A requested thread for Kathulous.  Apparently some guy named Quagmire has complained about liberals.  Discuss.  (Hopefully Kathulous will elaborate a bit for us)

http://imgur.com/gallery/srTljAA

"Social injustices" often aren't Social Injustices at all. They're just something that people make use of for whining, and scape goating other people as often as possible. If people are born White, Male and Heterosexual, they are often labeled as derogatory terms for each thing in the former three categories just for being born that way, and yet "Social Justice Warriors" will often hypocritically hate, either obviously or pretentiously, the straight, Caucasian Males just for being that way.

This also briefly mentions Christianity. . . which is why I bothered to put this in the religion section. "News Flash, not everyone is perfect". . . is how Quagmire put it. Christianity is NOT the only religion that has done evil in the past. Even Buddhism, as good as it has been through the past many decades, maybe centuries in history, has some outstanding examples of their clergy horrifically abusing people of lower castes when the Dali Llama says that showing compassion is not a sign of weakness.

I'm not saying "let's all just get along" I'm just trying to say, if you're going to fight real social injustice, go ahead and do it, and stop attacking the babies for what the muggers are doing.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:12, Mon 01 Sept 2014.

I think it's a mistake to generically criticize a disparate group of people. You run the danger of strawmanning them by lumping all of their views together.

I read The Guardian, where a significant number of commenters might be called Social Justice Warriors, and many of them also speak up against what you are complaining about. The SJWs seem divided on the issue of blaming men for being men or telling people to "check their privilege." They're not a unified block.

If you want to see ugliness in SJW land, you should look at the infighting between lesbians and transsexuals. It's uglier than the occasional attack on men in general, because in lesbians v transsexuals both sides come out swinging.

I don't think you know what I'm saying. You are assuming I"m talking about all Social Justice advocates. I'm talking about "Warriors". The apostraphes is meant by me to convey sarcasm.

How can you tell a 'warrior' from an 'advocate'?

An advocate, without apostrophe surrounding it, is obviously the original meaning of the word. Maybe a lawyer, or perhaps someone who just supports something.

I support proper social justice against abuse of power.

An "Advocate" depending on certain circumstances, can be used to convey a sense of sarcasm. It's easier to tell sarcasm in a context like on the internet or in letters, the spoken word, by the proper use of apostrophes.

A warrior is someone who fights. When I'm using "Warrior" in this context, I'm talking about someone who ludicrously concludes that social injustices happen when a scientist invents a nail polish that can detect the presence of date rape drugs, and then feminists say that he is somehow oppressing women.

In reply to Kathulos (msg # 6):

That seems like a rather artificial and pointless distinction.  If "warrior" is someone who fights, then there's no distinction betwseen peaceful fighters like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, who fought hard but nonviolently; and violent ones, like the 60's Black Panthers.  Your dividing line, sarcsm, basically seems to be: "Who can take a joke and who can't".  Which is absolutely unfair, because that would allow racists to spout all kinds of hate, then get away with it by saying: "It was just a joke!"

You're thinking too much if you just want to criticize what I'm saying.

The distinction seems artificial to me, too.

It sounds like an 'advocate' is campaigning for social justice you agree with, and a 'warrior' is campaigning for social justice you disagree with.

Is the link working? Because I'm pretty sure that Quagmire is addressing exactly the same thing you're talking about.

I read the link after you made your first post in this thread, but I don't see how it relates to my comment.

How does it not? I am explicitly bringing to the floor that bickering over the tiniest visage of offence or lack thereof is not real Social Justice.

It is not Social Injustice to be born Caucasian, Male, or into a Christian Family. . .

What is tiny and insignificant to you actually is a big deal to those who care about such things.

I still don't see any firm distinction in either your posts or the comic you sited between 'advocates' and 'warriors', so I can't tell if I disagree with your position on social justice.

In general I support social justice (though there may be things some consider social justice that I consider its opposite). Where I draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable activism is that acceptable activism doesn't silence its opponents or label them with terms they would not apply to themselves.

But since all rules have exceptions (except this rule), there are places where I don't support the right of some groups to label themselves. Criminals come to mind, in that I don't think they have the right to invent politically correct language for their crimes. I wouldn't support burglars calling themselves 'property liberators', and I don't support illegal immigrants calling themselves 'undocumented'. I also don't support the right of groups to label themselves in such as way as to implicitly deride their complements (c.f. 'brights').

On the 'silence their opponents' front, I prefer minimal (but not non-existent) restrictions on free speech. Speech which threatens a crime on someone or incites others to prevent a crime is unacceptable. Yes, I'd have a hard time coming up with an exact definition of 'incitement', in case you're wondering.

I'd like to see similar statements from you as to what general principles you use to draw the line between 'advocates' and 'warriors'.

Fair enough. This is actually just a little bit relevant to the Zoe Quinn incidents which have become discussed in gaming forums across the internet. She has people's websites shut down, and if I heard right, sleeps around with journalists and reporters so they can use their skills to silence people who oppose her sexually manipulating people in order to get her games sold. . .

