There’s a lot of stuff flying around the Internet right now about “Gamergate”, a supposed scandal at the supposed heart of supposed gaming that supposed gamers are supposedly crusading against. As you may be able to guess from all the “supposed”s, there’s a lot of bullshit out there. So first, I’ll sum up what “Gamergate” is.
It started with Zoe Quinn, an independent game developer. She had an ex-boyfriend, Eron Gjoni, and the break-up was ugly. Gjoni started airing their dirty laundry online, specifically on 4Chan, starting on a blog he created specifically to do so, posting evidence that she’d cheated on him. Naturally, people were extremely upset that he’d apparently hacked into her private chat logs that she’d cheated on him that she was sleeping with game journalists. Yes, that’s what they’re all upset about! The slight against gaming journalism! Because it’s their ethical responsibility to avoid conflicts of interest because it’s her responsibility to avoid forcing them into conflicts of interest with her sexy ladyparts.
Quinn responded by pointing out that a) her bad break-up is none of the Internet’s business, b) her ex-boyfriend is not an unbiased source for discussions of her behavior, and c) none of the game journalists ever did anything unethical as a result of these relationships. 4Chan responded, as all reasonable Internet gaming enthusiasts do, with doxxing, death threats, and slut shaming. Followed by calling Quinn a liar for accusing them of doxxing, death threats and slut shaming. Oh, and they also insisted that they couldn’t be misogynists, because they prominently backed a group of female gaming developers who weren’t Quinn (called the Fine Young Capitalists). While discussing on their boards how nobody could accuse them of misogyny if they backed a group of female gaming developers who weren’t Quinn, so they should do it as another way of getting back at her.
The Internet then exploded a bit, with several prominent gaming websites and several celebrities (including Joss Whedon, who gets special mention in all this because Joss Whedon is one of the patron saints of the Internet) pointing out that this is all a huge shitshow that gives gamers a terrible reputation. This led to a bunch of people a) claiming that this wasn’t about feminism and they weren’t misogynists, it was about journalistic ethics and they were merely concerned about the clear ethical issues involved; and b) Quinn was a lying (insert gendered slur here) who had it coming and by the way her lies and sluttiness are also a reason for Anita Sarkeesian to shut up too because they both have ladyparts so they’re in on it together!
This, in turn, led to a lot of people being banned from comments sections as trolls. At which point the cry of “FREEZE PEACH!” went out across the land, and the trolls insisted they weren’t being banned for being trolls, they were being banned because journalists hated being called out on their clear pro-sexy-ladyparts bias. Which led to Kotaku telling their journalists they couldn’t contribute money to games they wanted to see made, because hey sure why not.
At this point, there are a number of people out there saying, “You know what? If this is what being a ‘gamer’ is associated with, fuck gamers everywhere. I’d rather see that particular label die in a fire.” And people coming back with long, defensive posts that can all be tl;dr’d down to “#notallgamers”. Oh, and Anita Sarkeesian had to move out of her home because she’s getting death threats from people who know her address over her latest video about women and video games, which isn’t actually related to any of the stuff with Zoe Quinn but should help you understand why people are calling gamers an entitled culture of creepy fucked up sociopaths right now.
So now that you know what’s going on, what do I have to say about it? Apart from all the opinions that I not-too-subtly encoded into the above summary, of course. Well…
1) Zoe Quinn is not responsible for this shit. Whatever went on between her and Eron Gjoni is none of my business, your business, or literally anyone’s business in the world except for her, Eron, and the other people directly involved in the break-up. I am not their relationship counselor, and am not going to pass judgment on anything either one did to cause the break-up, because I don’t know about it and neither do you, even if you read Gjoni’s posts on the subject because it is not a particularly great leap of logic to suggest that someone upset enough to hack into other people’s private communications and post them online a) may have some other relationship issues, and b) may not be self-aware enough to admit to them in public.
Either way, Gjoni’s posts are plain and simple an attempt to make his ex’s life miserable by airing dirty laundry online. This is not a “journalistic scandal” that needs to be exposed by public-minded gamers for the good of the industry, it’s an ugly break-up that some assholes have taken as a chance to pile onto a woman they already didn’t like that much due to her twin decisions to make games and be female. You know how you can tell? Simple. The gaming journalists involved are getting a free pass. They made the decision to sleep with someone involved in the industry, despite knowing that this could be viewed as a conflict of interest, and they have not suffered any consequences from their employers or from the gamers involved. If this was anything other than slut-shaming, they’d be getting fired or at the least suspended, and they’re not. Primarily because they didn’t slant their coverage to be pro-Quinn one little bit. If anyone tells you that Quinn’s bad behavior is responsible for her current position, they are either lying to you or to themselves.
2) I don’t believe 4Chan when they say they didn’t do it, and I don’t fucking care. It does need to be mentioned at this point that 4Chan insists that Quinn is faking all the harassment she’s receiving, and using them as a convenient target to make herself look good because she knows that nobody will believe them due to 4Chan’s reputation as a hivemind of vicious, unrepentant shitbags who love making people’s lives miserable. To which I point out: Hey, maybe you would be more likely to be believed if you weren’t a hivemind of vicious, unrepentant shitbags who love making people’s lives miserable. It is just as easy to fabricate evidence that other people are fabricating their evidence (“we have undoctored screenshots proving that their screenshots are doctored!”) and 4Chan explaining that they didn’t do anything wrong this time is a bit like the Joker pleading ‘Not Guilty’. (And this also goes for anyone claiming Sarkeesian, or Phil Fish, or anyone else involved is faking evidence of harassment. The claims are weak, and frankly if you default to believing the harassers over the harassed, then that should indicate that you need to sit down and have a long, hard think about what that says about you.)
3) If gamers want people to stop talking about “the death of gamers”, they need to do more than just point to all the people who aren’t harassing women. Look, I like video games as much as the next person. I like games in general as much as the next person. But the fact of the matter is, when someone is getting death threats for suggesting that video games and the people who play them have issues with women, it makes me not want to be associated with public enthusiasm for video games. Because that is the face of the brand right now. “Gamer” = “maladjusted manchild who can’t take criticism and endlessly harasses anyone who disagrees with them”. It is going to take a stronger response than “Hey, I didn’t do that!” to counteract that. It is going to take pushback. It is going to take calling out the bad behavior in no uncertain terms. If you’re concerned that you’re being rude to a fellow gamer, or that you’re not giving a fellow gamer a chance, or that gamers need to stick together? This is a good time to fall for the “no true Scotsman” fallacy. People who do this shit aren’t really gamers. They’re assholes who play video games.
