GamerGate

General Off-Topic Discussion
11

That’s a great link, inurashii. It makes very clear the problems with GG.

I get why supporters of GG stay with the hashtag. They are married to the principal of the argument. It doesn’t matter what other supporters say or do. It doesn’t matter how it began, or what the various goals of the movement are, or who is hurt by it. It’s the principal. I hear it all the time in right wing arguments. It’s the principal that matters. It’s the principal.

Well, I will stand my ground right here and say that I am against the principal. Sure, ethical standards in journalism sounds like a great intention. But the effect is that game journalists will not be able to speak out for women. That’s the effect. The silence of women. I am for Freedom of the Press. I am against, and will NOT stand for, any movement where the effect is the silence of women or the continuation of the status quo.

I hear you. I understand you have opinions. You are allowed to have them and should be allowed to express them. But I believe they are Wrong with a capital W. I’m going to call you out on them and say that they are Wrong when you do express them. I’m sorry if this means I’m uncivil. I’m not going to stop fighting these opinions tooth and nail. They are Wrong. They are Hateful. They are Wrong. I’m sorry if that means I’m uncivil.

Also an apology to Carolyn, your blog post was heroic, but I do feel we are at war. The war isn’t parser vs. non-parser. It’s between those who want the oppressed to have a voice vs those whose ideologies result in our silence.

1 Like
12

That reminds me of another claim about the origins of a controversial group. Perhaps you’ve heard this one: “Planned Parenthood? Don’t you know their founder was a racist and secretly wanted to exterminate the black race by stopping them from reproducing? Look at what she wrote in a private letter about her so-called Negro Project: ‘we do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population’. How can you support Planned Parenthood knowing that’s how they started?”

This claim has serious flaws:

  • It’s not quite based in fact. It takes words out of context and distorts the speaker’s intentions. While the quoted sentence is one that could appear in a discussion of covering up genocide, that’s not actually what the letter was about.
  • The founder is not the movement. Even supposing it were true that the founder was as nasty as claimed and had the goal she’s accused of having, that doesn’t mean that the organization she created ever shared it or took action in pursuit of it. The organization consisted of people other than the founder, and no evidence is presented that those other people were aware of this supposed goal or ever took action in pursuit of it either.
  • The movement has moved on and is no longer controlled by the founder. The organization is much bigger now than it was then, comprising many times more people who have joined to further the organization’s overt, stated goals. Some new revelation about what the founder was really thinking before she formed the organization might make an interesting historical footnote, if true, but it doesn’t invalidate what the organization has become since then, nor does it mean everyone who supports the organization has really been supporting genocide all along.

Every time I’ve followed up on a claim about what a chat log allegedly proves about the origins of GG, I’ve come away unsatisfied. I’ve also seen no evidence that any significant number of people involved with GG intended to use it in order to further harassment, even at the beginning, and certainly no evidence that any significant share of the people involved today have that goal. And the fact that it isn’t an organization, and has no leadership, makes it even less plausible that the people involved today are somehow unwittingly doing the bidding that their shadowy masters laid out in a chat room before this all started.

How hard have you looked? This took me a minute or so to look up:

I trust that you’re not going to dismiss that as “bullshit that minimizes its severity”. If you want more examples, I bet a polite request on Twitter would get you a lot of links.

Well, I think one reason people continue using this label is that it facilitates collective action.

I’m afraid I still don’t see a relevant difference between that statement and these:

“Christianity harasses people (this is a pretty mild description for what they’ve done), they murdered George Tiller, and your attempt to say that you can support Christianity without standing with that stuff is completely unconvincing.”

“Environmentalism harasses people, they’ve set fire to apartment buildings and farms, and your attempt to say that you can support environmentalism without standing with that stuff is completely unconvincing.”

The “X harasses people” bits are misleading generalizations, and the implication that anyone who supports X is “standing with that stuff” is toxic guilt-by-vague-association.

13

Did you hear that from a supporter, or did you just conclude that that must be why they do it? Because I think they’d tell you something different.

Hmm. Why do you think ethical standards in journalism have the effect of stopping journalists from speaking out for women? I don’t see a connection between the two, and I’m sure you’re aware that many of the people involved in GG are women.

No, that doesn’t mean you’re uncivil. Please, if you think I’m wrong, go ahead and disagree! Just don’t hold me to a different standard of discourse than yourself.

Hmm. I think everyone wants the oppressed to have a voice. Who do you think doesn’t want them/you to have a voice? What have you not been able to say, or what would you not be able to say if those people got their way?

14

This really scares me and worries me.

Whatever your opinions of the validity of the GamerGate hashtag, and however much worthwhile stuff you think happens under it, it is also true and unavoidable that it has been and continues to be used to deliberately organise extreme harassment and abuse. That someone is working to organise “anti-SJW” people using that hashtag to participate in the competition frightens me. As an author, I’m worried about what I might end up on the receiving end of, and I’m carrying relative amounts of privilege into the situation. I hope that comp organisers are watching this and are ready to act if necessary. Personally I think watching and ensuring there isn’t harassment and abuse is probably all that’s needed now, because I’m frightened that anything beyond that would actively incite such behaviour. Having seen the harassment and abuse that’s taken place under the hashtag, even writing this post makes me nervous.