She also employs hackers to shut down forums, and complains to people across the internet for being sexually harassed, and for sexism against her whenever they call her out on her unethical behaviour. That's a "Social Justice Warrior". ((Apostrophes included this time)).

Or at least, that is what is being said about Zoe Quinn.

In reply to Kathulos (msg # 15):

I don't have any idea who Zoe Quinn is, but if you're objecting to her methods, surely her message doesn't matter?  If you don't think the same thing can be said of people who hold an opposing viewpoint, isn't that hypocritical?

"Often?" I don't think it's very useful to make sweeping, probabilistic statements about social justice issues. If you've got a specific set of so-called "social injustices" that you view as invalid, then that's something we can discuss. Otherwise, there's really no point.



As a white, male, heterosexual, I really haven't experienced that myself, and I really don't know any other liberals personally that would act in the way you've described, but your point seems less to be a philosophical one and more a personal rant. You keep using the word "often," but I don't know what you're trying to get at with that. Are you trying to castigate all advocates of social justice for the unrepresentative actions of an extremist sect? The majority of Americans are moderates, whether one checks off the name next to a (D) or an (R) at the ballot box. While extremists are more vocal and more alarming (hence the "extremism") than moderates, it's rather unproductive to smear all advocates of a certain philosophy/belief/stance with the ill behavior of their extremist colleagues; what's really needed is an honest, philosophical discussion about the issues at hand, and the differences between groups.



Sure, Christianity absolutely isn't the only religion with a dark past. So what? Does that mean that one shouldn't examine the historical sins of the religion? Or of any other religion, nation, or race, for that matter? I wouldn't argue that we should hold people accountable for the sins of their fathers (e.g., obviously modern whites are not responsible for colonial-era slavery), but I still see these events as historically relevant as they pertain to modern-day issues (e.g., African Americans are more impoverished than whites in America today, and a historical understanding helps us understand that this isn't because "white are biologically superior" or some other such nonsense; history can provide context for modern problems). I'm sorry if you've been persecuted by "some" people that "often" take these otherwise meaningful points and twist them into justifications for blaming the sons of 2014 for the crimes of 1619, but please don't use this as a spring-board to proclaim that "'Social injustices' often aren't Social Injustices at all."

@PeaceLoveScience. . .

you presume much if you think that I'm just pretending like all social injustices are an imagination. . .

In reply to Kathulos (msg # 18):

I don't believe that I accused you of that. Rather, I used your own words in describing your opinion: "'Social injustices' often aren't Social Injustices at all." So, as I asked in my aforementioned post, do you have any social justices in mind that you'd like to discuss as being invalid? I think we could have a much more productive conversation that way. (:

Well okay.

So, here's one idea. Maybe more women than ever would like to become an occupation in certain areas of life. . . but think, that, just for a moment, that some women just want traditional roles in life. Stay, home, take care of children, take care of the House, etcetera. (House Wife). . .

Sometimes House Wives are seen as victimized "by the Patriarchy". If they WANT to be stay at home Mothers. If they don't want to work away from their homes they shouldn't really have to.

It's not a social injustice that a Woman wants a traditional role to play in life. It's "normal". It's normal to them because it's what they want, and it's often said that when someone wants to do their job they do it more effectively.

Then there's this strange idea that Homosexuality must be forced down some Church'es throats to accept. A few somewhat isolated cases of this are happening at the moment. If you would lay aside the Civil Right's side of the argument for a moment, a Church is something that the Government should not have control over.

If Homosexuality is indeed a Civil Right, then a Ship's Captain, a Justice of the Peace, etcetera, can do their ceremony, or they can look for a Church that will do it.

"Normal" is a highly relative term.  I could argue that a stay at home spouse is highly abnormal, simply by citing the fact that most households are now two-income.  It's also a red herring, because you're using "normal" for a stand-in for "acceptable"; do you have any citations of people saying staying at home isn't acceptable?

Same for your homosexuality line.  That sounds like a reaction to a straw man to me.  Do you have any cases you can show us?

I think most people in this thread are just over-analyzing things.

Or perhaps you're not analyzing things enough? ;)

Kathulous, would you consider yourself a "social justice warrior?"  Would you consider people offending you on the internet to be a "social injustice?"  Does raising this topic turn you into what you're describing?  It sort of sounds like you're saying "I'm speaking out against people on the internet who offend me...because they speak out on the internet about things that offend them!"

You complain about people viewing themselves as victims...then portray yourself as the victim of their complaints.  You seem to feel "hey, nobody's perfect!" should prevent people from pointing out flaws in groups you like, but then point out flaws in groups you don't like.  You seem to dislike people "presuming" that you don't think there are any real social injustices, but at the same times seem to presume quite a bit about those you disagree with (e.g., that they hate white males, that they want to force women never to stay at home, etc.).

And when you say stuff like "you're all just over analyzing this," or "if you disagree with me, you're thinking too much!" it creates the impression (in me at least) that you maybe haven't given much thought to what you're saying.  You know you don't like the people you call "social justice warriors" (though it's not 100% clear to me if these are real people, or just a caricature), but it seems to me like you haven't given a ton of thought to why you don't like them.