4) The Famous Young Capitalists need to be careful about who they’re getting involved with. On the one hand, I feel tremendous sympathy for them in all this. They’re pretty much just innocent bystanders who are being used as props, and they do seem to have some legitimate beefs with Quinn (that are also not anybody’s business, really, unless you’re interested in the minutiae of professional gaming development). But on the other hand, just like gamers in general, the FYC do need to realize that one of the strategies that unreasonable people use to avoid being called to account for their actions is to count on them being reasonable. They count on people saying, “Well, I believe in the principle of free speech and free association, so I don’t want to flat-out tell these people to fuck off, because shutting down conversation is the kind of thing unreasonable people like them do.” But that’s the whole point–the other side is not arguing in good faith. They are only keeping the lines of communication open to allow them more opportunities to harass. They are using the Fine Young Capitalists to make themselves look reasonable in order to continue making women’s lives miserable through threats and intimidation. And so while I won’t tell the FYC that they have to stop, I will ask them: Do you enjoy being used like that? Is whatever you’re getting out of this in money and publicity worth it?
5) Joss Whedon is not actually the patron saint of the Internet. I love his work, I think he’s a great guy, and he should legitimately be proud of himself for having spoken up in defense of Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian, because the people who are being assholes about this are making a good effort to harass and assault everyone who stands up for them in order to isolate them and silence them. (I’ll admit to a tiny, marginal amount of worry about posting this entry. But the more people that speak up, the less time and effort they can devote to any one of us. The remedy to isolation is unity.) But people like Joss Whedon are not the heroes, here. Just being a celebrity who’s willing to call himself a feminist doesn’t make him special. The people who are special are people like Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian who get motherfucking death threats and go on with it anyway, because they’re not going to be silenced when they’re doing the right thing. They’re the heroes. Joss Whedon is the sidekick.
(UPDATE: Edited to correct a factual error–Gjoni did not go straight to 4Chan, they picked up on it all on their own. This makes him look marginally better and them look marginally worse.)
Related Articles
67 users responded in this post
What a bad article.
Couldn’t even read it past the first few paragraphs.
Firstly, the ex didn’t post on 4ch, it was his blog, secondly, 4ch didn’t doxx, Zoe doxxed herself with fake info to get the SJW crowd on her side.
Again, really, really bad article.
You should have read further, I addressed the “4ch didn’t doxx” issue. I did correct the opening to correctly reflect where Gjoni started his public slut-shaming, though, just so that you wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.
Wodge:
You didn’t address the main point: Is this sort of behavior acceptable in your world?
Nice ad hominen there, no striking it out does not remove it from your article. He didn’t had to “hack into their private chat logs”, he was part of the chats, he had his own copies.
‘Just being a celebrity who’s willing to call himself a feminist doesn’t make him special.’
Thank you.
Um, no. I didn’t strike it out to remove it from my article, I struck it out to point out the fact that nobody in all this seems particularly upset that Gjoni is a creepy control freak who’s secretly logging his girlfriend’s behavior to use against her at some future point. To me, that’s the worst thing about all this, but nobody’s upset about it because he’s the guy and she had sex with someone not him, so whatever he does is apparently justified.
But I am highly impressed that in a post that’s entirely about misogynists quibbling about bullshit side issues in order to distract from the fact that at heart, this is a bunch of misogynists using any excuse to dogpile on a woman who has the temerity to enjoy the same hobby they do, you’re now quibbling about the exact source of the personal and private communications that Gjoni published in a public forum without the other parties’ permission in order to slut-shame her. Way to prove my point!
Of course Joss Whedon isn’t the patron saint of the Internet. Everyone knows that’s Wil Wheaton.
If you don’t know the genesis of this whole thing, then you cannot POSSIBLY have done your homework at all on this.
I’m neutral on this (my feelings: journalists should be clean, people shouldn’t be raging idiots to other people/women in general/etc.), but you clearly didn’t put the work in. And no, the tacked on ‘oh lol my bad’ doesn’t make up for it.
OK, so Broadwing, I’ll ask you: what homework could he have done that would bring up something that justifies this? Or even justifies neutrality? His point is that none of this is justified. Do I understand you that there is something that COULD have justified the way she’s being treated?
Nitpicking errors does not actually make you look neutral. It makes you look like somebody trying to wave away the point.
At a very fundamental level, the genesis of this doesn’t matter in the slightest. It doesn’t matter whether she cheated on her boyfriend. It doesn’t matter if she got favorable press from game journalists she had a relationship with. It doesn’t matter if she was caught on camera kicking a dog for no reason. It doesn’t matter if she shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. There a proportional responses to all of those things, and this isn’t it. Nobody, whatever they did, deserves to be treated like this.
And women in video gaming, and in comics, and in pretty much every single male-dominated subculture, nerdy or not, get treated like this.
All. The. Damn. Time.
Nailed it entirely, John. I’ve been watching this shitshow since it started, and the supposed cause/argument/excuse keeps shifting subtly like the fucking Borg locking out phaser frequencies. If the details and motivations for the argument keep shifting, that means that, yes, someone is arguing in bad faith.
I’ve been ignoring the #Gamergate hash on Twitter and referring to it as #GameGhazi, which I think much better reflects its origins as a punitive sideshow built on precisely nothing.
morally it’s nobody’s business but her and her ex’s may be true. But since when has it actually been true? Paparazzi show people want to know people’s actions. Hell gossip shows that.
Garfan, maybe you’ll answer: is this justified? Do you agree that the backlash against Quinn is justified by people’s desire to see other peoples’ private moments?
Um, no. I didn’t strike it out to remove it from my article, I struck it out to point out the fact that nobody in all this seems particularly upset that Gjoni is a creepy control freak who’s secretly logging his girlfriend’s behavior to use against her at some future point. To me, that’s the worst thing about all this, but nobody’s upset about it because he’s the guy and she had sex with someone not him, so whatever he does is apparently justified.
