The journalist in question had quoted Quinn, once, months before they dated; he never wrote about her or her development efforts again.

Nevertheless, Quinn soon had her accounts hacked and her personal information stolen (experiences she was accused of fabricating). Quinn's opponents tried to turn the entire situation into an ethical debate about the relationship between gaming press and game developers.

The "ethics controversy" then sucked in Anita Sarkeesian, founder of Feminist Frequency, a video series aimed at exploring systemic misogyny in video games. Sarkeesian is no stranger to harassment; she has received a series of threats for her Feminist Frequency video series since the day its Kickstarter raised more money ($150,000) than she had requested ($6,000). The amount of money raised incensed Sarkeesian's critics, and after her August 25 video, "Women as Background Decoration, Part 2," Sarkeesian received graphic rape and death threats, eventually leaving her home after one of her harassers tweeted her own address at her.

The Quinn and Sarkeesian events led several publications (Ars included) to discuss the notion of a "gamer." In this context, "gamer" does not mean "all people who play video games"—a group now broad enough to easily outgrow the term's narrow origins in '80s toy marketing. Instead, the term more narrowly refers to hard-core video game fans, who skew young and male. In the words of Leigh Alexander at Gamasutra, it was through catering to this group that video games came to overemphasize guns, women, and money. With the industry expanding its horizons, some "gamers" felt left behind in a world that has started to turn against aspects of their favorite pastime. Under this view, "gaming" itself is under threat.

Quinn and Sarkeesian became lightning rods for "gamers" of this sort, and thus was born "#GamerGate," a hashtag that became a breeding ground for all kinds of conspiracy theories surrounding the "corrupt" systems that allowed Quinn and Sarkeesian to figure in the industry as they do. As the hashtag spread, spectators got increasingly drawn into arguments about the ethics governing relationships between game developers and the gaming press.

#GamerGate spread through Twitter and reddit and eventually drew high profile support from actor Adam Baldwin. Eventually a second hashtag sprouted, #notyourshield, which was pitched as an "attempt by the worldwide gaming community to show that this isn’t just male gamers who are speaking about gamer gate, and this isn’t an issue of hating feminism or not wanting women in the community."

Discussion logs, however, suggest that #notyourshield didn't begin as a broad movement but was a campaign manufactured and orchestrated by 4chan users via sockpuppet Twitter accounts. And, according to screenshots recently released by Quinn, so was the original #GamerGate.

"But seriously, I think we're doing pretty good on the #GamerGate front," wrote user OperationDunk in a "quinnspiracy" IRC channel. "Lot of support, and a ton of people are picking up the self-chastising when people start getting insulting. It took a few days of 4-5 of us doing it but it's taking off."

As for #notyourshield, its first reference appears on the /v/ video games board on 4chan as a suggestion for responding to "social justice warriors" who claimed the #GamerGate campaign was misogynistic. "Something like #NotYourShield and demand the SJWs stop using you as a shield to deflect genuine criticism," an anonymous user wrote on September 2.

As with the manufactured campaign #EndFathersDay, sockpuppet accounts appear to have figured heavily in getting the #GamerGate and #notyourshield campaigns going. The sock puppets pushing the hashtags were easy to identify by their low post counts, the fact that they tweeted about little other than #GamerGate and #notyourshield, and reverse image searches of their avatars that showed the photos to belong to people who likely didn't own the accounts in question.

Another of the screenshots posted by Quinn shows IRC users referencing "sleeper cells" at a gaming conference. "I think all the sleeper cells are hard at work, there was a bit of organizing last night," wrote the user Prawnzilla. "If anything goes down at PAX [Penny Arcade Expo], and she approaches those folks, they better be diplomatic and let her ***** fit her way into humiliation." Quinn commented on the screenshot in a tweet: "SLEEPER CELLS. Probably the people who showed at my panel and took photos for 4chan." The logs also allegedly include at least two appearances by Eron Gjoni, the author of the original blog post about Quinn.

4chan members have denounced the logs to The Escapist, saying they are misinterpreted by Quinn. Both 4chan and Quinn provided copies of their logs to The Escapist; 4chan's copies do not include quotes about sleeper cells or the bit about 4-5 users said to have started #GamerGate, since they are from a different channel (#burgersandfries). They do include references to starting sleeper-cell Twitter accounts and "digging up dirt" on both Quinn and Sarkeesian.

The site We Hunted The Mammoth scoured the full transcript released by 4chan, turning up gems from some anons like, "i couldnt care less about vidya, i just want to see zoe receive her comeuppance." In another exchange, user Cyberserker says to another user, "You need a reason..." User Opfag responds, "Well I don't have a legitimate reason. I just want to see her die horribly."

After hours of reading the chat logs, David Futrelle of We Hunted the Mammoth summed them up:

"The 4channers express their hatred and disgust towards [Quinn]; they express their glee at the thought of ruining her career; they fantasize about her being raped and killed. They wonder if all the harassment will drive her to suicide, and only the thought of 4chan getting bad publicity convinces some of them that this isn’t something they should hope for.

They gleefully distribute nude pictures of her, posting links to online archives of them and emailing them directly both to Quinn’s supporters.

They dig up all sorts of information about her and her family and do their best to track down anyone and everyone with even the most tenuous links to her. One industrious researcher even manages to find a picture of Quinn at age 13; while acknowledging that it had no relevance whatsoever to issues of gaming ethics, she posts a link to it anyway."

While the hashtag campaigns gained steam and was eventually sustained by a larger population, the the chat logs shed new light on the motivations and actions of those who did the most to push #GamerGate into the spotlight.

[Editors Note: For those focused on the kernel of actual valid issues of game journalism ethics somehow churned up during this whole mess, this post over on my personal blog may be of interest. For general questions over the tone or style or amount or timing of coverage of GameGate, Rock Paper Shotgun sums up our feelings nicely. -Kyle Orland]

Update: To clarify the above article, actor Adam Baldwin was the first to use the hashtag #GamerGate, according to results on the Twitter analytics website Topsy as noted by Cathode Debris. Baldwin used the hashtag when tweeting links to pre-existing misogynistic corruption conspiracy theory videos surrounding Quinn and Sarkeesian. The logs show that organizers quickly adopted the hashtag to further organize their efforts.

 

[The Question]

Oh, and here's a direct link to the chat logs detailing GamerGate's origins:

https://storify.com/strictmachine/gameovergate

 

[Tempest]

Oh, and here's a direct link to the chat logs detailing GamerGate's origins:

https://storify.com/strictmachine/gameovergate

Stop sharing facts, you fact-sharing person. You'll ruin the movement. Remember, despite all the complaints about SJW and women and after all the threats of rape and the revelation of private information, it's all about the SJW.

I mean, it's about ethics. In journalism.

Clearly The End is dedicated to ethics in journalism, because his posts are filled with discussions on how the male journalists, gaming judges, and so forth, were in the wrong on what they've done.

 

[The Question]

Stop sharing facts, you fact-sharing person. You'll ruin the movement. Remember, despite all the complaints about SJW and women and after all the threats of rape and the revelation of private information, it's all about the SJW.

I mean, it's about ethics. In journalism.

Clearly The End is dedicated to ethics in journalism, because his posts are filled with discussions on how the male journalists, gaming judges, and so forth, were in the wrong on what they've done.

I'm still waiting for the info graphic of a picture of Jefferson Davis with the text "Actually, it's about ethics in games journalism."

 

[Tempest]

I'm still waiting for the info graphic of a picture of Jefferson Davis with the text "Actually, it's about ethics in games journalism."

I don't have that, but I did find this.