Perhaps you'll get more traction if you attack some specific ideas you disagree with, rather than the group that holds them?  Instead of complaining about "social justice warriors," perhaps it'd be more fruitful to look at a specific position they've taken, and critique it?  Instead of "some people somewhere on the internet think X and that's crazy talk," it might be more productive to link to their actual words, so we can see what they actually think/believe.  Then you can tell us what you disagree about in their words, and how you think we should react to them.  I think that'd help us all have a better idea of just what we're all talking about.  Because right now people can't really tell the difference between what you call a "social justice warrior" and a social justice advocate, except that you mock the former but respect the latter.  It might also firm up in your own mind what it is you disagree with, rather than just knowing that you don't like those people you mock.

I'm not going to address your points as the straw feminist that you've portrayed, but rather from my own, feminist perspective. If a woman (or a man, for that matter) simply wants to be a stay-at-home parent, then I wouldn't classify that as a instance of victimization by the so-called "patriarchy." Rather, it's when a woman can only conceive of being a child-bearer (or in which a person can only conceive of women in that fashion) that I might have some qualms, and thus feel the need to point out that a woman is capable of more than childbearing and rearing-- but that's as far as one should go. The act of raising a child as a stay-at-home parent is not in itself evidence of victimization. Rather, it is when women are forced by their husbands to do so, or feel that they are incapable of doing anything else, or when businesses discriminate against hiring women as a consequence of this notion, that a woman becomes a victim by virtue of her sex. I can't say that I personally see this around today, or hear it from female colleagues when discussing the topic, but there was indeed a time when nothing more was expected/allowed of a woman (see: most of American history).

The expectation of a woman to be a stay-at-home parent isn't necessarily resultant of a particular desire to do so. I completely agree with you that if a woman doesn't want to work outside of the home then she shouldn't have to. I have absolutely no problem with that. The only feminist critique that I would raise would be in the event that a woman feels a societal need to do so, as if this is the only role that a woman could ever have, or is forced to do so (which, today, is much less of a problem; women can no longer be fired for simply becoming pregnant or getting married, women are actually allowed to hold most of the same jobs that are open to men [excluding negligible, sex-related exceptions], and there are protections in place against other forms of discrimination in the workplace).



Now, to put on my atheist hat. Having spoken to many homosexual colleagues and friends about this topic, I can offer you my personal perspective. I do not know any homosexuals that would advocate for "forcing" a church to change their beliefs and marry them. The entire "gay marriage" issue is about the right to be legally married, not to be married in a church under one's religion of choice. Of course, this doesn't mean that homosexuals true to their faiths shouldn't strive for reform within their respective religions, but I've never met a homosexual that actually advocated for making said reform a governmental matter rather than a canonical one. Churches are free to practice what they deem appropriate, and should be allowed to do so. The beautiful thing about marriage is that a church needn't be at all involved. While I'm sure that many Catholic, homosexual couples may want to be wed in a stained-glass building with family and friends lining the pews (for example), that simply isn't what the "gay marriage" issue is about. The intention is to make legal (and state/federally recognized) marriage between two men or two women; to make marriage a civil right afforded to homosexuals and heterosexuals alike, that's all.

Don't take this as in insult, but it seems to me like your perspective on social justice is one that's limited to the ranting of liberal keyboard warriors over the interwebs, rather than formed from speaking with progressive-minded friends and family. I only say so to encourage you to speak with colleagues and the like about these issues if you really want to learn about social justice issues (and I applaud you for coming here and making an attempt at doing that), rather than construct a liberal strawman made from the emotional extremism of the blogosphere. I can't speak for everyone, but your claims about "social justice warriors" do not resonate with me or any of the other progressively minded people in my life.

@Tycho: Wonderfully said. :)

I have heard some people denigrate stay-at-home moms for their choices, as though they're somehow 'betraying' feminism for that choice. I wouldn't say it's a majority opinion, but I also know more stay-at-home dads than stay-at-home moms, so my circles just don't have a ton of exposure to it that might prompt comments either way.

I'd say you'll find more confrontation on the topic of having kids (either refusing to have kids, or a willingness to have more than three).

In reply to katisara (msg # 25):

I would say there's an important difference between disagreeing with a decision someone has made, and thinking they don't have the right to make the decision.  Kathulous' comment talked about people thinking women should "have to" work rather than be stay-at-home moms, which is a bit different than thinking that women should work.

Disagreeing with people's choices, and trying to convince them to make other choices is just part of living in a free society.  Trying to take away their choice is quite different.

Similarly for his comments about gay marriage.  It's one thing for a church member to push for their church to change, and it's another get the government to force them to change.  As PLS said, most gay-marriage supporters aren't pushing to have the government make churches change their doctrines.

It might help clarify things if Kathulous is talking about people who are expressing an opinion about other's choices, and trying to make change that way, OR if he's talking about people who are trying to use the government to take away the choice.
This message was last edited by the GM at 12:33, Mon 08 Sept 2014.