I think you’re taking this part entirely the wrong way. If you read the post, what you see Zoe doing throughout the relationship is gaslighting – constantly lying and questioning Eron’s memory of events, and challenging anything that happened that he can’t prove happened, to make him doubt his own perceptions of reality. It’s a form of psychological and emotional abuse. The National Domestic Violence Hotline has more to say on the subject. Keeping logs of conversations, aside from being a default-on function of most chat programs, is one of the ways to work against that, to actually have proof when you’re told it didn’t happen.
I might be alone in this, but I think that an abuse victim calling out their abuser in public is absolutely everybody’s business, and the abuser doesn’t get to claim that it’s “private”. I’m certainly not going to be upset at him for doing so.
Nailed it.
I’m a game dev and I’ve been following this, uh, catastrophe with an unhealthy obsession, so thanks for doing a nice post about it.
I genuinely don’t know what to do about this madness, but at the very least, it’s been a reminder to not engage with people who are
too stupid to breatheonly looking to incite more crap.TA: Let’s stipulate you’re correct. (For the record, I think you are correct: There is definitely gaslighting going on.) Does that justify total strangers saying the things they have said to her? Do you see the same things being said to non-gamer women? To gamer men? To non-gamer men? Does her gaslighting justify releasing nude images of her without her consent? Death threats? Threats of rape? Harassing her family with any of these?
Outside of a situation like domestic violence, it’s rare for a relationship to dissolve and all of the blame is on one person in it.
Having said that, publicly posting your side to get people mad at the other person obliterates any semblance of the moral high ground you may have had.
I agree with the notion that people should stop being misogynistic assholes. That said.
It was Wizardchan not 4chan
Famous Young Capitalists?
The guy wasn’t “secretly” logging chats. Facebook keeps your messages .
Half-assed articles like this is the reason those misogynistic assholes has traction.
Wouldn’t it be easier to just let the movement against “gamers” continue, rather than try and rescue the term? Isn’t the whole idea that you identify yourself first and foremost by one of your hobbies inherently unhealthy?
Stamp collectors don’t call themselves “stampers” and talk about stamps that every true stamper must own and how that bitch doesn’t know what it really means to be a stamper.
Calling yourself a gamer is an attempt to take control of video games, both as a medium and the community of people who play games, by tying yourself to them fundamentally. Why else would you choose to define yourself by just one facet of your life? Everything else that happens when you do that is bad for you. It’s inevitable that people like that would attack scapegoats, outsiders and anyone who doesn’t fall lock-step in with their opinion about Bioshock Infinite.
I’m not saying that everyone who ever called themselves a gamer is like that, most people just sort of picked up on the term over time, but if those that aren’t like that are beginning to reject the word along with the people that are like that, why bother trying to reform it? Why not just let this movement of people saying “fuck this, I’m not a gamer” continue to grow? If it’s already happening then it’s far more likely to work. It’s not like we need the word “gamer” to play video games.
Boz: Maybe you’ll answer: So research errors in this article justify rape/death threats? Assuming every point of fact in this is wrong in some way, it’s OK to send rape and death threats to someone? To post nude pictures of them online without their consent?
“That said” seems to mean that you have ceded that these things are not justified, and then there is a “but” in your argument. A “but” there means that in some way the issues of these threats are justified if there are errors made in articles or opinion pieces raising the issue. Yes, or no? Please clarify how these errors make the situation any different.
Half-assed articles like this is the reason those misogynistic assholes has traction.
Yeah, I’m sure there are PLENTY of otherwise reasonable people sitting there thinking “Well, I would condemn the death threats and all the other hideous behaviour, but this article didn’t get the names of all the websites involved correct, so I guess I have to side with the assholes”.
@Devichan
I refuse to make that false choice. The issue you are forcing is not binary. Yes there are research errors in this article and Yes “Don’t be a misogynistic asshole” is a given for a sane human being. It’s non negotiable in civilized societies.
I’ll explain why bad articles and half-assed measures are good for assholes. Because when you half ass, you hurt your credibility. You create doubt in your readers. When you lose your readers trust the assholes will use it for crying wolf effect. Essentially next time John writes an article about this issue he’ll be the guy knowingly nudged the facts to force his narrative before.
i.e. “First he claimed boyfriend was hacker when it didn’t stick he made him a creepy control freak when only thing he did was sharing his facebook posts just to vilify the guy.”
Calling yourself a gamer is an attempt to take control of video games, both as a medium and the community of people who play games, by tying yourself to them fundamentally. Why else would you choose to define yourself by just one facet of your life?
I’m hypothesizing that for many of these poor fools, there is nothing else. Video games and the tribe of video games are all they have, which is why a perceived threat to the status quo of games is reacted to so poorly: it is a threat to their very identity. If that is the case it’s more than a little sad, more than a little pathetic, and less than no excuse for the kind of behavior we’ve seen the last two weeks.
But what it would be is the end result of a culture that sees you as nothing more than a fleshy little spending node and encourages you to “root” for and identify by a brand or corporate entity- which is something gaming has had in its DNA since the outset. One console vs. the other, consoles in general vs. PCs, PC vs. Mac, Consoles & PC & Mac’s “Hardcore” gaming vs. Mobile’s “Casual”. And now our main-event match is Deeply Concerned Real Gamer Men vs. Icky Fake Gamer Girls And Their Journo White Knights Who Must Have An Ulterior Motive For Saying They Want Equality.
The most depressing thing? Looking at the hashtag is now exactly what it is like to look at Conservative Twitter, where there are no facts and the same lies get parroted back and forth again and again and again and everything is one person/group’s fault, and you get told you’re some kind of traitor or Kool-Aid drinker if you challenge any of it.
I’m glad I don’t identify as a gamer, because my hobby has been poisoned.
Anyone who takes a side in this is a goddamn idiot.
On the one hand, if the habitual liar did get death threats and so on that’s awful and shouldn’t have happened.
On the other hand, the existence or lack thereof of such threats is totally irrelevant to everything else people are saying about her.
First, the idea that we shouldn’t criticize her for the journalism thing because it’s the journalists responsibility is sexist and insane. If it happened, both parties are equally responsible, but if she made a habit of this, she is both the primary culprit and *absolutely* the person we should be talking about. I’ll be honest, I had no respect for games journalism to begin with(and I don’t think I’m alone), so “person makes a habit of bribing game journalists” is a bigger story than “game journalists take bribes”. It’s easy to see this as an outgrowth of the very common misogyny on the internet, but neither you, nor anyone else has made that point particularly well, and given that there does appear to be a lot of evidence that Zoe Quinn has acted badly, you’re going to have to do better.
