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AlexanderHammil said on September 4th, 2014 at 12:18 pm

THANK YOU. Jesus.

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At this point the best thing to do is not engage the liar side of this thing at all. Editors everywhere should be put on alert as to what these bullshit “integrity” accusations are really about and who’s plotting them and where, and no response should be given. Anywhere. From anyone in an official position.

At that point either they’ll get tired and go away, or do something actionable. Either way, actually trying to talk to any of these fools is just going to result in more people like Jenn Frank saying “fuck it, I quit this shitshow” which will just embolden them.

Not gonna happen, but that’s my wishful thinking.

(I am way too fond of the word “shitshow” and the internet gives me way too much cause to use it)

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I made the mistake of engaging with one of the dipshits on this, to point out that the Kotaku writer Quinn supposedly slept with and the Kotaku writer who reviewed her game are not, technically speaking, the same person. The response was that positive reviews of her game exist, and therefore there was corruption, regardless of who wrote them. At that point I left to find something I could use to stop my brain leaking out my ears. Argh.

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Jack-Pumpkinhead said on September 4th, 2014 at 1:22 pm

Thank you MGK. I hadn’t heard about this until Monday, & I really wanted to type my responses (none of my business cause I don’t care about reviews or her life, but death threats are inexcusable). I feel I can say that here without anyone getting too bent out now, so there. Makes me glad I’m not super-involved in online culture, or at least when I do get involved I know who’s behind the username.

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Thank you MGK!

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Game journalism isn’t something I’m super interested in, so when I heard that people were asking for “neutral” reviews of video games I was really confused. Like, the point of a review is to give your opinion on something, so asking for a “neutral” review is like asking for one of those fish that doesn’t swim. If you want specs, go read a press release.

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I agree with you that the Zoe Quinn stuff is irrelevant. It was unfortunate that the conversation about journalistic integrity began from some ex-BF splashing personal details around the internet.

I do not think that the continuing discussion about journalistic integrity is a bad thing, though. There are assholes, doxxers, and idiots on both sides, but for me, personally, I would like to see gaming journalism become more professional. There was a thing about IGN a while back where they splashed some art for a game all over, turning the entire site into an advertorial, and when the game came out, it got a score much higher than it deserved (I don’t remember what it was called – had two Tango & Cash looking motherfuckers).

There’s more accusations of harrassment from both sides than there are ideas for how journalists can cover gaming in a non-biased way. Any time someone says, “Yeah, but Kotaku shouldn’t let it’s reporters donate money to developers, because that’s unethical” gets shouted down, and anyone who says “Yeah, women get a rough time in gaming because there are a lot of guys who are assholes to women.”

But you know what? I played Depression Quest. I thought it wasn’t very good and not very interesting. There are better depictions of depression that are more engaging. Saying the game sucks is not harrassment. Saying Anita Sorwhateverhernameis only glosses over the outer layer of things when she critiques the gaming industry’s portrayal of women is not harrassment. There’s nothing wrong with disagreeing with people.

So yes, the personal crap about someone’s sex life and all that – it’s bullshit. But the stuff about journalistic integrity is not. There’s nothing wrong with consumers of video game culture asking that the content they are offered is not biased. Are there problems with how women are treated in gaming? Of course, you’d be a fuckin’ idiot to say otherwise. Are people like Zoe and Anita helping further the conversation? No, they’re being self-serving victims. I appreciate they’re trying to do their own thing and more power to them, but just because some people don’t agree with them doesn’t make them martyrs, and just because a few assholes harass them doesn’t mean every single dude who has an xBox is a mysogynist (a word thrown around so much it’s lost pretty much all meaning at this point). I don’t like that I can’t say “Depression Quest was not fun or interesting” without being depicted as some woman-hating psycho.

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Ryan, if you see someone being harassed by an ugly mob, and your response is to say, “This is a pretty good time to spout off about how awful I think her game is,” that’s an asshole thing to do in several ways.

It makes it sound like you think your opinion of a game is as important as the issue of harassment. At best, it looks like you’re kicking someone when they’re down – your opinion of a game belongs in a discussion of that game, not in a discussion about how to deal with people being harassed. When you drop your opinion of her game in this context it comes across as if you’re saying, “Well she kinda deserves harassment.”

As MGK said, maybe some reviews are biased. But that’s not remotely as important as the fact that women can’t write about games on the internet without being harassed. Trying to shove that important discussion aside so you can whine about game reviews you don’t like is shameful.

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VarDevNull said on September 4th, 2014 at 3:54 pm

Hey, Ryan, did you read MGK’s post? I think you didn’t. Here, let me quote the relevant part.

“In short: I have not seen one complaint about Quinn that is relevant to the issue of the horrible things that have been visited upon her. I have seen whining and piteous, pathetic wank, most of it either obfuscating the basic truth that this is about looking for excuses to attack Zoe Quinn for her gender, or alternately proclaiming that “this is bigger than Zoe Quinn” because some have at least enough insight to realize that maybe the wildly sexist assault is counterproductive, but they don’t want to apologize really so they jump straight to “we need to move on and address the REAL issues.” As if death threats were some kind of amusing sidenote.”

And by the way, nice examples of “not all men” and blaming the victim.

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Carlos Futino said on September 4th, 2014 at 4:00 pm

Ryan, the thing is, no one is having a discussion about unbiased reviews in games journalism. They are harassing a person. I don’t care what’s your opinion on jornalistic integrity, it doesn’t excuse death threats.
And as for her game: yeah criticizing a game isn’t harassment. But the quality of the game has nothing to do with what’s happening now. It’s about a Quinn’s personal life.

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I do not think that the continuing discussion about journalistic integrity is a bad thing, though

It’s not- but you have to realize that 90% of the people currently having that argument are not actually interested in having that argument in any way except a way that inconveniences women in games journalism or other game writers with feminist leanings. Nothing that targeted is trustworthy.

There’s plenty to be done to improve games journalism (and journalism in general, as the ransoming of access to the obedient is a poison that afflicts media at every possible level) but people who start at the bottom by going after freelancers who might donate to each others’ Patreons are misguided, and that is the charitable explanation.

Basically the “games journalism” angle is to hook people who don’t understand or care about the misogyny angle into doing the misogynists’ work for them.

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“It’s a poison place filled with poison people; it makes Reddit look like a circumspect garden party by comparison, and that is indeed the very point of the site, to allow people to wallow in this sort of thing anonymously with no consequences. Why would you ever trust their word?”

Yep, always and forever this. FUCK 4chan.

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Yay! Thank you.

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If you really, truly care about “integrity in games journalism” (which, let’s take a deep breath here and note is a HILARIOUSLY inconsequential thing to be fretting about anyway, but removed from all context, yes, OK, it’s not *inherently* a bad thing to be concerned with) then there are really only a few things to do about it at this point:

1. SHUT THE FUCK UP for a few months, until this blows over.

2. Start fresh with a real ground-up campaign to try to do something about it. Actually launching a games website or something with strict journalistic standards about reviewing stuff would be a good move.

Because the thing is, even the most well-meaning people on the GamerGate side of things are now horrifically tainted. We’ve seen enough about what’s going on over there (and this is THE INTERNET you chuckleheads IT IS PUBLIC, we can see you launching propaganda campaigns to try to “shape the narrative” and whatnot) to say with conviction that you have lost, forever, the right to have your arguments treated in good faith. And you clearly have no sense of perspective, because you are enabling HORRIBLE PEOPLE for the sake of, again, a ludicrously minor “cause”.

Plus, as has been commented, even bringing it up at this point suggests that you’re hopelessly myopic. The side of the road is littered with people bleeding to death and you’re lecturing them about jaywalking. Not the time! Assholes!

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those guys want us to believe they’ve been fighting the “corruption in game journalism” that has been happening for years, but not a single one has a account that has comments or posts criticizing such corruption from years ago until now

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I’m not blaming the victim. I’m blaming people who play the victim all the fucking time. Karl Rove was really good at that. I remember seeing him at an event for North Dakota Republicans back in 2006 or so that I covered for a local paper. He told a heartwarming story about how Republicans were, and I quote, “hunted” by Democrats in Texas when he was growing up. He got lots of donations that night.