I tend to agree with Tycho.  I was a stay at home dad for a while; while some people expressed their disapproval, I never saw anything past that.  Usually, it was because they didn't understand why I made that choice.  In the same vein, while I do hear people voicing their disaaproval over the stay at home moms I know, it's never anything more than that.  It's on par with disapproving of someone's shoes.

As for the gay marriage thing, that sounds more like a Koch Bros. Scare tactic.  Without a specific example, it's hard to discuss.

Kathulos, no offense, but you seem to want people to read that rant, nod their heads, and share their similar experiences.  Unfortunately, a lot of "Yeah, that's how it is" posts doesn't make for good discussions.  Your thesis wasn't very strong, and when you reply with: "You're overanalyzing things", it makes it sound like we're just supposed to laugh and agree, as opposed to exchange opposing views.

I will address your humor point, though.  Not everyone finds the same stuff to be funny.  If someone on the internet were to make fun of you in a hurtful manner, would saying: "Lighten up, it was only a joke!"make it ok?  Using humor as a cover for hurting people isn't ok, and by saying it was a joke, you imply that being hurt or offended is their fault.

If you want a good example of the interaction between "SJWs" and "Social Justice", as well as the ostensible difference between the two, I would recommend looking into the Gamergate controversy.  Read what the media is saying, read what people in the movement are saying, see what outsiders are saying about it. (By outsiders I mean the conservative press who views GamerGate as a Leftist civil war, and the people looking at it simply from a Business/Marketing/PR perspective).

Regardless of the impression you take away from it, it's a good opportunity to understand what people who have a problem with it are talking about.

For the most part when most people think "Social Justice", things like Civil Rights Movements come to mind.  But a lot of people referring to Social Justice negatively are probably thinking of this sort of thing:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F_4X...sdX1qagc5do1_500.jpg

I count myself as one of those people, despite being a Lefty Liberal Socialist Commie Egalitarian :P
-------------

Here are some articles to get you started, arranged in chronological order.

www.gamasutra.com/view/news/224400/Gamers_dont_have_to_be_your_audience_Gamers_are_over.php

http://www.forbes.com/sites/er...long-live-the-gamer/

http://www.slate.com/articles/...e_over_but_they.html

http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/19/adios-gamergate/

http://gawker.com/how-we-got-r...-gamergat-1649496579

http://www.theverge.com/2014/1...31/gamergate-is-dead
------

You may wish to do a bit of further investigation yourself, since I have given mostly the opposition's side of the situation, and their reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated ;)
This message was lightly edited by the GM at 19:58, Fri 31 Oct 2014.

I haven't had a chance to look into it too deeply, but there are some facts that seem very clear.  First of all, "social justice warriors" is largely a myth.  Unlike gamergate, there is no large organized movement that even resembles what they describe.  Really, it's just a buzzword that they use so they dont have to actually face evidence and facts.

Second of all, even among the most rabid feminists I know, none of them would ever go past online name-calling to make a point.  Gamergate kids have not only issued rape threats, but death threats, exposed people personal information, and harassed them online.  Felicia Day was doxxed by one of them, just for speaking out.

So, there is a huge difference between the two: the gamergaters, who are more than willing to take things well past any sense of proportion; and the social justice people, who are speaking out strongly, but not actually doing anything harmful to the other side.  That right there is enough to show you which side is "right", the side that is acting properly, and not using underhanded terror tactics.

You've left out another side in this conflict, the the trolls and the dramamongers, which have been proven (often by their own testimony, due to the nature of high-profile trolls) to be behind the majority and the most egregious of the death threats and harassment on both sides.

(and it does happen to both sides).

https://twitter.com/Nero/status/513666683916255232
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1NZrhGCIAAlsKi.png
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B0RGxEvCYAAh3xY.jpg
http://33.media.tumblr.com/076...gW1tkhroeo1_1280.png
http://i.imgur.com/E1xxidy.gif
http://gamergateharassment.tum...m/image/100419839286
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B0Aj_TOCIAEu7Bc.jpg

Official trolling organizations have been harassing both parties under varying flags trying to keep the drama going, organizations like the GNAA:

http://theralphretort.com/gnaa...-gamergate-sabotage/

Mateus Prado Sousa, a click-bait journalist from Brazil, is highly likely to be behind the death threats and violent comments issued to several high-profile women against GamerGate in order to manufacture stories.

http://blogjob.com/oneangrygam...nding-death-threats/
---------



And not only have the trolls posting under the #GamerGate Hashtag been associated with the larger movement, but doxxings and death threats have been associated without even any evidence of association.

Just this last couple weeks, a GameDev threatened to kill Gabe Newell (owner of steam) because his game was accidentally released as an early access title, and when his game was removed from Steam entirely, he tried to lay the blame of the consequences for his actions on GamerGate.

http://www.vg247.com/2014/10/2...ranautical-activity/
--------------------

Make no mistake, the stuff that has been happening is certainly horrible.
Focusing on this harassment, given who's statistically behind it, is only giving them what they want.

