Three out of countless unethical practices being criticized have to do with Zoe Quinn.  Unless you want to suggest that entire staff at Gawker, Kotaku, Vox, The Verge, Polygon, Destructoid, Arstechnica, GamaSutra, and other news outlets involved in the campaign are somehow being accused of all sleeping with Zoe Quinn, I highly suggest that You should stop obsessing over her sex life.



It's irrelevant in concerns to the validity of the hashtag who started the hashtag, it is only relevant in the historical sense, since Adam Baldwin really hasn't had anything to do with the Hashtag aside from starting it.



To be honest, I'd suggest if you don't want to be hit by poo, you should stay out of things entirely.  Attempting to take a pro-gamergate stance, or even a neutral stance, in the issue will probably get crap flung at you, and not by us.



I'm also pretty active in the gaming community; clearly on different parts of the community.  I have seen people throughout the industry both for and against gamergate.  Many pro-gamergate developers have contributed to articles about the issue.  Unfortunately, in the current climate, most have to remain anonymous because they could risk losing their jobs.  You might want to take that into consideration.



I think you meant to say anyone.  And you can imagine why the supporters aren't vocal about it.  I can understand also why, if you are as involved in the community as you say, even if you believed me I'd suggest you not making it public.  Places like NeoGaf ban Pro-GG people pretty quickly.

And I don't think we've lost; we've made great headway into getting advertisers to pull their support from the problem sites, and the opposition has responded beautifully, because insulting and threatening companies is the exact opposite way to persuade them to reinstate ad campaigns.  Doesn't matter if ad companies "don't support GamerGate", they're doing what we want them to do.

Something big is also said to be happening come December.  Nintendo-Direct big.

You're going to have to elaborate on this sentiment, haha.

Even if you're right (which I doubt), have you ever heard of the term "Pyrrhic Victory"?

So you get a few ads pulled.  News sites aren't going to change their policies over that.  They thrive on ratings and internet hits, and the bigger the controversy you stir up, the more traffic they get, and ironically the more they can charge per ad.

In the meanwhile, you leave behind a legacy, staining the gamer name for years to come.  You're already permanently associated with rabid sexists and cyber-trolls, and other gamers are dragged down that hole with you.  Is that what you really want?
This message was last edited by the GM at 07:47, Fri 07 Nov 2014.

I understand what a pyrrhic victory is.  However you've misunderstood, in my opinion, what exactly we believe we have to win, and what we have to lose in most of your posts.

Most of us value things that you don't care about, while you value things that we don't care about.

And I suspect the reason we don't care about those things is very similar, which is also the same reason why we don't care that the other cares about their particular thing.



I'm afraid it's more complicated than that.  The amount you can charge doesn't simply come down to how controversial your statements are.  Most companies don't want to advertise on sites that attack them, their customers or make controversial statements that they don't want their brand associated with.

Wait wait wait.

Are you seriously saying being forever associated with rabid sexism and threats of rape and death is *worth* the cost of victory?  That's dangerously close to condoning the doxxing and threats, and definitely far too close to extremism for my tastes.



That presupposes you have enough public opinion on your side that the company will actually worry about it.  Hobby Lobby and Chik-Fil-A are examples of companies that were faced with much larger and better organized opposition, and still stood firm, because they knew they had even more support.

Second, you're assuming that losing one or two big-name advertisers will actually hurt someone's bottom line.  Ad space is ad space, and for the most part, internet ad rates are based on traffic.  It doesn't matter who's paying for that space, as long as they're getting paid.

Third... let's suppose you actually manage a victory.  You take down Gawker, or some other gaming site.  Exactly how does that affect the state of journalism in general?  How does that help gamers?  And is the cost to the gamer identity, branding all of us as extremist woman-haters, worth it?

I don't consider it a cost that applies to me or GamerGate, and even if it's perceived that way, it'd be a sunk cost anyways.  We have as official a stance as we can denouncing this sort of behavior, and we've founded/contributed to several charities supporting women game developers, cancer research, and anti-bullying organizations. Yet some people are still determined to associate us with that behavior. Many of them have a vested interest to portray us in this fashion.

At what point do you think we should stop caring what those people think about us?  I really don't understand why their opinion matters so much when their minds were already made up to begin with.



Again with public opinion.  If that's what you believe is required for the companies to worry and pull their ads, then since they have done so, it logically follows that we have enough public opinion.  I don't think public opinion matters but by your own logic...



Several, actually.  Intel, Adobe, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Scottrade, UAT, Unilever, Budweiser, Bonobos.