My complaint about ZQ and the rest of the professional victim class is not that they are women, or game devs, or whatever, it’s that they scream bloody murder at the slightest imagined wrong. The Fine Young Capitalists thing, for example, was ruined over ZQ’s idiotic assumed victimhood and they lost over $10,000. Should people call ZQ or FYC or anyone at all ever and leave death threats? Fuck no. Call the police, get them arrested, and put them away in jail. I don’t think anyone deserves that kind of treatment, no matter how big a doofus they act, but I also don’t think that because I like XCOM and Civilization I’m an automatic misogynist or homophobe or whatever other labels people are trying to stick to the identity of being a gamer (since I am gay, getting called a homophobe was a laugh).

To repeat: I could not give a fuck about ZQ except to the point that she and people like her ruin other people’s projects for no good reason (again, Fine Young Capitalists). I’ve never harassed anyone and I think people who do that sort of thing are scum of the earth. I’m not blaming the victim. I’m saying that I can ask for gaming journalists to be a little fucking responsible without me being called a woman-hater. Shit, I didn’t even know ZQ was accused of sleeping around, which is more bullshit that gaming journalists should leave alone because it’s not fucking relevant, as MGK said. I learned about GamerGate when I heard about the people at FYC being doxxed and harassed by some members of the SJW brigade (not all SJWs are assholes, just like not all gamers are assholes). I saw tweets in which ZQ bragged about their website getting DDOS’d. That pisses me off because it reveals not that she cares about promoting equality, just that she cares about promoting the right KIND of equality where she and she alone is the arbiter of what is right and what is wrong, and God help you if you get on her bad side or think differently than her. People like her – and the people who harass her – are bullies. Journalists who enable this behavior are idiots.

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Thank you, MGK.

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“I’m not blaming the victim! Now here are 500 words on the problem of what I will refer to as the ‘professional victim class.’ and their idiotic assumed victimhood.”

I think that’s what people refer to as mixed signals right there.

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Carlos Futino said on September 5th, 2014 at 8:01 am

Ryan, you may not realize, but what you’re doing is blaming the victim. When you claim they’re crying about “imagined wrongs” you’re basic calling them liars and saying it’s they’re fault bad things are happening to them.

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I suppose that, technically, it is not blaming the victim to assert that the victim is in fact not a victim but a big fat liar.

Equally as gross, though.

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Also, this is the second place today I’ve heard “but the other side has gotten threats too!”, which I hadn’t heard anyone assert before. Guess the new marching orders came out…

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So if Ryan saw a woman being run over by a car, would he call an ambulance or ask for the woman to provide evidence she was run over? And what evidence would be enough? Not, not blood, because that can be faked or carried in pouches. Injuries? We know people can injury themselves. Heck, why is she even complaining abut being run over? That happens everyday! It is the price of crossing the street.

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@Ryan: Here’s the thing. When you say, “I agree with you that the Zoe Quinn stuff is irrelevant. It was unfortunate that the conversation about journalistic integrity began from some ex-BF splashing personal details around the internet.”

…and then say…

“But you know what? I played Depression Quest. I thought it wasn’t very good and not very interesting.”

…then you are tacitly creating an equivalence between Zoe Quinn getting death threats and your having to play a video game that is not very good. You are suggesting, either inadvertently or deliberately, that these two things are equivalent.

If you wonder why people may be reacting to your comments with hostility and “shouting you down”, think about that for a while.

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I feel like doubling over and vomiting every time I hear the “there’s threats and doxing from both sides” argument.

There are three “sides” to this and only one of them is directly producing the threats. There’s a woman and her supporters being terrorized, a mob of self-aggrandizing fools enabling it while moaning about “ethics…” and then 4chan trolls.

Anyone taking “Gamergate” seriously as a cause are being utterly played by 4chan slime. I would bet real money that 99.9% of threats they receive (when they aren’t lying or exaggerating) are coming from the same 4chan users terrorizing Quinn (I’m leaving that .1% there because, hey, there’s always a misguided outlier).

In general, if you find 4chan on your side, you’re not only wrong but probably being toyed with by them.

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saying that we shouldn’t try to fix game journalism bc it’s been messed up for years is like saying we shouldn’t fix racism bc it’s been around for years.

Before you go all false equivalence on me, I’d check comparing the Michael Brown thing to Zoe Quinn.

And besides, why would you get so mad about gamers trying to correct a problem they see with their community? It makes zero sense, and kinda points out that you’re not thinking about this logically.

I really don’t understand how you support Zoe.

1) Not only did she say something was rape and then did it (like most 20-somethings, right?)

but 2) she blocked the growth of a positive feminist game development group, even when they offered her a paid consulting gig to fix whatever she thought was wrong (like most 20-somethings, right? Come on.)

3) On top of it all, she made a game about depression which didn’t get a greenlight until she made completely unsubstantiated claims about being harassed by a forum filled with depressed people (wizardchan, not 4chan), and then did NOTHING when her supporters told said depressed people to kill themselves… (that’s ALL I did in my 20’s)

You should be up in arms about this, but somehow you’re not. She’s proven that she’s playing the SJW camp, and yet you’re not mad about her hypocrisy.

I’m genuinely confused at your position. It’s not “shaming” behavior: it’s calling somebody out on their bs. How do you not see that?

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Here’s the deal, from what I can see:

1. It is the position of MGK and others that anonymous internet harassment (particularly that of females – I personally refuse to put a gender standard on it) is absolutely terrible and pathetic. I’m definitely inclined to agree. If I had my druthers, I’d publish every troll’s personal information on various public sites.

Trolls are people who revel and luxuriate in being stupid, disruptive wastes of life. Fuck them.

2. Are people legitimately up in arms about fucking VIDEO GAME journalism? Why? Do people really live and die by reviews? Does the random coverage of some random “journalist” trump first-hand experience?

Or, put glibly, I can completely ignore “video game journalism” by getting a Gamefly account and playing some demos, or by logging onto Steam and trying shit out.

3. From what I can tell (and ::GASP:: irrespective of gender), Zoe sounds like someone I’d never wish to meet in real life. Ditto her ex. I can’t abide adults not acting like fucking adults.

That said, by attacking her, you’re letting the anonymous internet assholes get away with idiocy.

These 4chan fuckers need to be found and punched as hard as possible in whatever bit of soft tissue will cause the most damage (IMO of course). They don’t need people taking up their cause.

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“I’m genuinely confused at your position. It’s not ‘shaming’ behavior: it’s calling somebody out on their bs. How do you not see that?”

Look, a number of folks here are not going to entertain the topic at all. It is irrelevant to them, on both ideological and practical levels. These people will tend to view any sort of “but” as tacit approval of the actions of the 4chan morons.

Now, ideally, someone like you could create a sub-thread or somesuch to discuss certain nuances of the issue at hand. That isn’t possible. If you want to discuss those issues, you must do so on this thread, in which people will make the assumption that you’re arguing in bad faith.

I’ve been there. It’s frustrating and more than a little illogical (IMO), but it is what it is. People want to talk about the 4chan response to this bullshit, not whatever bullshit Zoe may or may not have engaged in.

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@Matt

Fair enough. Thanks for a reasonable response. I gotta say, I wasn’t expecting it, but I’m grateful. Cheers for that.

Anyway, I have a question then:

since anonymous attacks on the internet are wack, how would you suggest dealing with someone like Zoe? Boycott her games?

Again, I’m actually pretty thrilled to be having a civil discussion about this. It’s how progress is made. I’d appreciate it if no one derailed it. But hey, it’s a free country…

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“since anonymous attacks on the internet are wack, how would you suggest dealing with someone like Zoe? Boycott her games?”

That’d be my response, yes. I simply would not be a customer of anything she produced or produces in the future.