Blaming GamerGate for these harassments despite substantial evidence to the contrary, or at least substantial enough to place significant doubt on the allegation is unfair.

To claim that this small group of individuals somehow reflects negatively on the entire movement, or invalidates the claims of ethical/legal violations within the Games Media, I feel would be disingenuous and too convenient given the very real nature of those violations, and the nature of twitter hashtags and internet anonymity.

Additionally for your here is the Colbert Report Segment with prominent figure in the controversy Anita Sarkeesian (at least, the one able to get the most media coverage).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L_Wmeg7OTU
------------------

This is a multifaceted controversy of course, including the harassment of women which you've pointed out, and this was the initial facet being covered (optimistically, because that's the facet that will get the most clicks/viewers; pessimistically, because corrupt press doesn't report on its own corruption).  With any luck the facets that pertain to the ethical integrity will be addressed afterwards since the people involved with the harassment facet are at best tangentially related to that.

There's been some movements towards covering that by the smaller press sites like The David Pakman show, and there is a bit of resistance against switching investigation and coverage over to other facets.

------------------

For me personally, I am interested in the portions of the movement that are out to remove the current rot in games press by consumer action; a lot of this is the fault of the consumer being too complacent and feeling disenfranchised.

As a result, the constant lowering of quality and standards for these outlets has continued, attracting these toxic natures; click-bait articles (articles with a provocative title but actually containing little of substance), collusive behavior between press outlets that are supposed to be competing, and people being hired to write content for a consumer site, but whom actively despise their readership, the products they're writing about, or both.

However the contempt reached a back-breaking level that has re-awoken the awareness in a lot of people of their consumer power (myself included), and we are wielding that power in order to put pressure on outlets to establish and enforce a higher standard of professionalism on their sites and staff.

While it's true that anyone can use the gamergate tag, it's also true that there's not a lot of condemnation of these actions under that tag.  In fact, I haven't seen any-- most of the gamergate people say something like "Bitch had it coming" or other similar sexist drivel.

Of course, that's not evidence that there are none, but it is proof that if they exist, they're very rare.


Yes, trolls exist on both sides.  That said, I haven't seen any evidence that "social justice warriors" are organizing to mass-doxx gamergaters, or issuing death threats, or even rape threats.  "Social justice warriors" are a myth, anyway-- there is no organized movement that has any of the goals they supposedly have.  Gamergaters, however, are a distinct movement.  "Organized" might be a bit strong for them, but there's no denying that there is a group of like-minded people doing this.


Sorry, but that ship has sailed.  The day of "honest journalism" died a long time ago.  Personally, I think Fox News was the nail in the coffin, but it started a long time ago.  I remember "entertainment news" shows as far back as the early 80's, and it only got worse over the decades.

So gaming journalism is crooked.  That's a bit like saying politicians are crooked, or CEO's are greedy.  Go ahead and tilt at that windmill if you want, but dragging feminism into it is a bad idea, it guarantees that you'll go down in mud.

My take on it...

I do think SJWs are a 'thing', but it's a cultural thing. Just like racism is a 'thing' even if businesses don't normally write a policy saying 'hire no blacks' (at least in 2014), it's a cultural movement that exists, spreads between people, and has real-world impacts. The crowd I roll with is pretty heavily left-leaning, so I for one feel pretty inundated with it.

However, I agree with GMC, that GamerGate is also definitely a 'thing', with at least a large faction created artificially and directly managed and directed.

And like GMC said, I've seen plenty of caustic responses from the GamerGate crowd; like real, violent threats and such. When I said something like that on twitter, it took literally seconds for them to start accosting me. Say something pro-GamerGate and mostly you just get links and insults (but no threats).

So here's what I have seen from GamerGate:
-- A very in-depth interest in the sex lives of some women (never men).
-- A good number of rape and death threats
-- Advertising and boycott campaigns based on push-back against GamerGate

What I have NOT seen from GamerGate:
-- Anyone, in any capacity, saying that death/rape threats are wrong, or condemning people who make them
-- Any serious inspection of journalism ethics, when it does not involve a woman's sex life

Sure, I agree that journalism ethics are a very serious, very real issue that deserve attention. But at this point, GamerGate is not the right vehicle to conduct that with.

I'll admit, it depends on where you stand,.

On the one hand, there are lots of very vocal left-leaning people. Some are very, well, vehement about their point of view, which can make non-far-lefties feel overly attacked.  I know some very radical left people, some of which have accused me of being a conservative in disguise.  From that standpoint, I can see why people think SJW's are a "thing".

However, there is no organized SJW movement, at least not like gamergate.  There's no hidden meetings, no secret handshake, nothing of that sort-- just some people with extreme views.  There's also no group that sets out to strip white straight cis men of their rights.  There are some out there who might make white straight cis men feel that way, but they're not just nutcases, they're *lone* nutcases, who don't band together to attack others.  And like most internet trolls, they never take it past then verbal annoyance standpoint.  They can be overly aggressive about it, but they never cross the line into threatening.