Edit: Some of these never even advertised with Gawker to begin with, and falsely including them on the sponsors list is an FTC Violation, and could also see defamation lawsuits

http://adland.tv/adnews/gawker...tner-them/1291467968
http://adland.tv/adnews/can-ga...ould-it-be/376533440


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1w0N9EIUAA-aId.png:large


There are many more that are waiting for current contracts to expire, or pulling out quietly.



That isn't true, I'm afraid.  Advertisers generally have a large variety of different ways to sell ad-space, which they sell to potential customers in "promotional packages".  For example at the highest level you have those advertisements which take up the wallpaper of the website, puts your ads before and after videos, puts banners at various locations of a page, implements ad-themed capchas on the forums, get your name added to the list of sponsors, etc.  Various lower forms of packages include only some of these things and cost less.

The lowest form of advertisement is through a third-party source like ad-sense, and it doesn't pay very much.  Not enough to support these websites, they have a very narrow margin and need the Premium Advertisers if they want to keep their current overhead.  Some of them might even stand to lose access to Ad-sense by violating the terms of service.



What I suspect is going on behind the scenes, or whether anything is going on behind the scenes, is uncertain.  There are murmurs of big things, but skepticism stays my hand until something official comes out.

But I think, best case scenario for all involved that deserve a best case scenario, Gawker Collapses, it sets a precedent that the current standards and attitude is unprofitable, and changes are made to establish and enforce ethical codes.



Begging the question, really.  I'm not very worried by this sentiment, I don't think it will hold true, and the narrative will become less credible the longer this goes on.
This message was last edited by the GM at 10:01, Fri 07 Nov 2014.

Two issues here.  The first is that if you can't persuade fellow gamers that you're distinct from the sexist trolls, you won't succeed in convincing other people.

Second, you're right-- gamergaters won't be paying for your mistakes.  It's the other gamers out there who will.  We've come a long way in being recognized and accepted as more than the geeks in the basement, but this will set things back by years.  We weren't being persecuted much before, but it might start up.


According to the links you posted, it's highly debatable as to rather or not gamergate has any effect at all.

And speaking of dishonest journalism: the first two links look like real news articles, but are actually editorials.  There's a clear bias in them.  The third appears to be a screenshot of an emil sent by the FTC, but it doesn't actually say which sites are involved, or if it's not just a boilerplate reply, or even provide the headers so readers can tell if it's real.

Honest journalism doesn't provide a running editorial.  It simply presents the facts and lets the viewers decide for themselves.  None of those links even comes close to that.

Actually, what's more likely to happen if gawker collapses is that all gamer media sites take a hit as well.  They'll switch over to purely opinion-based, like a Yelp model.  So, all you've accomplished is kill the gamer reporting you think is so valuable in the first place.

Rhetorical question, actually, but your response scares me.

Look, when 9/11 hit, there was a concerted effort from Bush on down, to try and convince the American public that Muslims were not the enemy, just the extremists.  The hate crimes were fortunately infrequent and short-lived, but some of that prejudice lives on today.  Try having brown skin and going through the security line at the airport, for example.  Al Qaeda was sure they'd never be caught for their crimes, and if they thought about how other Muslims would be persecuted for what they did, they didn't care either.

See why this worries me?

That is a valid statement.  I do however think that gamergate supporters have increased as this has gone on, and the number of active gamergate members at a much greater rate than the number of active anti-gamergate members.

http://bit.ly/1sdyvxr



We send the emails, and they pull out.  Maybe they were going to pull out anyways, is what you're saying?



Yes, that can be found in the About section of the website.  It's not a News Site, it's an Opinion/Archive Site run and frequented by people in Advertising.

I'm sorry if you assumed what I was linking was an article talking about advertisers pulling out of Gawker+ , I already gave a couple links to that effect earlier in this conversation.

The reason I posted these articles was to provide an advertiser's perspective of what's going on.  The first link also links to a piece that provides an advertiser's perspective that is less positive towards the situation.



Yes, those are valid criticisms of the screenshot.  Are you just dismissing the validity of the email, or the claim that putting companies on your sponsors page without their consent is deceptive advertising?

http://business.ftc.gov/docume...-internet-rules-road



I'm going to have to remain skeptical about this claim, none of your previous statements on the subjects which you would base this outcome on rang very true to me.

I've already made my sentiments known about this line of thought in earlier posts.