1 Like
15

Via looking at that hashtag this may also be worth keeping an eye on: 8chan.co/intfic/

16

Yeeeeah, not going to stick my head in that buzzsaw voluntarily (also: not on Twitter). The thing is that I’ve read a fair amount of gamergate stuff, far more than is psychologically healthy, and its credibility is nil. I keep following links like “Zoe Quinn harassed clinically depressed people!” and finding out that it’s something like “Zoe Quinn said, truthfully, that she’d been harassed on wizardchan.” Or as here I hear “Gamersgaters have distanced themselves from harassment!” and find something like “Death/rape threats and harassment are bad at specific women, but journalists writing articles that make negative generalizations about gamers are just as bad!”

I’m not addressing the rest of your analogies because I don’t think I have any chance in convincing you, I frankly don’t think it’d be worth it anyway, and I hope that anyone who’s reading along can see how weak they are. As I said, not interested in a debate.

17

Let’s choose one issue: that website journalists and editors were donating to Zoe Quinn.

The websites that features these journalists are the ones that write articles supporting women in games.
GG is calling to boycott these websites.
A successful boycott will shut down these websites.
A successful boycott will remove the websites that writes articles supporting women.
The end result is there will be less articles supporting women.
The end result is there will be less journalists speaking out for women.
I am against this.

If you think other websites will pick up the mantle if these ones go, you are wrong. If you think other websites will hire the journalists not involved with the incident, you are wrong. The threat of the backlash is too great.

If it were simply about the donations, then the policies put in place to stop the donations would have been sufficient enough to calm the critics. But it isn’t. It’s about having these websites shut down.

I am against this.

(An aside, I’m leaving for a while, but happy to pick this up later. Also, I’m guessing we turned off the spam filter, because a spambot got through. Can we turn it back on?)

18

Taking the stance of “being at war” automatically creates opposition. Being at war only comes about when diplomacy has completely failed. Even the above quote uses the term “enemy”, which automatically creates a division – even though the intent is to avoid battle.

Further:

Why? Because former enemies become allies after a “war” ends.

19

I agree there’s some cause for concern, but I think it ought to be the same kind of concern we’d face if any other political group decided to take an interest in IF.

Let’s say you run the biggest, best auto racetrack in the same town as the Democratic Party headquarters, and you’re known for attracting a liberal crowd. One day you catch wind that the Republicans from a nearby town are organizing a field trip to your track. What’s going to happen?

Well, there’s a chance they’re coming as a political event: they want to go fight some liberals and score points for their team. Maybe they’ll harass your staff, intimidate your regulars, smash your windows, and spill beer everywhere, high-fiving each other as they leave and laugh about how they showed you who’s boss. You’ll want to make sure your alarm system works and that shotgun under the counter is loaded.

But on the other hand, you know Republicans love auto racing, and there’s a good chance they’re just coming because you’ve got the only track worth going to. You might still hear them snickering at your HOPE posters, but they know they’re your guests, and to the extent they want to score political points, it’s by winning races and showing you they can compete on your terms – and that they aren’t the unruly mob you think they are. Maybe you’ll get to score some points of your own, maybe they’ll learn something from you, and hey, their money’s just as green as anyone else’s.

I think the best way we can prepare at this point is to make it clear that everyone is welcome, but everyone is expected to be honest and respectful in submission, voting, communication, etc. Let’s hope they don’t let us down.

20

My reply is in the applicable topic here:

[url]New users and IP bans]

21

If you don’t want to see evidence, you won’t see it. Most people who read those chat logs came away satisfied by the evidence. Especially after seeing the rape threats right there on Twitter for the world to see.

Not you, though. You’re not satisfied by the evidence. Maybe they faked the moon landing.

In the mid 20th century, racists rallied under a “states’ rights” movement. Federalism is a legitimate political concern. But soon enough, everybody knew that when you said “I support states’ rights” you meant “I support Jim Crow laws.” Even legitimate federalists who didn’t support Jim Crow found that they couldn’t make their argument any more; federalism itself was tarnished.

Today, it’s 1948. I don’t care how important federalism is to you. You can’t caucus with the States’ Rights Democratic Party as a moral person today.

Whatever you want politically, you can’t do it morally when you do it with the Gamergaters.

As I see it, the hashtag serves a valuable function: the only people left with the Gamergaters lack the empathy to see how what their doing hurts other people; they see a false equivalence between their own anger over minor slights and the serious damage self-proclaimed Gamergaters are doing to other people.

22

If you expect your opponents to concede that you’re completely right and they’re completely wrong, you’ll never be satisfied. And if the only way for them to meet your standard of evidence is to do that, then you’ll find no evidence that meets the standard.

All right. How do you feel about the teenage trans girl who, because of her involvement with GG, was threatened over the phone by someone planning to out her to her friends and family and pressure her college admissions office to reject her application? Have you heard GG opponents distancing themselves from that harassment in a more convincing way?