Theres an entire subset of people in GamerGate, labeled the "GamerGate Harassment Patrol" who have taken it upon themselves to calling people out on that, and reporting people who aren't dissuaded by being told to cut it out.  (on twitter at least, I'm not even going to touch the chans by their very nature people feel obligated to be offensive there about everything).



I don't know by the standards of personal experience I have proof of the exact opposite.  Perhaps we should collate our experiences.  Do you have any links to examples that haven't been dealt with?  If so, I have connections in certain contexts and might be able to deal with it if the trail isn't too cold.



No, they are their own side.  The way you frame it here suggests that the trolls attacking one side and the trolls attacking the other side are members of the opposing side, and aren't also attacking the other side at the same time.

These are not Privateers given a Marque by #GamerGate or The Games Press.  These are Pirates.

 

There are a couple of examples but which have nothing beyond a couple blogs and screenshots that I wouldn't consider posting here because it's anecdotal aside from the screenshots.

However, the mass doxxings that were happening?  That was done by the "Wagoner crew "(and for every account that we were reporting into oblivion, another two Wagoners would sprout up), a troll organization from Something Awful, and they were doxxing everyone, #GamerGaters included.

Again this isn't about "well trolls will be trolls and both sides have them", no this is seriously third parties taking interest in a big controversy and wanting to stir things up.



Perhaps there is no overall organized movement; not every person who you'd identify as a conservative or a liberal necessarily knows every other person.

Quite a few of them (at least, the ones where the ethical and legal violations are concerned) actually do organize, even collude, and we've discovered quite a few of these organizations through whistleblowers leaking private google+grouplogs, Financial Data, and also investigating mission plans from Media PR Firms. It's bordering on anti-trust violations, Racketeering, and Fraud in a lot of cases.



If you really mean the windmill comment, then I appreciate that you would label my concerns as quixotic, I really do, no sarcasm.  I have at the very least convinced you then that the efforts come from genuine idealism.

I believe this is a beginning of change, a reversal of the decline of news, standards, and ethics across society as a whole (and I agree it's been happening for a while as you described it).

As you've said via the Quixote comment, however, we've yet to show you the practicality of these ideals.  Well, the truth of that will be demonstrated by what we accomplish, not by what the Media says about us; It's not us who keep dragging feminism into it; what are they going to cover, the actual corruption, ethical and legal violations within the media?

We have accomplished a lot of things in the past couple of months.  The ship may have sailed but a lot of us are willing to swim hard as we can for as long as we can in order to catch up and turn the ship around.

Paydirt.  Founder of Gawker Media exposed in private chat to friends;
Praise the Whistleblowers, Sic Semper Tyrannis.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1lXHzECMAA55gJ.png

Counterpoints:

Could have been intentionally leaked to misinform/sow mistrust.
Could be fake, photoshopped or otherwise doctored.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:34, Tue 04 Nov 2014.

Honestly, I don't go onto dedicated pro-gamergate forums.  I've just seen some of what's on twitter and 4chan, and that's overwhelmingly sexist, as you pointed out.

That said, I also don't see many pro-gamergaters publicly denouncing the sexism, on any forum. So, while I can't speak to precisely how rare it is, it definitely looks like a very quiet minority if it exists at all.


To be fair, not all like-minded people constitute a group.  However, some gamergaters have organized, in the sense that there's a fair number of them actively working together towards a common goal.  There is no equivalent feminist opposition, and certainly none that resort to doxxing, rape threats, or death threats.

I was being a little sarcastic.  However, I'm not the kind of person to tell you what hill you should die on.  If you really want to force a change in journalism, you're going to have to take on the entire media establishment, and even then, I think you're stuck in the 80's. (And I imagine you may not have even been born then, so take that figuratively.)  My generation of gamers grew up relying on word of mouth to find good games, plus publications like Dragon magazine.  We believed in our sources, because we believed in journalism.

However, we're now in the internet age.  You should never trust anything you find on the internet, at least not without cross-verifying it from a dozen different sources.  That's the new reality in this age.

Finally: even if a few gamergaters are good people, that doesn't mean the entire movement isn't toxic.  A friend of mine uses the skittles analogy to describe her reaction to men and rape culture, but it applies here as well.  Less than 5% of men are rapists, so they're a distinct minority.  However, let's say I hand you a bowl of skittles, and I tell you only 5% of them are poisonous.  Does that mean the bowl is safe to eat from?

4chan is no longer GamerGate; discussion of GamerGate was banned on 4chan shortly after the owner of 4chan came back from the XOXOFest.  The 4chan branch moved to 8chan.

 It's very strange that a discussion about a movement that is ostensibly sexist is banned from a site which is supposed to be notorious for its sexist speech.

I've seen plenty of sexist stuff from big named people against #Gamergate, and not so much from people who can be identified as supporting #GamerGate.  #NotYourShield was a response to claiming that women/poc people in support of #GamerGate were either fake accounts, or were internalizing their misogyny, being a gender/race traitor, or were generally too stupid to understand the issues.

https://twitter.com/b0ltwolf/status/506172311817711616

Add to that the fact that they continue to characterize the movement as anti-feminist and comprised of mostly straight white males in the news outlets they work for, and you can forgive me if you characterize a few trolls on twitter and 4chan saying something stupid as trivial compared to the vast consensus of sexist/racist/bigoted narrative being pushed by the people who stand to be the most affected by the backlash against ethical violations.