Specifically, I might say something like:

“1. Threats are NEVER justified, particularly those made by idiot manchildren who are railing against all women as if they were that one girl in junior high who wouldn’t go to the prom with them.

2. That said, ::blank:: seems like a real piece of shit, and I take issue with his/her modus operandi. As such, I won’t support his/her work or products.”

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@Bob: “saying that we shouldn’t try to fix game journalism bc it’s been messed up for years is like saying we shouldn’t fix racism bc it’s been around for years.”

Yes, because video game players who buy a video game that turns out not to be very good experience exactly the same kind of suffering and harm that African-Americans suffer under a racist system! Didn’t you hear about that one unarmed gamer who got shot by a video game store clerk for being dumb enough to buy Superman 64? Don’t you know how tough it is to have to get dirty looks when you try to resell ‘Ride to Hell: Retribution’ at GameStop? Oh, the humanity! OH WOE! OH SORROW!

tl;dr: Trying to place an equivalence between a bad article on Kotaku and people getting death threats is exactly the kind of brain-dead bullshit that is making people ignore everything else you have to say.

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@john

and so ends reasonable discourse.

had you read the whole thing, that part was pointing out that the author’s comparing micheal brown to Zoe was ridiculous. It was like… sarcasm.

Anyway, you didn’t address anything else I said. You cherry picked something, completely missed the point on it, and then reverted to name calling, even though you saw a productive conversation right before.

Now remind me who shouldn’t be taken seriously?

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@matt

yea I guess that’s the best way. vote with your actions, not by needlessly being an asshole to someone.

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“Trying to place an equivalence between a bad article on Kotaku and people getting death threats is exactly the kind of brain-dead bullshit that is making people ignore everything else you have to say.”

Bottomline, it seems as though anything the dude says will get picked apart, as he’s trying to advance a different topic (or at least a shift) than what the majority is discussing.

One of the most disheartening aspects of this site is the extent to which certain dialogue just gets hammered on. Seriously, at certain points it becomes an exercise in “say this or we will tell you, repeatedly, to STFU.”

Now, that’s not to say that certain individuals don’t argue in bad faith. Hell, I’d say that certain folks (here and elsewhere) make a point of it. It just seems as though there’s an almost automatic assumption that “quibbling/setting up a sidebar discussion/disagreeing with particulars = arguing in bad faith.”

It’s worse than the usual irritating internet bullshit; it is absolutely anathema to anything even remotely resembling actual discussion.

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“yea I guess that’s the best way. vote with your actions, not by needlessly being an asshole to someone.”

As I said before, video game journalism means nothing to me. It’s an “industry” based on discussing and reviewing products that any individual of certain means can test on their own. I give no more validity or weight to video game reviews than I do to movie reviews, mainly because of the arbitrariness of it all.

Now things like lists, or analyses of genres/titles/series? That’s a different matter. Those are entertaining little sidetracks. But, as MGK says, making that your “hill to die on?” Eh, I’d say that a better “hill” would be railing against journalism in general (which, IMO, is utter shit).

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And besides, why would you get so mad about gamers trying to correct a problem they see with their community? It makes zero sense, and kinda points out that you’re not thinking about this logically.

Bob, I’m gonna go ahead and go full Godwin here, but please bear with me because I’m doing it to draw a legitimate comparison and not attempting to emotionally color the debate:

The Nazi party saw a series of very real problems with their community caused by the socioeconomic consequences of World War I. They identified a potential cause and acted on it. So, was that good? No, it was not. And certainly not above criticism. They acted in bad faith according to their prejudices and agendas, and the real problem had nothing to do with the one they were “solving.”

That’s the entire problem here- the #GameGhazi people are using the illusion of a just cause to do bad things. Obviously things aren’t as bad as they could be given the comparison I just used, but they’re bad enough to warrant some anger. And yes, I am angry.

The question you have to ask- and I have been repeatedly asking -is if the industry is so rife with corruption and willing and unwilling collusion with corporate forces- which it is -why are indie publishers and freelance writers the main target? Why are women the main target? Why start with people on the lowest socio-economic rungs of the industry?

There’s no logical reason to start with and focus exclusively on the least powerful figures in the community, unless the pretense of cleaning up the community is a dodge and a lie. Unless you’re using that cause as a cover to your real goal.

There could well be actual people concerned with the fate of the industry in all this, sure! But if so they have seriously fallen in with the wrong crowd. Because I guarantee you that EA and Activision are not “next.” They’re not even on the radar, even though their practices are far more poisonous to the integrity of games and games journalism.

In short, you should always be deeply suspicious of anyone blaming all their problems on the weakest voice in the room, because there is something they’re not telling you.

(Incidentally, I actually did have someone tell me on Twitter “This is the hill I intend to die on.” Insane.)

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Carlos Futino said on September 5th, 2014 at 1:50 pm

“Bottomline, it seems as though anything the dude says will get picked apart, as he’s trying to advance a different topic (or at least a shift) than what the majority is discussing.”

That’s because he is trying to advance a different topic. That’s exactly what I believe MGK was talking about. Trying to discuss whether Quinn is a good person or not while people are talking about harassment equals to derailing the conversation and shifting focus from the attacks. Even if it’s not done in bad faith.

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“The question you have to ask- and I have been repeatedly asking -is if the industry is so rife with corruption and willing and unwilling collusion with corporate forces- which it is -why are indie publishers and freelance writers the main target? Why are women the main target? Why start with people on the lowest socio-economic rungs of the industry?

There’s no logical reason to start with and focus exclusively on the least powerful figures in the community, unless the pretense of cleaning up the community is a dodge and a lie. Unless you’re using that cause as a cover to your real goal.”

I like this. A lot.

“That’s because he is trying to advance a different topic. That’s exactly what I believe MGK was talking about. Trying to discuss whether Quinn is a good person or not while people are talking about harassment equals to derailing the conversation and shifting focus from the attacks. Even if it’s not done in bad faith.”

Okay, here’s my issue – how much mileage should/can one wring from the idea that stupid trolls are stupid, socially regressive, and overwhelmingly hostile toward women?

Like…that’s bad. I don’t know that anyone could defend the practice. I don’t know that anyone here would stick up for the 4chan idiots and say “I see nothing wrong with that intent or delivery whatsoever.” Okay…now what?

The guy said that there is room for a discussion about the integrity of video game journalism, and got nailed for it. There IS room for that discussion, just apparently not here. I think it’d be great if future posts just outright stated “STAY ON TOPIC – sidebars not allowed” or somesuch. If full-on discussion isn’t valued or wanted, it’d be great to know that up front.

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“Incidentally, I actually did have someone tell me on Twitter ‘This is the hill I intend to die on.’ Insane.”

Many nerds are completely bereft of anything constituting practical perspective. Which is friggin’ sad.

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had you read the whole thing, that part was pointing out that the author’s comparing micheal brown to Zoe was ridiculous.

The author didn’t compare Michael Brown to Zoe Quinn. The author compared the people attempting to justify Michael Brown’s shooting to the people attempting to justify Zoe Quinn’s harassment, because the methods of doing so were and are fundamentally the same. And all you’re continuing to do by arguing that Quinn is a bad person is precisely that, because Quinn’s badness or lack thereof are – and I feel the need to bold this part – not relevant to her being harassed by loser internet dickheads.

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@Matt: “The guy said that there is room for a discussion about the integrity of video game journalism, and got nailed for it. There IS room for that discussion, just apparently not here.”

And not now. And not in this context. Again, repeating the point–when Person A is talking about people getting rape and death threats, bringing up another issue is going to sound like you’re trying to distract people from the rape and death threats by talking about something else. It is going to sound like you don’t care about the rape and death threats, or at the very least that you regard the other issue as of equivalent importance.

If you do, you are profoundly lacking in perspective and need to get some empathy. And if you don’t, you maybe need to respect the importance of what we’re talking about, and give it a little space and time before you embark on the “anti-corruption in video game journalism” campaign that suddenly became vitally important to you last week.

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“And all you’re continuing to do by arguing that Quinn is a bad person is precisely that, because Quinn’s badness or lack thereof are – and I feel the need to bold this part – not relevant to her being harassed by loser internet dickheads.”