Second, fuck 4chan.
Third, from what I’ve seen, the Wizardchan business was absolutely Quinn’s doing. I’m willing to look at evidence otherwise, but without such evidence, I’m going to stand by my conclusions.
Finally, 4chan donating a bunch of money to what is effectively a charity(and asking that their cut of the profits be given to what is absolutely a charity) doesn’t reflect poorly on anyone involved and claiming that TFYC should be “careful who they associate with” is petty and ridiculous.
Fuck this nonsense and everyone involved in it.
Finally, 4chan donating a bunch of money to what is effectively a charity(and asking that their cut of the profits be given to what is absolutely a charity) doesn’t reflect poorly on anyone involved and claiming that TFYC should be “careful who they associate with” is petty and ridiculous.
Except that they were publicly stating that they were doing it to, in essence, buy feminist papal indulgences. They did it on purpose and selected someone with a negative history with Quinn so they’d have something to point to when someone called them on their vile behavior. They were trying to drag TFYC into a fight they had first dragged themselves into and use the Captialists as a shield. This is an action worth judging someone for, and judging those who turn a blind eye to it.
Also, saying “fuck 4chan” and being utterly dismissive of their actions or their impact doesn’t make any of it go away. It has also failed to make you look as though you’re “above all this” while you’re mainly casting aspersions on the Not Harrassing/Threatening to Rape and Murder People side of the argument. Hint for future debates: that is not the side to be focusing your criticisms on if you want to appear to be Too Smart For The Room.
“You are not exclusively on our side so you must be rapist.”
Fuck that fascist bullshit and fuck your side RAC.
Making threats and harassing her personally are definitely wrong. You should do that online to someone anymore than you should knock on someone’s door to tell them you don’t like what they’re doing.
But I just disagree with the idea this article seems to have that no one should form an opinion about this incident because they aren’t involved.
“You are not exclusively on our side so you must be rapist.”
Fuck that fascist bullshit and fuck your side RAC.
Okay, I’ll try that again with Cliffs notes so hopefully you’ll understand.
Anyone who takes a side in this is a goddamn idiot.
Translation: “I’m not taking sides! I’m above all this!”
On the one hand, if the habitual liar did get death threats and so on that’s awful and shouldn’t have happened.
Disclaimer that the entire rest of the post will then work against, with a twist of “she deserved it.”
On the other hand, the existence or lack thereof of such threats is totally irrelevant to everything else people are saying about her.
“Her side has no merit whatsoever and I’m being dismissive of any potential wrongdoing of the other side of the argument BUT REMEMBER I’M ABOVE ALL THIS”
(TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: No, it is not irrelevant. It is part and parcel of a pattern of behavior of the people who are intentionally making this into a big deal. And they are using the publicity from those threats, benefiting from them, while condemning them only when pressed and never without attacking Quinn’s character at the same time. If the threats are irrelevant to your argument, Quinn’s behavior is irrelevant to the other argument. At which point THERE IS NO OTHER ARGUMENT.)
First, the idea that we shouldn’t criticize her for the journalism thing because it’s the journalists responsibility is sexist and insane. If it happened, both parties are equally responsible, but if she made a habit of this, she is both the primary culprit and *absolutely* the person we should be talking about. I’ll be honest, I had no respect for games journalism to begin with(and I don’t think I’m alone), so “person makes a habit of bribing game journalists” is a bigger story than “game journalists take bribes”. It’s easy to see this as an outgrowth of the very common misogyny on the internet, but neither you, nor anyone else has made that point particularly well, and given that there does appear to be a lot of evidence that Zoe Quinn has acted badly, you’re going to have to do better.
“Now that I’ve handwaved the wrongdoing of the side I’m actually on and attacked the character of the side I’m not on, while pretending to be neutral, I am invincible in this argument! Also, the fact that this kind of treatment routinely happens to any woman in pop cultural fandom with any character flaw, even if that character flaw has to be invented first, is irrelevant!”
(TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: If games journalism is really so Goddamn laughable and unimportant, why are we having this discussion at all? Battling for the soul of something you just said doesn’t have one! Personally I feel it is unimportant- it’s the parasitic twin of large corporate PR firms- but that’s just me. Also, why do we take for granted that this is bribery and not simply sexual contact between people who work in the same fields, which is a thing that happens all the time?)
Second, fuck 4chan.
“Let’s not even TALK about 4chan. This prevents us from having to talk about the bad-faith arguing, public spin-planning, and other wrongdoings of the people who I am siding with while pretending not to side with anyone!”
Third, from what I’ve seen, the Wizardchan business was absolutely Quinn’s doing. I’m willing to look at evidence otherwise, but without such evidence, I’m going to stand by my conclusions.
Everything is Zoe Quinn’s fault. But I am neutral in this, remember! I am as sincere about being neutral as I am about harassment being bad and more importantly not actually having happened!
Finally, 4chan donating a bunch of money to what is effectively a charity(and asking that their cut of the profits be given to what is absolutely a charity) doesn’t reflect poorly on anyone involved and claiming that TFYC should be “careful who they associate with” is petty and ridiculous.
Remember, I have already dismissed the idea of even discussing 4chan and its faults, so we can ignore the part where they are publicly and explicitly using TFYC as a cover for their other bad behavior, like That One Black Friend Rush Limbaugh Almost Certainly Has!
Fuck this nonsense and everyone involved in it.
I AM SO ABOVE ALL OF THIS WHILE CLEARLY AND CONSISTENTLY TAKING THE SIDE OF THE ANGRY MOB OF STUPID DISINGENUOUS LIAR PEOPLE.
That ex-boyfriend created a entirely NEW (and hence completely unknown) blog just to expose this dirty laundry, so I highly doubt 4chan “picked up on it all on their own”.
He definitely must have made some effort to spread it, a unknown unlinked personal rant blog wouldnt spread on its own like that.
Explaining at length that harassing people is wrong is great for making yourself look good, but it doesn’t actually change the behavior of harassers. They know.
I won’t dispute that. But like I accidentally worked my way entirely around at length without saying directly in my last post: Either character and intent are an issue, in which case this person was being way too dismissive of the very valid criticisms and faults of the people behind GameGhazi. Or alternately, character and intent are not an issue, in which case the side pushing the journalistic integrity BS has no case..