I honestly don't know how to respond to this.  It's a very alien, disturbing way of looking at the situation to me, to even make the comparison between these two events.  I'm sorry if I offend with that comment but man...I disagree, I guess?
This message was last edited by the GM at 11:14, Fri 07 Nov 2014.

Like I said, Quinn was the one whose sex life kicked it all off. Even by your own telling, it was Quinn's sex life, and not Grayson's, not Married Man's, not anyone else's. Even right now, your telling is 'this is who Quinn had sex with. Let's talk about why that's bad of Boggs (the married man--I feel a little guilty about giving traffic to some site detailing her sex life to have to look that up, but oh well).

If the issue was gamer journalism, it would start with "let's talk about Boggs, about who he has had sex with", since he's the journalist.

Then there's the big fuss about Anita Sarkeesian, who isn't a journalist at all and doesn't seem to even do anything with them. I don't know if you call that a false flag attack as well.

I have one friend-of-a-friend (I don't know her personally, so I didn't track it too closely) who had to move because of GG rape and death threats.

I'm not aware of any man (on either side of the debate) getting his home address with pictures of his children splashed publicly, combined with promises of rape, dismemberment, and murder. Nor am I aware of anyone on the pro-GG side providing any sort of assistance, or even publicly stating that behavior is wrong (yourself included, unfortunately, although you did imply there are people who do it).

From my perspective, when you're talking about the state of your hobby and someone promises to drive to another person's house and kill them, and has demonstrated at least some capability of doing so, the discussion of the hobby stops until the death threat can be addressed.

If it's not about Quinn, I expect to see more 'investigative reporting' about other people, and more actual action, including money spent, on those other things. Complaining and making lists isn't worth a lot.

Right now the Gamer Gate house is on fire. I appreciate your (personally, you, Sciencemile) goals, but take care of the basic stuff first before you expect anyone else to fall in. If you decide you can't control people running under the GamerGate flag, then, well ... Sorry guy. You're wearing the swastika now, and as much as you're delivering food to the homeless, you'll always be the villain.




It really does matter. This is who you are hitching your cart to. Are you comfortable attaching your work with Baldwin? I wouldn't be. Remember, YOU brought up Baldwin, not me. You apparently think he's worth mentioning as being notable in your company. This is who YOU are self-identifying.



There at least you're right. If I say I'm pro-Gamer Gate, I have plenty of friends who will roll their eyes at me and ask me if I've been reading the news.

And I imagine if I identify as pro-GG, that other pro-GG people won't be saying bad things about me.

But I don't consider that a big accomplishment.




These are small businesses. Posthuman is 4 people. I don't know about Evil Hat. Wizkids is sizeable, but for the most part they've been quiet. (Remember, Posthuman also tossed all MRAs off of their forums, so they aren't exactly afraid of retribution.) Mostly it's self-employed and freelancers, so they can say whatever they want.



I guess we'll see :) But the results aren't measured in advertiser compliance. It's measured in the transition of gaming web sites to more ethical reporting. But then, the big advertisers on those sites aren't BMW and Nissan. The big advertisers are the gaming companies--the same companies that release games for early reviews, that provide airfare and special access, that provide interviews, etc. You can't replace that.

I've no problem with this, although he isn't a journalist.  He's part of the industry, but his ethical violations are, as I've explained in the post to Vexen, different.  He broke one of the big universal no-nos of workplace ethics that's a lot more well known than the intricacies of journalistic integrity.

Like I said, Grayson is a Reporter, Rob Arnott is a contest Judge, Boggs is an Employer.

And there are many other examples besides these three.  Most of them don't even have to do with sex.



Well, THE BIG ONE that she got on television for (the threatened massacre at Utah State University) definitely had nothing to do with GamerGate.  I'd imagine there's a big fuss in general because she received a death threat and has appeared on TV.

The police determined the threat not to be credible, and the FBI said similar things in regards to their investigation, including their statement to apply to all previous threats she's received.

As for false flag...I can't say anything beyond if you're interested in the answer to that you're going to need to file an FOIA because it's not wise to comment on ongoing investigations.



That's really not credible, sorry, especially since you're sufficiently distant from this anecdotal information for me not to be able to further inquire about it and render something more solid out of it.

Let me put it this way, when somebody does something like that, whether the claim is true or false, it's serious enough that somebody is going to jail.



There are, but I really see this women/male quota of harassment as surreal and unhelpful.  What exactly would I be proving by posting to examples like someone receiving a knife in the mail with a letter telling them to kill themselves?

It's an argument from ignorance.