I think that the key point to make is that there is no justification for the behavior exhibited by 4chan fucktards. None.

That said, I don’t think that someone saying “On another note, not a big fan of her” is attempting to justify the behavior. I don’t think that they’re saying “you reap what you sow” or whatever. I think they’re saying “Yeah, this is a mess, and 4chan idiots are 4chan idiots, but there’s more to the story.”

Then again, I may be reading more into what people are saying. Regardless, in this case the parameters of discussion are set (regarding the topic), and that’s fine. I just wish there were more opportunity hereabouts for fuller discussion and/or casual jawing without massive backlash.

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“And not now. And not in this context. Again, repeating the point–when Person A is talking about people getting rape and death threats, bringing up another issue is going to sound like you’re trying to distract people from the rape and death threats by talking about something else. It is going to sound like you don’t care about the rape and death threats, or at the very least that you regard the other issue as of equivalent importance.”

Alright, I don’t think we’re ever going to see eye to eye on the overall topic/concept of discussion. And hey, that’s fine. Suffice to say:

1. I’m going to go ahead and assume that the “you” you’re using is a general one.

2. I don’t think that that point has been missed, though I do see people trying to talk past that point. People tend to do that in an active discussion, and not all of them do so maliciously. My problem is that some posters here seem to uniformly view that as malicious behavior. Which leads to shifts in tone. Which leads to the usual conversation-destroying ad hominem/personal attack bullshit

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I think we can all agree that idiot manchildren are fucking terrible. I’d be firmly behind an endeavor to take the fight back to them, and shout them down on their home turf. Maybe THAT’S what needs to happen. The more socially stable nerds take the fight to the developmentally-stunted manchildren and say “No, nerds are nerds, and you’re a complete and utter fuckhead.”

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@Matt: No. The “you” I’m using is not a general one. I am telling you, specifically, that this is not the time or place to talk about the integrity of video game journalism, because we are talking about the harassment of women in the industry, and the two issues should not be conflated in any way, shape or form. Because they’re not connected, and the people trying to connect them are doing so in order to make their terrible behavior seem justified.

And you–you personally, Matt, not a general “you” but you as in YOU–are either deliberately or accidentally helping them. You are saying, “Yes, their behavior is terrible, but I’d like to change the subject to something I’d rather talk about,” and you should not do that. Because it gives the impression that you don’t care. And saying, “Oh, but I do care,” isn’t sufficient to correct that. Not when you then try to change the subject again. Clear?

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“You are saying, “Yes, their behavior is terrible, but I’d like to change the subject to something I’d rather talk about,” and you should not do that. Because it gives the impression that you don’t care. And saying, “Oh, but I do care,” isn’t sufficient to correct that. Not when you then try to change the subject again. Clear?”

Jesus Christ, man, did you read what I wrote? Once again, for the cheap seats: I don’t think we’re ever going to see eye to eye on the overall topic/concept of discussion. Ever. You see it as something completely different than me, and you clearly see absolutely no value in a free-flowing conversation, as it doesn’t serve an activist purpose. Done. Finito.

Here’s an idea: don’t engage me. You have clearly decided that you know precisely how a discussion should go, and you vigorously defend your sovereign duty to decide what should or shouldn’t be discussed or even posited, and I find it (as I’ve mentioned to you in multiple threads) to be an absolutely horrid practice in concept, tone, and execution.

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“And if you don’t, you maybe need to respect the importance of what we’re talking about, and give it a little space and time before you embark on the “anti-corruption in video game journalism” campaign that suddenly became vitally important to you last week.”

And BTW, this should be a general “you,” as I have repeatedly stated that I don’t give a shit about video game journalism, nor do I think that it is relevant. Read the words I wrote, and stop erecting strawmen cobbled together from your own assumptions (however passion-fueled they may be).

I DO give a shit about the state of conversation on the internet, and I DESPISE the way that you and others absolutely and brutally jump down the throats of ANYONE who presents an argument even tangentially in opposition to the position you champion. Not those arguing in bad faith, not those arguing in good faith, not those asking questions related to the topic at hand: ANYONE you perceive to be part of the “opposition.” It is transparently weak, useless bullshit. I’d like to think that, on some level, you realize that.

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Now, BACK ON TOPIC: Has anyone here taken the fight to the trolls? Is there anything more substantial we can do to render this bullshit trollism null and void?

Moreover, are there any initiatives one could start or support to break the barrier of anonymity? I know that a decent amount of Reddit trolls have been outed, but what about 4chan?

MGK, you’re a lawyer: how hard is it to track down and prosecute those who make these threats?

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Oliver Fugate said on September 5th, 2014 at 11:18 pm

When people post naked photos of you, you’re not a “self-serving victim.” You are a victim.

This conversation should be about the death threats, the rape threats, the posting of naked pictures, the dessimination of personal material. As an outside observer, the gamer world shouldn’t bloviate about anything else until this is settled.

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It’s kinda messed up that you would admit you know nothing about Zoe personally, and then assert that’s she’s probably confusedly blundering around with the best of intentions in the same sentence. Like, why mention that you have no basis for an opinion, and then speculate on what your opinion might be?

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bad johnny got out said on September 6th, 2014 at 6:12 am

Justin. If you need someone to validate you, fine, I’ll do it: ZQ is a horrible human being, an especially destructive type of female-psychopath which young and inexperienced men (such as 4chan) must learn to recognize and avoid.

But Anita Sarkeesian is not, and she’s been harassed just as badly. So.

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“But Anita Sarkeesian is not, and she’s been harassed just as badly. So.”

The Sarkeesian thing is flat-out baffling. Like, on an anthropological level.

Makes me wonder what these people would say IRL.

“This conversation should be about the death threats, the rape threats, the posting of naked pictures, the dessimination of personal material. As an outside observer, the gamer world shouldn’t bloviate about anything else until this is settled.”

Agreed, but how? How do we settle it? What can we do on a practical, actionable level?

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What if I told you, there is no spoon?

https://storify.com/strictmachine/gameovergate

Too long, didn’t read? EVERY damn inch of #GamerGate has been deliberately orchestrated. And the strongest bit of journalism in the whole mess was performed by the victim. Yes, victim. Zoe Quinn might be the biggest bitch on Bitch Hill (I also don’t know, and I ALSO don’t care) but the victim, she remains.

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FBI involvement? NICE. Fucking awesome.

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Too long, didn’t read? EVERY damn inch of #GamerGate has been deliberately orchestrated. And the strongest bit of journalism in the whole mess was performed by the victim. Yes, victim. Zoe Quinn might be the biggest bitch on Bitch Hill (I also don’t know, and I ALSO don’t care) but the victim, she remains.

Worst part is that it’s not even worth saying “I told you so,” because everybody already knew, and was scrambling to argue around the fact.

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And now, an epilogue from a former Bethesda programmer that is worth a read. I said before that I felt as though the issue was people deriving their identity from gaming, and damn if that isn’t what this person is saying to Douville.

I grew up with a father that was hyper-critical of everything. And I did (and do) get defensive of the things he criticizes because I felt as though he was judging me for liking those things. He’s not(mostly), but you do take it personally. It feels like it’s an attack on you. If you’re lucky what you end up with is an identity that reaches beyond what it is you like. If you’re not, what you get is angry and defensive.

It’s not my intent to defend anyone who helped harass good people out of their jobs and out of their fields- those actions are unconscionable and I hope somebody pays for it. But those are the instigators and hardcore assholes. There are people who took up their cause here who, while not entirely blameless, have had their fears and insecurities and faltering sense of identity turned into someone else’s weapon. I just hope that somebody with more patience than me can help some of those people realize that it’s not personal and never has been.

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“If you’re lucky what you end up with is an identity that reaches beyond what it is you like. If you’re not, what you get is angry and defensive.”

Yep. It’s a “turf” thing. Disabusing oneself of the notion requires some capacity for introspection, which many people are either afraid of or can’t be bothered with.