The overall effect of that post is: “I am very pointedly not taking sides in this because I am better than that, but here’s all these reasons Zoe Quinn is at fault using a line of reasoning I am selectively applying only to her.”
On the other hand, I will pointedly refrain from speculating as to why someone would only hold Quinn to those standards.
I would, frankly, be more impressed by the death of the gamer articles if most of them weren’t being written by people who are fairly invested in an idea of video games that mainly consisted of them and a few of their friends (Who are all brilliant, wonderful geniuses) and who didn’t write an article on a similar theme every six months. The success of GTAV, the inevitable sales failure of the PS4 and the mere existence of E3 were all signs and symptoms of the idea that ‘gamers’ were doomed.
The misogyny is ugly as fuck but it’s a sideshow to the direction the argument has gradually gone in. The actual fight now is the final spasms of the New Game Journalism/Indie crowd that emerged a few years ago and were promised they were the new cool kids a few years ago. They were going to be Music Journalists and Rock Stars! But with games! And they were, for a little while, sort of.
But the focus shifted to the youtubers and the let’s players and the twitch streamers and the esports. They were so utterly uncomfortable and baffled by the growing popularity of esports.
So, yeah. It’s time to have a conversation about the misogyny in gaming. And we were having that for a little while. But now what I’m seeing isn’t that. What mostly seeing at the moment is a final desperate attempt to stick the knife in and matter again at the expense of the part of the demographic who left them behind and it’s not necessarily the narrative the ‘Gamers are Dead’ people would like to push.
The misogyny is ugly as fuck but it’s a sideshow
I despise your value system if you think misogyny is just a footnote in some silly “What’s the best kind of Games Journalism?” argument. The treatment Sarkeesian has received dwarfs in importance all this petty whining about how some people don’t like the editorial slant of Polygon or whatever.
There is nothing in all this “gamergate” fuss that is remotely as threatening to the health of the video games community as the fact that women can’t make videos criticizing games without getting rape threats, or that female developers get slut-shamed for being female.
…I should stop replying to like every post. I’m sorry. But this is pretty much the only place I visit where I’m going to see even semi-rational conversation on this.
So, yeah. It’s time to have a conversation about the misogyny in gaming. And we were having that for a little while. But now what I’m seeing isn’t that. What mostly seeing at the moment is a final desperate attempt to stick the knife in and matter again at the expense of the part of the demographic who left them behind and it’s not necessarily the narrative the ‘Gamers are Dead’ people would like to push.
You have it backwards. All of this is caused by gaming being dragged into the noxious progressive/intellectual/elitism vs. conservative/anti-intellectual/populism dichotomy. Social conservatives have carefully framed the rest of our culture in this way to try and consolidate their fading power. The GamerGate people are working to ensure that thinking critically about sex or race, in fact thinking critically about anything at all, is couched as an assault on the majority. And goading that majority to respond in kind.
That being the case, the whole GamerGhazi argument is the populist flipside of the Death-of-the-Gamer argument. OMG we’ve got to save gaming from
cootiesliberalsZoe Quinn and her cadre of ethically compromised love-slaves! Except you can watch them openly discuss on /v/ how to make the argument sound and look like it’s real and it’s sincere and not about Zoe Quinn or feminism. They’re trying to figure out the right dogwhistles for a gaming Southern Strategy. Even if they annoy you, the indie crowd are not the problem here- the overlap between that group and feminist voices in gaming is possibly not coincidental, but it is not the indie aspect of their opinions that finds them, to be frank, under attack.But, both groups are more or less prone to sky-is-falling mentalities because this is part and parcel of the utter damn folly of letting your identity be controlled by your consumption habits, mainstream or independent.
It’s just a hobby. If there’s not room for everyone to enjoy it and we can’t all be allowed to think about things without being threatened, then I- as a game hobbyist of 32 years -say that games and the “Gamer” can go ahead and die if they really want to.
EDIT:
The misogyny is ugly as fuck but it’s a sideshow to the direction the argument has gradually gone in.
That is on purpose, like I went over above. It is being intentionally masked by a more vague set of “problems” with games journalism to sucker people into siding with assholes in an anti-feminist crusade. But we have this one chance to tell the people involved to fuck off, because the planning has been done in public.
Think hard about your value system if you get more upset about the possibility that maybe some video game review somewhere was biased by a personal relationship than you do by the fact that there are whole categories of people who can’t write about games at all without getting harassed by a mob.
If I was the doing that, I’d completely agree with you.
But as much as people are using the games journalism stuff as a cover for their misogyny, I’m also seeing people using the misogyny as cover for the games journalism stuff.
Because I’ve been watching some of this shit unfold well before this particular chapter started and I’m seeing enough score settling that, yeah, part of this has become part of some silly ‘What’s the best kind of Games Journalism’ argument.
A great deal of this is entirely untrue. If it wasn’t 4 AM I’d start linking stuff, but I’m too tired. So, tomorrow then eh?
Until then: OPPRESSION QUEST!
http://oppressionquest.com/
Oppression Quest gets off to a great start by not allowing “be a good programmer” as an actual possibility for a girl.
I’ll give you a pass on not posting links because, sure, we’ve all been there at 4AM, but: “Oppression Quest”? I don’t even want to touch the odds on that being made by a straight white middle-class American male.
So, just for score keeping – has anyone actually *found* this “paid for” review? Last I checked, it didn’t exist. And I would suggest that even *if* such a review exists, it speaks far worse to the reporter than to the developer. And not just in some idealistic “reviews should be pure” angle – have you *seen* the stuff AAA developers throw at reviewers? Do you think they do that from the goodness of their corporate hearts, or do you think they’re trying to buy a good review?
Personally, my favorite site I’ve found was someone claiming to “have the truth but the media isn’t reporting on it”. seriously? Where every detail of this lady’s life is being blasted around the internet? If your “truth” is so crappy that modern media doesn’t want to touch it, that should give you a freakin’ hint. I presume you’ve passed it to Fox, and if *they* won’t touch it, you got Nothing.
I don’t play video games, for what it’s worth. I played Mario Bros and StarFox as a kid but it’s not my bag.