Argument from ignorance again.  My quick check on Google suggests you haven't even looked.  Or even look back at the second post I made on the subject in this very forum thread for sources of assistance.  It also includes men receiving death threats and worse if it matters.

Come on, seriously this is disappointing.



Fallacy of relative privation, especially when the people receiving the death threats don't need to be present for the conversation, since they're irrelevant to the serious issue of ethical/legal violations. (as you've pointed out, they're not journalists or even expected to follow any professional code of ethics).



No it isn't worth much I agree.  People who complain about things without actually doing anything are pretty irksome.



I don't agree with your characterization of me or the intent of my actions.  I imagine based on a quote of yours I omitted because of its non-starterness, that your response might be "Too bad".  Indeed it is.

I've seen you able to think a lot more critically than this Katisara, and your language and logical cohesiveness in the last post is quite worrying.  I don't like to think that you're of the mind that there are "No bad tactics, only bad targets".
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:37, Fri 07 Nov 2014.

I should have been more clear. I'm not here trying to argue that these are reasons why you should stop supporting GamerGate. I'm sharing my own experiences though, and why, in my circles at least, anything GamerGate is a non-starter (and why, unfortunately, my circles are very very close to the circles you are specifically targeting for your activism).

If you come to me or my friends and say 'hey, I'd like to talk about journalistic integrity', you'd get a warm response, although 90% of people don't care enough about the modern media, or are already so jaded, that they won't be especially helpful, unless perhaps your goal is to crowdsource new media sources to replace the old or something like that. In the RPG industry there aren't really any big RPG media outlets any more, but RPG advertising and development is very, very muchso a case of 'who you know', and that's an issue people recognize.

But if you came out and said "Hey, I'm with GamerGate ..." you'd immediately get cut off at the knees. You're toxic. You're dangerous. Maybe you personally have the best of intentions, but given the violence these people have seen, you've basically come out and said you're pro-rape. No one is going to associate with that, not after the damage already done by people self-labelled as GamerGaters.

If you want to keep the name, you have to fix the reputation. Until you rebuild your reputation, no one will touch you.

Apologies then for my misunderstanding of the context of your statements which informed my previous response.

I don't do twitter, so I have no context to examine your link.  I *think* that it's listing the number of tweets under the various tags... but in that case, it doesn't show membership or support, it just shows that one side is a lot more talkative.  That said, I am on a number of gaming forums, and pro-gamergate discussion is shouted down quickly.

Now, to be fair, both are anecdotes.  Unless we poll gamers, we have no way of gauging exact numbers.  So, do you have any estimates as to the number of gamergate supporters?  We can compare that to estimated numbers of gamers out there, and see how they measure up.


That is one possibility that your link gives, yes.

It's still dishonest journalism.  If you want to give someone's perspective, you give their exact words, and don't add your own commentary.  Basically, it's a pro-gamergate ad, and not an unbiased perspective of an advertiser.

Really, it's no different than Fox News.  There was a court case where they said they had no obligation to tell the truth, since they were on-air for entertainment.  In the same vein, putting "this is an editorial" in the footnotes, or otherwise presenting evidence as if you were a real journalist, is just as dishonest.


Honestly can't say.  The question supposedly posed in the screenshot is phrased in such vague and hypothetical terms, I can't tell exactly what it refers to.  There are no specifics.

Comparing gamergate to terrorists might show you how others see it.  You know that there are people under your flag who are willing and able to not just troll women who oppose you, but hack them and release their personal information, issue rape threats, and threaten to dismember and murder them and their families.  And they back it up by doxxing high-profile opponents, such as Felicia Day.  That is a kind of cyber terrorism.

Now, from what I've seen, you're reluctant to separate yourself from those people.  You also said you don't care about public opinion.  However, that doesn't mean the rest of the gamer world shares your view.  I can assure you that there are throngs of gamers trying (and failing) to make it clear we have nothing to do with gamergate.  So, not only are you basically condoning cyber-terrorism, you're making it look like we do as well.

What you don't seem to see is that the public at large sees gamergate as internet terrorists.  There have been many high-profile cases of "Disagree with us, and this is what will happen to you."  Most (in fact, all that I've encountered) was against women, which adds sexism to the terrorism.

Now, I am using charged language, but this is *really* how outsiders see gamergate.  They regard members as little better than scum, and the terror tactics only make things worse.  It really is like this.

By the way, this is an example of how honest journalism is supposed to be done.  Note that there is a minimum of commentary, the focus is on the person's exact words:

http://kotaku.com/blizzard-ceo...tm_medium=Socialflow

You're joking right?  There was a huge controversy over that article because it put words into a person's mouth.  Kotaku is owned by Gawker, by the way.