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Anita is pretty bad herself, what with the plagiarism and theft. Also the fabrications in her videos. And also the stuff she just gets outright wrong. And also the “If you don’t support me you’re a misogynist” stuff.

Does any of that warrant harassment? Fucking no.

Zoe Quinn is the fucking worst. She got TFYC taken down, she’s living proof of nepotism and corruption in gaming “journalism” and she deflected away from all of that using the actions of a small minority.

Does any of that warrant harassment? Fucking no.

But here’s the thing. The sane people on GamerGate (The majority) aren’t harassing them. They aren’t sending death threats. That’s a small minority of fuckin’ assholes. The rest of us just want gaming journalism to be fixed, to stop being insulted and lied to.

Does that warrant harassment? Fucking NO.

None of those three deserve harassment. But they’re ALL getting it. Transgendered people on the side of Gamergate are being accused of lying about their gender (HOLY SHIT), people of color are having to post pictures to prove they aren’t “white basement dwellers.”

Meanwhile the gaming press and those connected to it are calling for dox, using “#KillAllGamers” and “#KillAllWhites” and “#KillAllMen” hashtags.

This isn’t a one-fucking-sided debate, not for either side. Journalistic integrity has been called into question, indie developers have come out and said they were blacklisted, a PR firm that has several journalists AND indie developers involved in all this under their wing has been revealed.

There’s harassment coming from BOTH sides, there’s death threats coming from BOTH sides, and it’s bullshit from BOTH sides.

http://gamergateharrassment.tumblr.com/ here’s a few examples of the threats/harassment coming from the anti-gamergate side btw.

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Yep. It’s a “turf” thing. Disabusing oneself of the notion requires some capacity for introspection, which many people are either afraid of or can’t be bothered with.

Introspection is a hell of a rabbit hole. If you do it well enough and often enough eventually you’ll reach the questions you don’t want answered. For me it was “What does being dead feel like, or more accurately, not feel like?” I still have panic attacks when I think about that one too hard.

cole1114: Unfortunately the non-sane people of GamerGate are the ones who started it and fostered it, with a goal different from the one you say you have- and they’ve been caught out now. You got used. And one of the many tragedies of that is that it’s going to be a long-ass time before anyone can address any of the legitimate issues with game journalism without a lot of raised eyebrows.

Don’t know what else to tell you, except to be careful what horse you back and be careful of punching down.

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Anticorium said on September 6th, 2014 at 8:10 pm

It’s amazing that people talk about all the HORRIBLE HARASSMENT AND DEATH THREATS COMING FROM THE FEMINISTS, but can’t even be bothered to make up some screenshots.

I mean, I’m not calling you a bunch of goddamn liars, I’m just calling you a bunch of goddamn liars who cannot even commit to the bit. Zoe Quinn produced three weeks of IRC logs, you can’t even be bothered to make up a tweet?

Oh, sorry, I see that people did make up some screenshots. Well, okay. I’ll apply the same standard of proof that Zoe Quinn has been subject to: you’re still a bunch of goddamn liars, make more “proof” and maybe I’ll change my mind.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/04/men-are-harassed-more-than-women-online.html

https://medium.com/@sixthman/who-is-harassed-more-f81799a2f550

there’s some more.

And the IRC logs that were cherrypicked and outright tampered with? Those ones?

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Sorry, but that Daily Beast article is massively flawed. It’s the same as claiming that more men die in war, ergo, men are being exterminated. With perhaps the rare exception like the Faulklands war, most of the people deciding to go to war are men. Most of those who signed up in the military are men. Most of those opposing them are men.

Are you going to include the abuse those who think gamergate is full of hooey as those being persecuted? Should the gender (as well as any gender-oriented slurs) be taken into account for any data gathering? If so, find a different article.

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And the IRC logs that were cherrypicked and outright tampered with? Those ones?

For one: considering that those logs merely corroborated what many people, myself included, watched happening on /v/, You’re going to have to do slightly better than “nuh-UH.” Your cause’s credibility is currently less than zero, as I mentioned before. The fact that you’re now posting random anecdotal MRA evidence from The Blaze, for God’s sake, pretty much cinches that.

For the other thing: random chatlogs and one person’s say-so were enough to start this manure-fest, so why are they suddenly not good enough now?

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Anticorium said on September 7th, 2014 at 1:15 am

And the IRC logs that were cherrypicked and outright tampered with?

I am indeed talking about the IRC logs that the GamerGate losers doctored to remove the incriminating things they totally did say that were logged by Zoe Quinn! I’m glad we are on the same page! Thank you!

The reason I do not believe that men receive more and worse harassment than women online is that I was not born yesterday, I do not have the IQ of a potato, and I did not spend my life living in a cave until three days ago.

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Anticorium said on September 7th, 2014 at 1:23 am

Also, if you want to engage in a discussion about problems in the game industry, Zoe Quinn has started one in the #gameethics hashtag about crunch time.

Crunch makes games worse because the code that’s written during a 80- or 100-hour work week is known, through multiple studies, to be of lower quality than that written in a normal work week. It requires more QA, it contains more bugs that slip into the final shipped product. Crunch ruins your life because it destroys your ability to keep schedules outside of work. It means you never get to see your spouse and children. It is used as a tool to make naive young men feel like heroes because they are willing to sleep at their desks and shower every other day so that a faceless corporation can succeed at an arbitrary ship date and then lay off the entire dev studio.

If you care about games that are fun and aren’t full of bugs, made by people who won’t burn out and kill themselves from stress, Zoe Quinn is objectively more on your side than any GamerGate person, because she’s talking about the actual reasons games suck. However, discussion of crunch time will not let you talk about how awesome you are that you dislike doxing but you are also not an extremist and need to point out sometimes bitches be bitches. If you think this is a tough decision, you may in fact not possess the moral high ground.

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Why cole1114, are you saying that the people being threatened and harassed by assholes online are now treating their oppressors in kind? How very awful! It’s almost as if every action has an opposite and equal reaction! Hmmm…

Anyway, this issue has already been argued to death by tons of people far more eloquent than me. I will say from a PR standpoint that the best thing that you and your team can do from this point on is lay low, because you have already lost this fight, and every time you guys try to browbeat somebody on the internet for not sharing your opinions, it’s going to get worse.

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I think it’s pretty hilarious how all Anita Sarkeesian had to do in order to become gaming’s Great Satan was post a series of pretty basic “Introduction to Feminism 101” videos. It’s not like they’re especially inflammatory or radical, but for some reason when you point out that video games and the culture surrounding them might be carrying some unpleasant unexamined assumptions regarding women a whole bunch of guys start flipping their shit.

And of course she’s a plagiarist and a thief and a liar and a manipulative harridan and if you’ll just go over to this totally unbiased and not at all affiliated with the MRA movement website you’ll see all the carefully cited evidence you need to see that this is totally true and not a bunch of made-up bullshit. I remember when the Feminist Frequency videos first came out and the big talking point was “Anita Sarkeesian isn’t even a real gamer, it’s her boyfriend who’s the gamer and she just latched on to video games as a way to make money and be famous.”

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highlyverbal said on September 7th, 2014 at 2:11 pm

So if this really is the most amazing time to discuss gaming journalism, and not at all awkward or counter-productive, why are no serious or respected or credentialed advocates for gaming journalism getting involved?

(Bonus credit: name some other social issues where progress came on the heels of an unrelated atrocity.)

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Gaming “journalism” has serious and/or respected credentialed advocates?

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“Gaming ‘journalism’ has serious and/or respected credentialed advocates?”

Yeah, seriously…

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highlyverbal said on September 8th, 2014 at 2:13 pm

Exactly.

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“So if this really is the most amazing time to discuss gaming journalism, and not at all awkward or counter-productive, why are no serious or respected or credentialed advocates for gaming journalism getting involved?”