1) Just to address and then justify Seavey on a theme I’ve noticed on this site: siding with the alleged “harassed” over the “harasser” is not a good rule of thumb in a democratic society. Staying out of other people’s business is, so there Seavey and I agree. I just think that things such as the Duke Lacrosse case show that when we immediately side with the member of a smaller group against a member of a larger group, there’s a risk of a miscarriage of justice. We make sure the person with the quieter voice gets her say, but we don’t assume that she is right without giving the accused her own presumption of innocence. However…
2) In this case, a person aired private conversations to the entire internet. I think we can safely assume he’s not looking for a higher ground.
3) The immediate dismissal of Seavey’s points by many posters is a perfect illustration for his editorial’s points.
4) Regardless of whether the chats show a patten of emotional abuse, the relationship of these two individuals is not something a well-adjusted person would want to dissect unless they are a relevant relationship counselor or social worker.
5) If the issue is nepotism, welcome to the world. There may be evidence of nepotism. Just as there is in every industry. The people who employ nepotism to “get laid” generally don’t last long unless the people they favor make good work, and a lot of talented people get their start by having an inside connection.
6) In the end, I hope this gets Ms. Quinn a great deal of publicity and she goes on to have a successful career.
“t was Wizardchan not 4chan”
The more pathetic and bitter version of 4chan.
Oliver Fugate-2) In this case, a person aired private conversations to the entire internet. I think we can safely assume he’s not looking for a higher ground.
does a person who was wronged actually have to go for the higher ground?
>Zoe Quinn is not responsible for this shit.
If Zoe Quinn is not responsible for Zoe Quinn’s actions, who in the world is?
And what about the actions of all those Kotaku, RPS, Polygon etc. writers that basically got caught red-handed about writing articles about their girlfriend and didn’t have the sense to recuse themselves because online games “journalism” is a cesspit of no standards whatsoever? Who’s responsible for their actions? Is it 4chan? Is it nobody? Who?
These people have done some hilariously awful things, and you’re only enabling them when you try to hush the negative publicity they rightfully deserve.
PS. The “raid” is fake as fuck. No harmful information was posted in the “dox”, the phone numbers were fake, 4chan doesn’t sign their raids (standard practice is to pin them on an enemy site like Reddit or 9gag) and even the name of the board was spelled wrong.
If Zoe Quinn is not responsible for Zoe Quinn’s actions, who in the world is?
And what about the actions of all those Kotaku, RPS, Polygon etc. writers that basically got caught red-handed about writing articles about their girlfriend and didn’t have the sense to recuse themselves because online games “journalism” is a cesspit of no standards whatsoever? Who’s responsible for their actions? Is it 4chan? Is it nobody? Who?
Here I go again.
Here is a bribe. (link goes to eBay) It is an official bribe, issued by a major corporation, mass-produced in very pretty packaging. What does the comic book tell the gaming press about Injustice that they can’t tell from playing the game and reading the manual? How about the smartphone cover? The action figure?
More importantly, this is organized bribery on a grand-ass, industry-wide scale, and over the decades that this has gone on what I have heard about it from Mr. Everyman Real Gamer Concern Troll, who apparently magically came into existence with some disgruntled ex’s blog, -is fucking crickets. If these bribes had been issued from someone’s vagina, then would come the torches and Frankenstein rakes, I bet.
Apologies to games writers everywhere but it’s true- while there is such a thing as games criticism, there is no such thing as games journalism, largely because of shit like that. “Games journalism” is the parasitic twin of a major industry’s PR department. The very concept of “journalism” tied to a specific subset of consumer products is a joke anyway. Nobody’s going to get gassed or shot with rubber bullets writing about video games. Between NDAs and the ability to ransom off the access to their products that sites need to generate ad revenue, there is a pretty solid truth-proof bubble around this industry, just like so many others. And again, to these champions of justice, this fact- which is toxic to the flow of information, the lives of the employees of these companies, and society in general -is not anywhere near as important as the fact that somewhere a writer wrote about someone they had sex with. This is complaining about the fly in your arsenic soup.
And again, if Zoe Quinn’s behavior is an issue then you don’t get to dismiss 4chan’s behavior either. It is not even clear that this was an exchange of sex for coverage – of a free game, I might add, giving Quinn far less to gain or lose from this than the makers of Injustice had sending out smartphone covers and action figures. The fact that people like you take this as a foregone conclusion tells us much more about you and your supposed commitment to journalistic integrity than it tells us about Zoe Quinn. Meanwhile, it’s hard to misinterpret threats that chase people out of their homes, which is why great lengths are being gone to in order to dismiss them.
By your choice of target, your tactics, and what outrages you, you are revealed. You don’t care about freedom. You don’t care about journalism. You care about inconvenient and uncomfortable viewpoints being removed from your field of vision.
Well, holy shit. This escalated quickly.
Maybe I’ve lost all this in the confusion but…
A) Is anyone honestly disputing that gamer “journalism” is an absolute farce, overflowing with paid shills and devoid of pretty much anything resembling integrity or maturity? If not, then let’s please drop the “But Zoe Quinn ruined everything!” nonsense. Go cry into a stack of old Nintendo Powers.
B) Is anyone actually trying to defend the cancerous cesspool that is 4chan? Or are we playing the “Wizardchan! LOOK OVER THERE!” and trying to pretend there’s no abundance of cross-pollination between communities?
C) Quinn and Gjoini both seem like people I would not want to date, as they each reek of insincerity and insecurity. That said, is anyone here still insisting that their relationship is anyone’s business but there own? If you want to talk about gamer journalism ethics, see point (A). Otherwise, all I see is a gossip-driven high school break up expanded to internet levels of stupidity.
Past all this shit… what is anyone even talking about? I’m utterly lost. Seavy and RAC don’t appear to have the facts straight, and I’m really not seeing Quinn as any kind of role model or martyr here. At the same time, holy shit. Even this thread is full of misogynist bullshit. OppressionQuest? Fuck that noise. People need to grow the fuck up and move the fuck on. I still can’t believe this drama is dragging on.
What did I get wrong, out of curiosity? Not trying to start a fight or anything, but from what I’ve read and what I’ve seen, anything I’ve messed up is tangential to what’s happened at least. But if I’ve misrepresented something here I definitely want to know.
I take issue with only one statement in the original post. The bad blood between Zoe Quinn and TFYC is very much “our business.” They represent competing charities, not ex-lovers. Allegations that one tried to sabotage the other is quite pertinent to that ‘relationship,’ as well as their reputations.
…Which is a completely separate issue from the ‘who slept with whom’ that drives the whole mishegas, and wouldn’t justify the harassment even if Quinn spraypainted “TFYC sux!” on their cats, but yes, it is our business.