As for the few genuine cases of a person on youtube/#GamerGate I have found saying some unsavory things, I have confronted those I have encountered.  Results were not favorable, and it's not like anybody had their back, but this is the internet, you can't do anything if they refuse to leave, except make it known that they're not wanted.



I will point you to the first page of the Offical GamerGate Thread on The Escapist Forums.  I find that at this point, considering the medium people are communicating through, that you have to post over and over that you condemn these actions once it's already been stated as officially as it can be in places of permanency to be either not aware of the fact, or an attempt to derail the conversation. (your case being the former.  Usually the latter is only identified as the reason if somebody has already been informed/is posting in a forum where the very first page has the official statement)

http://www.escapistmagazine.co...and-Resources?page=1



There are plans that people establish which people may or may not go through with if they agree with the goal the plans are trying to achieve.

I have contacted via email and phone advertisers and sponsors of the targeted companies, in order to inform them about things representatives of those companies have stated, or terms of use contracts they have violated.



Well, it wouldn't be feminists that are opposing us (I don't consider the misinformed or neutral to be the opposition), since this is not an issue about feminism, it's an issue about consumer dissatisfaction over the media.  So the opposition would be the media, and from that perspective it becomes very very obvious what's going on.




You're not wrong.  In fact, you're late to the party a bit there.  We were interested in just taking care of gaming journalism, but it seems like it's just too intertwined to allow that, and it might have to do with one of the people behind the stuff that went down with the Games Press.

Have you ever heard of Ezra Klein?  Honestly I don't watch too much real news anymore, so I've just now been learning about JournoList and CabaList.  Apparently big controversy about collusion in the mainstream media in order promote a specific narrative while quashing opposing ones, news organizations influencing eachother's hiring and firing decisions, that sort of thing.  Was a big controversy.



1989 actually.  Dragon, Dungeon, Nintendo Power, EGM, Computer Gaming World.



That's acceptable for the internet rumor mill.  That is, as it is becoming apparent to a lot of people, unacceptable for professional news organizations.  It renders them unfit for purpose.



Far more are good than bad even if you include all the trolls.  That is my experience.  Also from my experience is that the people responsible have shown no remorse for allegations of violating ethical codes and the law, even as they try to cover it up and switch the issue onto sensational deflections.



I hate to argue an analogy, but you've equivocated somebody being mean on the internet to somebody getting raped...that's kind of trivializing rape.  I'm not really a fan of that.

Second, Poison and Toxicity are two distinct concepts.  A Toxin diluted sufficiently will not kill you or even have any noticeable effect; Potatoes are from the Nightshade family, and contain the same toxins as normal nightshade does, just in lower amounts.  If you eat enough of them, especially raw or undercooked, you will die, and people have died. That's not a convincing argument not to have mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving.  Nobody would take you seriously except for maybe Homeopaths, it's just not a line of thinking that you could nonsensically apply to the real world.

I've seen similar statements.  However, I judge people based on the actions taken under their flag.  And there are plenty of self-described gamergaters who are blatantly sexist and have issued threats.  Really, if you want to hold yourself apart, you may have to consider breaking the movement.  Sort of like how the Baptist church declares themselves to be separate from the Westboro Baptist church, or the Mormons and the FLDS.


It is a feminist issue, because it's mostly women who are being targeted.

Honestly, there's no longer any difference.  Some of the biggest information sources out there are entirely built on opinion.  Wikipedia, IMDB, and even Rotten Tomatoes get their information from individual reporters.  There is no news organization that lives up to your stated standards anymore, and there hasn't been for a long time.


Considering that female gamer friends of mine have gotten rape threats over this, I don't think it's a bad equation at all.

Really, this is just the eruption of a bigger problem lurking in the gamer world.  Women have had a rough time in gamer circles recently.  For example, female cosplayers get a lot of rough treatment, I don't know any who haven't been harassed at cons or the like.  Most of it is accusations of being a "fake geek girl", but there's all kinds that happen.

What's more, this is in part my fault.  Back in the 80's, gamers were persecuted, and gamer culture developed something of a persecution complex as a result.  I was accused of being a Satanist, more than once.  So, we banded together, bonding over games, and thumbing our noses at the world.  We took pride in our identity as rebels, and accepted everyone who was welcome to game and rebel with us.

Times have changed, though.  Games are more acceptable, if not outright mainstream.  But, my generation gave yours our persecution complex.  Now, you've become rebels without an enemy.  And because our complex runs so deep, I think your generation is spoiling for a fight, and finding enemies where there are none.

So, if this is the hill you want to die on, feel free.  I don't believe in telling people what battles they should fight.  But I do think that this is a battle you cannot win, and gamer culture may take a deathblow as a result of this.  The gamer identity is kind of fading anyway, games are so mainstream that it's no longer a defining feature.  I hate to see it pass, but gamergate and "journalism ethics" may be signs of its last gasp.