See, here’s my reasoning for not wanting to jump down the throat of people who (deliberately or no) speak off-topic or talk past the central issue:

1. You get NOTHING by shouting someone down. Well, nothing but a sense of self-satisfaction that you “did your part.” If you’re actually looking to change minds, and/or “out” those who are legitimate scumbags, then shouting someone down works counter to that purpose. They either clam up, or they focus their ire on you and the cause you champion, and see said cause as an extension of the asshole who greeted them with bullshit snark.

Now as to why would we ever want these folks to talk…

2. When you get people to open up, you cut past the smokescreen bullshit and get to the heart of the actual issue. The pretense is gradually stripped away until you get to the meat of the belief/assertion.

Which leads to…

3. You get said individuals to state their biases in clear, certain terms. That way you unequivocally know the angle you’re working with, and you can present an argument that actually changes a mind (in the best of cases) or utterly demolishes the biases.

I’ve done this multiple times, and have actually changed some minds. For one example, talk to a die-hard NRA member and ask them “How do you think that the government will actually take your guns away?” Get them to walk themselves through their own reasoning, then engage that reasoning. Eventually, you’ll arrive at the point of “So, yeah, not only is the government not trying to take your guns, they couldn’t take your guns even if they tried.”

It’s all about cutting through the ideology, to a point.

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On the other hand Matt, getting people to shift the topic of the conversation is exactly what these internet trolls you claim to hate so much want you to do. Like, that is exactly the thing they’re looking for in all of this, for people to go into threads like this one and go BUT WHAT ABOUT GAMING JOURNALISM/ALL THESE BAD THINGS THAT ZOE QUINN AND ANITA DID THAT I HEARD FROM THIS GUY/THE MENZ. You getting het up over people “jumping down their throats” is everything they could hope for because it diverts the thread away from the subject they don’t want discussed.

Not every position is equally valid or worth discussing, not every topic-shift is worth having.

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“BUT WHAT ABOUT GAMING JOURNALISM/ALL THESE BAD THINGS THAT ZOE QUINN AND ANITA DID THAT I HEARD FROM THIS GUY/THE MENZ”

And my verbatim response to that would be “What about it?”

And my subsequent questions would be along the lines of:

-So you think that the death threats and vitriol are justified?

-Do you think that there’s a problem with sexism in gaming fandom? Or do you recognize it and NOT view it as a problem?

-How is throwing a death threat toward a human being a rational response in any circumstance?

You want to know why ignorance prevails? Because the ignorant refuse to think, and instead take what they believe “in their gut” and shout it from the rooftops.

So what do you do? You MAKE them think, or reveal them to be incapable of such thought.

“You getting het up over people “jumping down their throats” is everything they could hope for because it diverts the thread away from the subject they don’t want discussed.”

And my point is that you can use that as a segue to get right back to the subject they don’t want discussed. It isn’t a separation so much as a divergence that meets up to the same road in a few miles.

It’s a different approach is all, and it’s one I’ve found to be successful in actually changing minds. THAT should be the goal, or the paydirt, for discussions such as this (IMO).

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Seems like a germane time to repost the link I posted before of ex-Bethesda programmer Brett Douville doing more or less what Matt said and successfully getting a threatened gamer to at least momentarily reconsider his position on Anita Sarkeesian.

And like I said before: as pitiable as I find it, and as strong the impulse to write them off may be, some people feel something precious to them is threatened. I disagree, but being met with hostility is pretty much what they are led to expect. If you’ve read those chat logs Quinn posted you’ll notice that the people behind this have done what cowards always do: they’ve couched this in terms of a war. That’s why Social Justice Warriors, because going to war against social justice activists sounds horrible and is.

Defying the expectation of a fight can be amazingly powerful. Obviously this doesn’t extend to the people who are arguing in bad faith, but they’re not the whole of this. They’re just the steering committee. There’s a whole bunch of scared people out there who could, at minimum, not be contributing to the problem if they were gently and honestly talked to, and made to realize there isn’t a problem.

The urge to attack and the urge to lecture like I’m, uh, doing right now- it’s pretty damned substantial! It’s what the internet has taught us to do in these situations. But if the internet was right about how things were supposed to work, #GamerGate would be justified – and we all know it’s not.

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I was referring to the way MGK talked about Zoe in my previous post. I… honestly have no concept of what the person who responded to me was talking about,other than that they seem to think I dislike Zoe, which I don’t.

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highlyverbal said on September 9th, 2014 at 2:14 am

But Matt, I’m doing exactly what you prescribe… I’m exploring the topic shift, as requested.

(But in the interests of intellectual honesty, I confess that further along this thread I may counter-assert that your process does not reliably produce the results you assert, while almost certainly presenting the costs outlined by Kai, et al. Perhaps you would be willing to outline the steps you have taken to guard against confirmation bias in your own examination of this hypothesis? I would hate to dismiss unjustly your ‘data.’)

(I know you will be willing to engage with me about your confirmation bias, right? Because that is your theme, engage with the topic shifts. Right? Then you’ll change my mind!)

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“Perhaps you would be willing to outline the steps you have taken to guard against confirmation bias in your own examination of this hypothesis?”

Tell me which confirmation bias you’re talking about and I’ll be happy to.

Here’s what I’m seeing: the preferred approach by many on this board, across multiple threads, is to unilaterally shout down and/or insult those who they perceive to be in opposition to their point(s).

My preferred approach is different. And this bothers some of you, for some reason.

As for the “cost,” what fucking cost? Are these little online conversations of such monumental importance that strict protocols must be followed? Are these conversations actually resulting in anything productive, or anything beyond preaching to the choir?

As for results, does it “reliably” change every mind all the time? Of course not. Does it expose those who are ACTUALLY arguing in bad faith, as opposed to those who are trying to fully explore a topic? Yes. I find it to be a better approach than, again, unilaterally assuming that any person who veers off-topic is some monumental troglodyte asshole.

And, again, this bothers some of you for some reason.

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“There’s a whole bunch of scared people out there who could, at minimum, not be contributing to the problem if they were gently and honestly talked to, and made to realize there isn’t a problem.”

Yep, exactly this.

Assholes are assholes. Scared or threatened individuals are simply misguided, and should be guided in a different direction rather than thrown in with the assholes.

That assumes, of course, that one is trying to effect actual change on the microscale, and not just teeing off on the “opposition” for the empowerment and “good feels” that provides.

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highlyverbal said on September 9th, 2014 at 10:14 pm

Like I said, doing exactly as prescribed. Somehow, that merits a second lecture.

Sigh.

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“Like I said, doing exactly as prescribed. Somehow, that merits a second lecture.

Sigh.”

If you have something that you want to say, say it. If you have a question you’d like to ask, ask it. You’re ostensibly asking me to “change your mind” and/or evaluate what I’m talking about, and I provided a breakdown (or a “lecture,” apparently). I also asked you to tell me, specifically, what “confirmation bias” you were referring to.

Finally, if you’re just trolling, maybe don’t do that?

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highlyverbal said on September 10th, 2014 at 12:50 pm

There is no ambiguity in my message: I deserved zero lectures and got two.

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>it’s simply gross, shaming behaviour.

Of course it’s shaming behavior. It has to be shaming behavior. When somebody habitually does horrible things, everybody else should be warned of their horribleness as publicly as possible, so that they can be wary around that person. To do anything else is to reward and shelter horrible people.

I’m not only speaking of Quinn here by the way, and your continued insistence that it’s all about her because of her sex and “LA LA LA I’M NOT LISTENING” mode of argumentation do you no favors.

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So did you actually want to discuss this?

“(But in the interests of intellectual honesty, I confess that further along this thread I may counter-assert that your process does not reliably produce the results you assert, while almost certainly presenting the costs outlined by Kai, et al. Perhaps you would be willing to outline the steps you have taken to guard against confirmation bias in your own examination of this hypothesis? I would hate to dismiss unjustly your ‘data.’)”

I’m failing to see what in the hell you’re looking for, if everything I say in response is going to be boiled down to “lecture.” Which it REALLY isn’t.

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“There is no ambiguity in my message: I deserved zero lectures and got two.”

This, BTW, shows me that you’re not interested in discussion. At all.