C) Quinn and Gjoini both seem like people I would not want to date, as they each reek of insincerity and insecurity. That said, is anyone here still insisting that their relationship is anyone’s business but there own? If you want to talk about gamer journalism ethics, see point (A). Otherwise, all I see is a gossip-driven high school break up expanded to internet levels of stupidity.
As I mentioned above, it was an abusive relationship, and Zoe was the abuser. Eron outing her as such is absolutely everyone’s business. You don’t silence the victims of domestic abuse by prioritizing the abuser’s sense of privacy.
Honestly, when I first read this whole ginormous clusterfuck I honestly wasn’t sure what I felt other than the urge to close my eyes and wait for it all to pass.
I think, quite possibly, there is no ‘fixing’ gamer culture. We should all collectively go fuck ourselves for letting it get to this point.
As I mentioned above, it was an abusive relationship, and Zoe was the abuser. Eron outing her as such is absolutely everyone’s business. You don’t silence the victims of domestic abuse by prioritizing the abuser’s sense of privacy.
Which is: A) a call that nobody here is particularly qualified to make, B) makes you look awesome for endorsing petty revenge by having Eron knowingly let people who’ve attacked Zoe before swarm her in retaliation, as opposed to getting him some kind of help if you were actually concerned about him in any way whatsoever, C) not something you get to use to pretend your phony shitstorm is about justice, because that’s pretty much the same scummy thing as using the Fine Young Capitalists as a shield against claims of misogyny, D) not even the argument that is being used to justify what is nakedly an anti-feminist pogrom against any gaming news writer or site that crosses /v/, E) another long-after-the-fact justification that didn’t make the rounds until at least a week after this started.
“And if THAT defense doesn’t work, try THIS one” is not the sign of a strong case. I’m pretty sure it’s a sign of the other thing.
It also doesn’t change the fact that every bit of this is just another verse in a long, boring, shrill song that gets sung any time a woman in gaming does anything that riles the North American Caucasoid Basement Troll. It is an “isolated incident” that literally happens every time.
Haha, RAC, you really didn’t like my post, huh? Just so you know, this is only my second comment, I don’t think you realized you were responding to someone else.
Anyway, I’ll clarify that I didn’t spend any time talking about 4chan because either you know 4chan is shit or there’s no point talking about it. “Fuck 4chan” is there because that’s really all that needs to be said.
Also, no really, who gives a fuck why 4chan donated money to a charity? Like seriously who gives a fuck? You don’t have to convince me, or anyone, that 4chan is terrible, talking shit about that just reflects poorly on you.
Finally, I *am* above this, because this is fucking stupid. Both sides are awful, they’re both habitual liars, and we had a new pile of evidence on top of the mountain we already had that games journalism is awful.
Here’s everything we learned from this: there’s evidence that Zoe Quinn is terrible enough to be on or near the same level as 4chan.
Why the fuck would anyone with sense want to take sides in this?
Finally, I *am* above this
Dasz, your posts and casual use of swearing indicate otherwise. Hating both sides equally doesn’t make you impartial.
I’ve just heard about this (never really followed gamer forums/journalism) but what I think speaks volumes about it is the difference in treatment.
I’ll explian: If someone actually thought this was about ethical journalism they would have attacked the journalists as much as they’re attacking the game developer. They aren’t. What does that say?
Thoughts:
1. Fuck 4chan. Awful, AWFUL site representative of the worst the internet has to offer.
2. I cannot see why anyone would have any sort of opinion on the liaisons/relationship of two complete strangers.
3. FWIW, I’ve been in relationships stained by cheating. I’m generally of the mind that the person who initially cheats is ultimately at fault, as they’re either unable or unwilling to sever a relationship in which they are unhappy, instead preferring to seek fulfillment outside of the relationship. It’s always struck me as cowardice.
That said, the preceding opinion means absolutely fuck all, and I feel no need to vigorously defend it, hound those who are “at fault” online or otherwise, nor does it compel me to threaten the privacy/lives of others. Might be because I’m a generally well-adjusted person who crawls out of the fucking basement from time to time.
4. This is why we can’t have nice things.
Also, to the ex, maybe handle the pain/humiliation of a bad break up like an adult?
“I’m hypothesizing that for many of these poor fools, there is nothing else. Video games and the tribe of video games are all they have, which is why a perceived threat to the status quo of games is reacted to so poorly: it is a threat to their very identity. If that is the case it’s more than a little sad, more than a little pathetic, and less than no excuse for the kind of behavior we’ve seen the last two weeks. ”
Yep, this. Bunch of maladjusted assholes.
I’m a nerd. Have been all my life. Stories like this, compounded by stories of utter horror from some major gaming conventions recently, make me shake my head and say “Shit, man, nerds are fucking terrible.”
One last thing: people are calling this an “article.” It’s an editorial. Editorials will tend to feature more opinion than “fact.” Not sure how or why this is surprising.
Switch, EVERYTHING spreads if it’s on tumblr. That’s kind of what the platform is for. He wanted it spread, but he didn’t need to do more than post it. Especially on a site full of the worst the internet has to offer save the deepweb. also yea, what Chris said, I’ve been fuck everything since the first day, because I knew it was gonna go down this way.
And it was guaranteed once they started banning people for it on /v/. Everyone on 4chan that gets banned goes to bitch at /pol/, aka Stormfront the imageboard. Every single step to contain this has been the wrongest possible step, and now you’ve dragged hi-power MRAs with thousands of followers into it.
This may have started against journalistic shilling and favouritism, but now it’s an all out barroom brawl between two groups of people that actively HATE games (and that includes the so-called journalists)
One side wants absolutely nothing but endless visual novels. The other side is full of people that, if this were any other gaming-related thing, would tell them to ‘grow up and get a job.’ Bringing codewords like ‘misogyny’ into the gaming debate cost everyone the quick burnout. Now /pol/ and ACTUAL stormfront and AVfM and Niceguy forums are going all out and see this as a way to destroy feminism in media forever. Thanks for that, everyone, especially you worthless-ass journalists who just had to throw your superiourity complexes around. You made this bout of schoolyard fisticuffs into an unwinnable WAR.