He didn't mention gamergate, he said "bullying and harassment is bad", at which point the writer decided to say "Yeah, take that GamerGate!"

"well, it's implied" you might say.  No, that's not the person's exact words, that's your bias, and by extension the writer's bias, which in this case could have been separated but wasn't.

This is cut and clear.

I've offered other means to determine the size of gamergate, I suppose until I know your standards of acceptance I should probably stop wasting my time.



Shouting down dissent doesn't make it go away.




Afraid that would also be a poor measurement. Being in support or against GamerGate really doesn't matter.  Based on your interaction with me so far, I think there would be no pragmatic benefit if I convinced you to change your mind, no offense intended.

I don't really feel like spelling out why, since I've already attempted to do so and it's kind of disagreed with you.  It relates to the Midterm Elections that just took place.



That's acceptable.

 However, since people have claimed to have received replies by the companies announcing their intent to withdraw their ads/sponsorship from mentioned sites, it's certainly not a possibility that dissuades continued efforts.



Please desist from making these comparisons.  I have no interest in this sick and deranged train of thought.  I will not be responding to you further on these matters.
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:36, Sat 08 Nov 2014.

I'm willing to accept your estimate on the size of gamergate.  What I want numbers on is how that relates to the number of gamers in the world.  That's where the useful comparison will be, and that's where we'll need something stronger than anecdote.


No.

I'm trying to be nice to you.  I haven't even come close to the kind of personal attacks that are flung by both sides in this matter.  I've come to respect your intelligence over the time we've been debating here.

That said... if you don't see that this is *really* how gamergate appears to the rest of the gaming world, you're going to be in for a rude shock when you hear the fury of non-gamers.  I was hoping to ease you into the reality of it, but it looks like you won't hear any dissent.

This is why I suspected groupthink of you earlier, you don't seem to be considering any perspective but your own.  Or rather, you dismiss them.  In both cases, it's a bad sign.  It indicates that you've been so buried in gamergate propaganda, you've stopped caring about everyone else in the world.  That truly frightens me.

You don't like these comparisons?  Then acknowledge that, for most of the gaming world, *gamergate* is the sick and deranged thinkers.  The actions done under that name are considered to be akin to terrorism.  That's the reality you need to face.

Like I said, the total number of gamers in the world is an irrelevant fact to me, so if you want that information it's on you to look it up and present it.

So far based on our dialogue, you haven't really looked into any of the articles you or I have presented beyond a superficial level, and it's not my job to do your research for you.

I can't take your claims of groupthink seriously when the "alternative perspectives" you throw out betray the lack of thought and effort put into presenting them.

I think we're done here, I have to get back to contacting more advertisers, we've gotten another two to withdraw since yesterday, and I really don't have the spoons to humor the ludicrous idea that acting within my full rights as a citizen and a consumer is terrorism.

I won't be addressing this topic again until much later, if/when something big happens.

Why should I?  I'm a gamer, and I don't see why I should care.

If you believe in your cause, but can't convince friendly gamers that it's worth it, what makes you think you'll change anything?  Especially if it means condoning the horrible acts done.

By the way: According to several sites, Mercedes put their ads back up.  So, I don't think it's working.

I can't be arsed to care about things like Gamer's Gate when the real world politics of the day is restricting many, or most, or maybe all freedoms we already have.

Okay, dumb question, what is Vivian James?

It's a character created for an Indigogo campaign to get more women into the games industry, and was rewarded as a result of communal donations by 4chan GamerGaters before 4chan banned discussion of GamerGate on its site.

It's a Homophony of "Video Games".  She will be present in the game that results from the project.

EDIT Err I think I may have the wrong term for it...it sounds similar is what I'm trying to say.

More information on the game and project here:

https://www.indiegogo.com/proj...-capitalists--2#home
---

Sorry it took me a while to answer you, I have been busy with progress.  Presidents of media organizations stepping down, millions of dollars reported lost, IRS, FBI, and DOD investigations all over the place, FTC guidelines being updated.  Nothing I'm considering to be big enough yet however.  Still more work to be done.
This message was last edited by the GM at 10:58, Fri 12 Dec 2014.

So if I'm reading this right, the program is to raise money to hire women who know nothing about video game design, teach them video game design, and push them through to getting a functional product?

I believe it was mentioned that professional game programmers/designers/whatevers would be involved in the process.