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Speaking only for myself, I’ve seen you absolutely dominate the comments on this article, jumping down peoples’ throats while simultaneously chastising everybody else for jumping down peoples’ throats, wanting to drag the topic in the direction that you’ve declared the right and proper one while being pretty contemptuous and dismissive of everything that deviates from it (“Are these little online conversations of such monumental importance that strict protocols must be followed? Are these conversations actually resulting in anything productive, or anything beyond preaching to the choir?”).

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“Speaking only for myself, I’ve seen you absolutely dominate the comments on this article”

Okay, so what is a satisfactory number of comments for a discussion?

“jumping down peoples’ throats while simultaneously chastising everybody else for jumping down peoples’ throats”

I have done no such thing. I haven’t been insulting, aggressive, etc.

“wanting to drag the topic in the direction that you’ve declared the right and proper one”

BUNK. My entire point is that there ISN’T a “right and proper one.” In fact, I’ve engaged this topic from multiple angles. Like, it’s THERE.

“while being pretty contemptuous and dismissive of everything that deviates from it”

Regarding what you quoted, if open discussion isn’t appreciated, then what the hell is the point of posting here? To say “I agree?” To attack people?

I’m legitimately asking: what is the point?

Fucking hell, message received. Either be ready to agree with the choir or join in on the lambasting of anyone who shows even the slightest bit of dissent. Done. Finito. MOVING THE FUCK ON.

Christ almighty, I have NEVER met such staunch resistance to an open discussion. Ever. It’s fucking maddening.

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Yeah okay man, you’re the voice of reason here clearly.

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“Yeah okay man, you’re the voice of reason here clearly.”

Alright, look, let’s start over…what the holy hell did I do wrong? Why is it that people here are so resistant to an open discussion?

I’ve asked this numerous times, and literally ALL I GET is condescension and snark in response.

EXAMPLE: You just did it.

Like, I can’t fucking win over here. And it’s upsetting to me (likely more than it should be) because there is SUCH POTENTIAL for meaningful discussion here.

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“Yeah okay man, you’re the voice of reason here clearly.”

For real, what does one do with this? What use is this?

We were having what I thought was a GREAT back and forth before, and BAM. Snark and derision.

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Okay, how about this; instead of making derisive comments about “dissenting from the choir” which you’ve done more than once now you instead don’t do that? You talk about being maddened and infuriated by peoples’ unwillingness to have frank and open discussions on the internet but you lead your thesis here off by essentially doing the same thing that people do everywhere else on the internet when they want to tacitly shut down broad swathes of conversation (“this place is a hugbox/echo chamber/circlejerk/all about preaching to the choir, etc”).

I mean, taking you at your word that you’re interested in open discussion that is a shitty way to set the stage for it, leading off by declaring the discourse you’re attempting to involve yourself in “worse than the usual irritating internet bullshit; it is absolutely anathema to anything even remotely resembling actual discussion.”

So I’m genuinely not sure what you’re aiming to get out of all this since you apparently already made up your mind about the comments/commenters here. It’s really hard to view someone’s efforts at “open discourse” as completely good-faith when you’re also rolling your eyes every time somebody doesn’t go along with your program.

Also? You seem like a really fuckin’ angry dude, like seriously.

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First off, I confused you with RAC. My bad.

“So I’m genuinely not sure what you’re aiming to get out of all this since you apparently already made up your mind about the comments/commenters here. It’s really hard to view someone’s efforts at ‘open discourse’ as completely good-faith when you’re also rolling your eyes every time somebody doesn’t go along with your program.”

Alright, a couple of things:

1. If you look back, my “making up my mind” is based on what I’ve experienced in this thread (and other threads here).

I wasn’t told “Alright, I can see where your approach might be useful.” I wasn’t told “Eh, I see where you’re coming from, but…”

I was essentially told “No. This is not welcome.” By a site contributor no less.

What conclusion am I to draw from that?

2. I only started rolling my eyes after pretty much every effort to explain myself was either disregarded or ignored. Sorry, but that’s incredibly frustrating.

“Also? You seem like a really fuckin’ angry dude, like seriously.”

Again, it is an incredibly frustrating discussion from my perspective.

Like, I agree with the central thesis of the post. Entirely. I’ve said as much, right from the get go. I just feel like I’ve been taking shit for trying to go about discussion in a different way.

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As frustrating as you may personally find it that commenters here don’t want someone trying to shift the discourse in another direction, they themselves may find it equally frustrating that everywhere they go on the internet that’s weighing in on “GamerGate” is inevitably topic-shifted.

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“As frustrating as you may personally find it that commenters here don’t want someone trying to shift the discourse in another direction, they themselves may find it equally frustrating that everywhere they go on the internet that’s weighing in on ‘GamerGate’ is inevitably topic-shifted.”

Huh. Alright, I can dig that. I really appreciate the perspective. I’ve been interpreting it as trying to bludgeon people into acquiescence (and, honestly, John can definitely come across that way, intended or no), when it’s more of a “conversational enclave” kind of thing. I see the value in that.

On my end, I like to discuss things I’m interested in. If I’m talking something like Hulk vs. Doomsday or the newest nerd culture (NOTE: not a knock) controversy of the month, then whatever. I’m sure the conversation will be light. If I’m talking social issues, I tend to want those discussions to mean something, and I go into them with that intent.

But yeah, I get that “meaning something” is an abstract and flexible concept.

Thanks. Much appreciated.

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mygif

The entire point of “GamerGate” as I see it is that it’s the same sort of conversational topic-shifting and astroturfing that’s existed since internet discussion forums have existed only on a larger scale. To a lot of people the crux of the matter, the pertinent point, is vituperative bile, threats, and scorn being heaped on women related to the gaming industry. In response to this, other people are trying very, very hard to muddy the conversational waters using every available means at their disposal.

And this is the point of MGK’s post up at the top, that a lot of these conversational shifts are largely irrelevant to that central point. But just about everywhere you go on the internet the moment you try to raise this point it’s basically a ticking clock to when the entire discussion is hijacked, sometimes blatantly and other times under the guise of “but I just want to TALK ABOUT THE ISSUES,” but the end result is the same…the conversation is no longer about the relevant point.

I’m not calling you out specifically as some devious troll or whatever, I’m simply pointing out that to a lot of the people looking at things like this…and GamerGate may be one of the most high-profile things of its type to happen in the nerdosphere in a while but I guarantee you that people have seen this exact same scenario play out time and again…it’s incredibly aggravating to always see people trying to divert the narrative to something else. That is, in fact, literally what 4chan is all about in this.

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mygif

Yeah, I get that. I just wonder how much of it (on the part of the topic-shifters) is deliberate malice and how much is a complete lack of perspective (and/or social compass)?

I’d like to figure out the best way to change shit like this (the vitriol, though it isn’t as if the 4chan assholes are going to stop), the whole “fake gamer girl” thing, etc. The only thing I can figure is that it has to be changed on the microscale, away from the internet. The internet seems to jack emotion up to eleven.

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mygif

First off, I confused you with RAC. My bad.

Yeah, I’m done with being argumentative for now because I’ve realized how little it actually accomplishes. It feels good to be all Phoenix Wright about these things but there’s no winning that way. I’m not sure there’s “winning” at all, but Brett Douville’s a lot closer to it than I am if there is.

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mygif

Honestly, I read that exchange between Brett Douville and some random guy on Twitter. It was excruciating. In the end the only real effect it had was Brett got an apology from the other guy for calling HIM a moron. There was no apology for Anita Sarkeesian, no lightbulb moment where that guy realized that maybe Feminist Frequency isn’t the jackbooted feminazi army coming to forcefully take his Playstation away and ship him to a reeducation camp. So apparently if you’re willing to take two hours out of your life to exhaustively engage irrationally angry people one by one you MIGHT get a personal apology for them calling you a mean name (maybe).