Also pretty much everyone knows normal mainstream journalism is corrupt, that’s why ‘indie’ started to become such a big thing. People were mad that what they saw as a less corrupt form of entertainment turned out to pull the same shit but on a much more secluded and exclusive scale. And anyone who didn’t realise mainstream was corrupt, sure as shit found out within two bad purchases. This has actually had the horrible result of making AAA PR shilling look MORE ethical than indie/online journalism, especially since AAA is not afraid to fire those who hurt the bottom line. You don’t see that kind of circling the wagons with the big guys. When you ACTUALLY screw up in a noticeable way, you’re right out the door. But the indie equation in this is circiling wagons and INSULTING THE PEOPLE THAT GIVE THEM THEIR LIVELIHOOD, how backwards is that?
Plus there’s always been people that take bribes but don’t stay bought. Even Roosevelt took a bribe. And then he laughed in Big Oil’s face when they asked him to follow up on it. That’s why even in a bribe-happy industry you still came out with reviewers who were ‘trusted’ to some extent.
Bringing codewords like ‘misogyny’ into the gaming debate cost everyone the quick burnout. Now /pol/ and ACTUAL stormfront and AVfM and Niceguy forums are going all out and see this as a way to destroy feminism in media forever. Thanks for that, everyone, especially you worthless-ass journalists who just had to throw your superiourity complexes around. You made this bout of schoolyard fisticuffs into an unwinnable WAR.
Uh… it’s kind of hard to avoid the word “misogyny” when that is exactly what is happening, being as it is not a “codeword” so much as a word that describes a pattern of behavior. And I’m pretty sure when people get chased out of their homes we’re past schoolyard fisticuffs? And also that when those people are uniformly female we can assume some misogyny is involved? And your entire post takes the tone of the journalist/Quinn side having some kind of blame in this shitstorm, so: go to hell, for one thing.
For another thing, Rainbow Dash is Worst Pony.
This has actually had the horrible result of making AAA PR shilling look MORE ethical than indie/online journalism, especially since AAA is not afraid to fire those who hurt the bottom line. You don’t see that kind of circling the wagons with the big guys.
I’m one of the first people to carp about an industry closing ranks- see “NDAs” and “Truth-proof bubble” above -but nobody in the indie press has actually done a single Goddamn thing wrong except apparently assume they were allowed to have a private sex life that may or may not include the people they work with. The correct response to this gigantic pile of lies and bad-faith arguing is, in fact, “Fuck off.”
…Okay, I take that back. One group has done one wrong thing: what little respect I ever had for Kotaku drained right out of me when they implemented their cowardly new “no crowdfunding” rule, because it lent this entire argument a legitimacy it does not deserve and emboldened a bunch of pointless thugs.
It’s ACORN all over again- we know O’Keefe is a lying scumbag. This is known. It is patently obvious to anyone with half a brain. So why did we go through the motions and destroy this group? Why did we make this petty criminal into a hero of scum when all we had to do is point out what he really was? Sinking to someone else’s level isn’t the real sin of upright people, it’s allowing people on that lower level to dictate the terms of the fight.
Digression over. If the indie press’ great sin is not bowing to public/financial pressure to fire someone groundlessly, how the dick does that make them seem MORE corrupt? And again, you have to be pretty stupid to decide that one person’s sex life coinciding with their coworkers’ is equal in weight to an organized distribution of free crap that has been going on for decades.
All the games press has to do to “win the war” is ignore these people completely, because their charges are groundless and their methods are deplorable. Every change to editorial policy that is made gives their argument a weight it doesn’t deserve.
“Stories like this, compounded by stories of utter horror from some major gaming conventions recently, make me shake my head and say “Shit, man, nerds are fucking terrible.””
Man, I’ve been saying this for years now.
I see that the ad hominem/insult shit has infected this thread as well. ::sigh::
Question: Is there, like, ANY area between “You aren’t really seeing the big picture” and “YOU ARE A TERRIBLE PERSON AND SHOULD BE CHAINED IN TARTARUS?”
It just seems like folks are WAY too quick to go on the attack hereabouts, regardless of whatever is being argued. I guess I’m wondering why?
My fault, and I apologize to all involved. I’m just so sick of the willful ignorance dance around this whole thing. “Well, yes, threats against a person’s life and safety are horrible (if they happened hint hint subtle-casting-of-doubt hint), and we can go to /v/ and watch idiots publicly strategize about new ways to phrase the same tired attacks and squirm around the pathetic misogyny at the crux of all this, but what about THIS brand-new excuse I just came up with for why this BS is the Most Important Issue In Gaming Ever?”
As it stands I’m pretty much done. My point has been made time and again, but for one last time: this phony movement was not started with desires anywhere close to its stated goals. If there are people who are genuinely concerned about journalistic integrity in games writing, I hope they realize there is a lot more wrong with it than who Zoe Quinn did or didn’t have sex with and what they wrote about, and that ranting and raving about Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian and “SJWs” undermines any case you may have towards protecting a free and impartial media- and makes you look like the gamer wing of the Tea Party.
It’s done. It was over before it began. GamerGate is irrevocably tainted by mountains of bad-faith argument and weaselry, and I’m going to safely assume than any of its expressions of concern for the state of gaming- a hobby that has no business not being for everyone – are fake, fake, fake.
In today’s interconnected world it is refreshing to find something composed of so many complicated interconnected parts that still manages not to contain anything of even the remotest interest to me.
What a very nice Venn chart this all makes.
In today’s interconnected world it is refreshing to find something composed of so many complicated interconnected parts that still manages not to contain anything of even the remotest interest to me.
You seem to be merely saying that you personally aren’t interested in this, but that doesn’t make any sense. I’m not interested in lots of things – pro sports, classical music, knitting – but I don’t read very long, esoteric, heated discussions about them and comment just to say I’m not interested.
So if not that, what are you saying, then? That none of this is important? That both sides are equally bad? What? I don’t get it.
“It’s done. It was over before it began. GamerGate is irrevocably tainted by mountains of bad-faith argument and weaselry, and I’m going to safely assume than any of its expressions of concern for the state of gaming- a hobby that has no business not being for everyone – are fake, fake, fake.”
Alright, I can get that.
Sadly it looks like at least one games writer has quit her job because she’s sick of being harassed by these assholes. (Neither Zoe Quinn nor Anita Sarkeesian- curiously or not so curiously, all the prime targets are women…)
So it’s just going to get worse now, and worse still with any further concessions these fools receive. And again the ACORN analogy holds. Argh.