I believe those “you are wrong” assertions are incorrect. If the boycotts are because of perceived ethical violations, as stated, and not because they write articles supporting women, then what backlash is there to fear?

I think you’re also overlooking another possible outcome, which is that the websites just correct the conflicts of interest, and continue producing the same sort of content they have been, but without the perceived ethical violations.

Finally, this chain of logic seems to prove too much. Do you really mean to argue that if a website produces content you deem valuable, their misdeeds should be overlooked for fear of reducing the amount of that content? What line would they have to cross in order for you to decide that a boycott is justified?

This claim about evidence only addresses the “It’s not quite based in fact” bullet point. Even if we stipulate that the chat logs really mean what opponents claim they mean, that still leaves “The founder is not the movement” and “The movement has moved on and is no longer controlled by the founder”.

Hmm. So by aligning yourself with GG opponents, are you supporting the threats I mentioned above in my response to matt w, and every other threat that’s been made against people participating in GG?

(If your response is “No, because those threats didn’t use a common hashtag”, you owe me a dollar. :slight_smile:)

23

Wouldnt it be super easy to abandon the name and come up with another ? Its not that incredible brand, anyway. If they were called the Hitler Jugend would you still think they were using it for promotional benefits?

24

Laroquod is screencapping and posting large sections of this discussion to Twitter under the #GamerGate hashtag. It is starting to attract more and more GamerGate attention to this board. It is incredibly frightening to me. A massive target is being painted on this board and this year’s competition.

twitter.com/Laroquod

I highly recommend ceasing this discussion. I’m asking all participants to stop talking about the theoretical merits or problems of the GamerGate hashtag here. If you are critiquing GamerGate, know that your comments are being posted to Twitter with an incitement to further involvement. I believe this is a genuine danger to the safety of people in this community. It’s not your fault. But please stop this conversation. Now.

twitter.com/EvilBobDALMYT/statu … 6786721792 : “@Laroquod you’ve spread the fire to the most thoughtful and slow board in existence. Excellent.”

25

+1 lock thread.

26

The sole purpose of this “movement” is for attention. It’s a group of fourteen year olds and men who still believe they are fourteen craving reaction from a demographic they don’t feel they can otherwise be successful socially with, and they feel has wronged them somehow. If they can’t gain positive reaction, negative is just fine with them. You don’t see regular people with lives and RL companions wasting hours of time in IRC chat.

They are fueled by any type of attention, positive or negative, and the only legitimate way to deal with the situation is to acknowledge them with bland indifference and move on. If their tactics disrupt a person’s life or a forum group, they’ve won. It’s terrorism on a very minor scale, and the worst that can be done is to give legitimate voice to a bullying minority that would rather gain attention via disruption than earn it legitimately. The less effect they have, the quicker they’ll get bored and move on to something more interesting. You will never wipe them out, because the demographic of disaffected fourteen year old children is ever-replenishing, and that is the age that youth starts wanting to change the world via hormone-fueled ‘revolution’ but hasn’t learned yet how to legitimately influence their world in a positive way.

Ethics in game journalism is a topic that can be discussed without doxxing or threatening phone calls. 99.9% of the trash talk in those chats is just talk. It’s disaffected and wannabe youth who want to brag to each other how gangsta they are by making someone’s life miserable. The rare person who is brave enough to actually follow through with any physical damage or harm to someone is the stupidest of all, since there is a ridiculously well-documented precedent of harassment and it would take probably eight seconds to connect the dots.

Don’t let your life be ruined* by a group who are following the precedent of high school bullying and find their strength to do so only in like-minded but anonymous numbers. It all gets better when you graduate and go to college where people have better things to do than spend time worrying about what someone else is doing. Seriously.

*I’m not saying hide, and I’m not saying to ignore legitimate threats to your person or privacy. Some completely anonymous person threatening hyperbolic harm in a public or private internet forum or chat with a site owner and potentially hours of transcriptions and witnesses is more than likely not going to be a legitimate threat.

1 Like
27

Laroquod can bring on all the chaos and conflict he wants to me. It will end his party right quick. Hope he screencaps that.

28

ha ha ha ha oh wow.

wow.

Ladies and gentlemen: GamerGate in action.

1 Like
29

And to think all this came about because someone said IF was dead and suggested 1-voting non-parser games. Makes you wonder how much damage someone could do if they actually set out to cause it.

Like I said in the other thread: people take things way too seriously. As a result of this one comment we’ve had people leaving the forum, the admin stepping down and a potential war brewing with GG. Wouldn’t it have been better to simply have not overreacted?

30

I’ve locked the thread.

MTW, I don’t care which side you’re on - vague threats against other users are not acceptable.

Everyone, for the safety of other users, please refrain from discussion of GamerGate for now. This includes linking to related material. There is abundant evidence that organised harassment of women specifically and “SJWs” in general has been a major part of the GamerGate movement and I do not want anyone here to be targeted, either on this board or off it. And no, fearing that your posts here may be moderated is not on the same level as fearing that you may be doxed or threatened with rape or murder, so please take a deep breath and consider other users before your next post.