Like, the great takeaway I gather I’m supposed to get from that Storify (and speaking of dragging things off-topic holy shit is Twitter just the absolute worst way to engage in any sort of dialogue with anyone ever) is that “See? This guy isn’t a COMPLETE asshole!” which is maybe the lowest possible bar to hurdle ever. You don’t have to be a COMPLETE asshole to still be an asshole and by the end of that conversation I didn’t actually notice that guy’s asshole quotient in the relevant context (re: Anita Sarkeesian, GamerGate, whatever we’re calling this) diminishing in any noteworthy way. The whole thing honestly comes across as a little self-indulgent on the part of Douville who I believe genuinely means well but seems to be tooting his own horn a bit much for what he managed to accomplish which isn’t much.

Reaching out to assholes and trying to de-asshole them is a great and noble sentiment but in practical terms the effect of constantly letting assholes have their say is to drive away non-asshole elements of a community/conversation and render it increasingly toxic. I’m reminded of the Comic Book Resource incident where after an article by a woman received such a vitriolic outpouring of backlash that CBR’s response was to overhaul their forums completely and start from scratch, this time with a new set of rules and guidelines ostensibly to turf that kind of sexist bullshit right out. Some people decried this as a drastic solution but this is what happens when shit like this becomes entrenched and “to be expected.”

There’s no solution to shitty behavior so long as there aren’t any real consequences for it. People will continue to rant about “fake geek girls” and “feminazis” because most people just shrug and write it off as a matter of course, oh well, what’re you gonna do, of course you’re still welcome in our community. The incentive for people to commit to some self-examination about their unexamined assumptions and behavior doesn’t exist.

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mygif

This is still going on? Wow. Okay, might as well toss in a couple of pennies.

Since Anita Sarkeesian was brought up, and since what’s discussed in this 2012 video still pretty much applies:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/6264-Anita-Sarkeesian-The-Monster-Gamers-Created

TL;DW, I’ll transcribe part of it:

The sad thing is, there are important discussions we could be having from this. Hell, as far as Anita goes, there are some solid criticisms you can level at her work. I’m not 100% on her side, you know. She’s not perfect by a longshot and her video series already seems to be a little off-base with some of the examples she’s named as targets. But we can’t talk about that anymore, because the debate’s not about whether she’s right or wrong. The debate was invalidated when people decided to try to ruin her life en masse. The chance to debate her on merit was lost once people started threatening to rape her. Now it’s hard to debate her points without people thinking you hate her because she’s a woman, and that’s a direct result of her being hated by so many for being a woman. A few people are now trying to retroactively justify the assault on her by accusing her of scamming and exploitation, but it’s too late for that. If you’d have just let her make her fuckin’ video in peace and reined in your knee-jerk viciousness, you might have been able to debate her on an intellectual playing field…And this keeps happening. It happens whenever someone has a problem with a woman working in video games. She gets attacked based on the fact that she is a woman, and then the debate shifts into sexism. And it’s your fault, the ones who apparently hate this debate, you’re the ones turning it into a gender war, because you have to go for the jugular every single time and make things personal and vicious. And when it starts, you can’t stop, and thus you continue to fix the spotlight on the issue, and provide fame and exposure to the person you wish would go away.

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mygif

Also, as far as whether game reviews are unreliable: of course they are. EA, for example, wields enough influence within the industry to affect coverage of its games by tempting reviewers with perks like invites to launch parties or early copies of games and threatening to withhold those things if they don’t like a particular reviewer. It may even flat-out bribe people. That would certainly explain this piece of asskissing in which IGN answers the question of why people hate EA by going to the COO of the company and asking “Why do people hate you guys?” (This is a piece in which the writer dismisses the outrage over the ending of Mass Effect 3 as “temporary” and something “everyone has already forgotten about”–in June of 2012, mere months after it happened. Even though people still complain about it to this day. It’s bullshit and, for whatever reason, either IGN or this particular writer wanted to be an apologist for EA.)

There’s also the case of Jeff Gerstmann getting fired from Gamespot because he gave the first Kane and Lynch game a bad review and the publishers got pissed enough about it to threaten to withdraw advertising money.

Yet for some reason, neither of those things generated any kind of Gate. Yet Zoe Quinn has. And that makes precisely zero sense to me.

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mygif

“Yet for some reason, neither of those things generated any kind of Gate. Yet Zoe Quinn has. And that makes precisely zero sense to me.”

Really good point.

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mygif

I dunno, people voted EA “Worst Company in America” in that big online poll deal two years running even when the competition was far, far more deserving of that title (including financial institutions responsible for shenanigans which directly led to our last recession). Never let it be said that gamers won’t direct their disproportionate sense of outrage in other directions from time to time.

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mygif

Welp, that’s the last straw. MGK, you’re a clown. This is one less bookmark I have to keep track off.

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mygif

I’m sure he’s crushed, guy on the internet who can’t simply stop reading a website he doesn’t like without comment.

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mygif

“Honestly, I read that exchange between Brett Douville and some random guy on Twitter. It was excruciating.”

And even if it did fully bring the guy around, that’s two hours of solid, in depth conversation it took to do it. There’s not time to do that with every one of these people.

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mygif

“And even if it did fully bring the guy around, that’s two hours of solid, in depth conversation it took to do it. There’s not time to do that with every one of these people.”

It’s not going to work for everyone of course, but every person you do get to at least chill out is a person who is hopefully capable of doing the same to another person.

“Like, the great takeaway I gather I’m supposed to get from that Storify (and speaking of dragging things off-topic holy shit is Twitter just the absolute worst way to engage in any sort of dialogue with anyone ever) is that “See? This guy isn’t a COMPLETE asshole!” which is maybe the lowest possible bar to hurdle ever.”

The takeaway is that it may take a herculean feat of patience but it is possible to have this discussion as a discussion and not an argument, at least with some people. Even if you’re not successful, you’re off the script, and that’s a good start.

It’s also an important realization, because treating this like it’s a war just feeds into the script the complete assholes who started this have fed to the insecure. It feeds an extremely hungry persecution complex. At some point we are all going to have to live together and we have to keep the people who think that is impossible from setting the tone of the discussion, or we end up stuck here.

(I just finished Raising Steam recently and I keep wanting to call the GamerGate organizers “grags,” but I don’t know how many people here will have frame of reference)

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mygif

“At some point we are all going to have to live together”

Actually we don’t have to and assuming we do is one of the Geek Social Fallacies. If I go to a restaurant, see a black couple sitting behind me, and start loudly complaining about dem damn darkies what do you imagine the more likely outcome of that scenario is:

1). The manager comes out, sits down, and spends two hours patiently trying to talk me through to understanding that everybody is the same under their skin, or

2). The manager comes out and tells me that I either need to keep that kind of stuff to myself or that I need to leave the restaurant.

(Insert your own Paula Deen joke here.)

This is what I meant earlier about how shitty behavior won’t ever change so long as nobody faces any consequences for it. It’s well and good and noble to talk about changing hearts and minds but past a certain point if you actually want to start detoxifying a community then you need to draw a line that says “if you can’t at least pretend to behave like a civilized human being, if it is beyond your social capabilities to at least keep your dumb, shitty opinions to yourself, then you can fuck right off.” Because otherwise you are never actually going to see any sort of meaningful change.

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mygif

“This is what I meant earlier about how shitty behavior won’t ever change so long as nobody faces any consequences for it.”

I get you, and I feel that certain members or participants SHOULD be shunned/rebuked if it’s clear that they’re only there to disrupt, or that they’re laboring under an irreparably toxic worldview.

I’d just like to weed those people out from the folks who just plain didn’t see things the “right” way. There’s value in finding someone who hasn’t really thought about ::BLANK:: and COMPELLING them to think about it.

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mygif

There is, but past a certain point it’s nobody’s responsibility for your shitty behavior but your own, whether it’s born out of malice or ignorance. You cannot in good faith expect a community to constantly be readily willing to go “Oh hey, is it that time again? Pull up a chair and let’s exhaustively and patiently explain to you why Anita Sarkeesian isn’t the boogeywoman come to steal your video games while you continue to act like an asshole” each and every time it happens.

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