Considering the standard of evidence which has been used to associate a vast majority of these attacks with us, you're going to have to make a convincing case.  Since #GamerGate was formed for that exact purpose of separating ourselves from the undesirable roots of the initial scandal to focus on the ethical segments, the futility of that is empirically proven.

Basically, to hold ourselves apart from the undesirables for these people in any way that would satisfy them, we'd have to stop raising the issue entirely.  In other words, they're telling us to shut up unless we want to be called sexists.



This is a completely false claim.  For every woman you can name whom GamerGate is targeting I can name three men.  This is a false narrative.  And I am using a high standard, as in there is a document to actually say "we are targeting these businesses' advertisers; they associate with these people, and they committed the following criminal/unethical acts.", not some anonymous twitter account.  I'll name nine of them now to cover the three who have been on television.

(even though they are not being targeted by GamerGate, since one's an iPhone game dev, the other helped make a choose-your-own-adventure text game, and the third runs a crowdfunded video series on critical theory as applied to videogames.  None of which has obligations towards ethical journalism).

Ben Kuchera
Dan Golding
Stephen Totillo
Mike Pearl
Kyle Orland
Joseph Bernstein
Robert Chipman
Ezra Klein
Nick Denton
--- Bonus Person
Sam Biddle
Nathan Grayson
Robin Arnott






None of the major ones do, no (except CSPAN LIVE coverage of congress).  But I don't see an argument here.  The standards still exist among organizations like Reuters and the Society of Professional Journalists, they're still written down, they're still taught in University.  It's not some art lost to the depths of time, it's just laziness.



I've never gone to a Convention but maybe next year I will.  The "fake geek girl" is as real as the "fake geek guy", the more correct term is hipster.  I've never met a fake geek girl, but I remember watching G4 back when it existed to show games and thinking "man, that guy doesn't know anything about games, what a phony".



I was accused of satanism by my own family members, and was bullied heavily as a kid because of my hobbies, beaten up, mugged, attacked on my paper route and thrown into a river.  It's not a complex, it was reality.

Based on what I've seen being said in articles, the mainstream news, forums, twitter, you name it, I really can't say where you get the idea that gamers don't have a social stigma anymore or aren't persecuted.

https://coxrare.files.wordpres...17-at-6-03-12-am.png



We shall see how things work out, but I am feeling really good about this.  Not about the media nerdshaming mind you, no I'm seeing a therapist and am on suicide watch because of that.  But if GamerGate is going to lose, it'll be after everybody who feels the same way I do dies of old age, because I'm not going to stop fighting for what is right no matter how many horrible names they call me, comparing me to the KKK, ISIS, Westboro Baptists, doesn't matter.

If there is any hill to die on, it's on a hill made from the bodies of crooks, bullies, and misologists.  I don't believe it will come to that however.  Holiday Season will determine if this is a long or a short game.

Are you seriously trying to say if most people can't tell the difference between gamergaters, it's our fault for not using "empirical standards"?  Dude, you may as well call youself NAMBLA or Westboro, and then blame everyone else for getting you confused.


I'll put my money down here.  Online, I've seen reports from almost a hundred women who say they've been harassed by gamergaters.  Now, name 300 men who've recieved similar threats.

Journalistic integrity is, for all practical purposes, dead.  If it exists anywhere, it's just lip service.  It's now the Internet era, and the new doctrine is: verify, verify, verify.

You might have thought it, but girls get harassed for it.  Cosplayers especially, they get a lot of flak.  That's the reality of geek girls.

Hate to break it to you, but the popular perception of gamergaters is that they're silly and annoying.  No one really takes them seriously, and the louder you scream, the less seriously people will take you.  And if you take stronger action, then you're no different than the doxxers and sexists who threaten women.

Gamergaters have already lost.  Because they're closely linked with toxic sexists, the movement will never be taken seriously, and outside the gaming community, no one cares about integrity in gaming jounralism.  No one cares about integrity in journalism period, else Fox News wouldn't the the #1 news channel, despite being fact-checked at about a 50% lie rate.  All that's in doubt is how much of the gamer culture will crash and burn with it.

Are you seriously trying to say if most people can't tell the difference between gamergaters, it's our fault for not using "empirical standards"?  Dude, you may as well call youself NAMBLA or Westboro, and then blame everyone else for getting you confused.


I'll put my money down here.  Online, I've seen reports from almost a hundred women who say they've been harassed by gamergaters.  Now, name 300 men who've recieved similar threats.

Journalistic integrity is, for all practical purposes, dead.  If it exists anywhere, it's just lip service.  It's now the Internet era, and the new doctrine is: verify, verify, verify.

You might have thought it, but girls get harassed for it.  Cosplayers especially, they get a lot of flak.  That's the reality of geek girls.

Hate to break it to you, but the popular perception of gamergaters is that they're silly and annoying.  No one really takes them seriously, and the louder you scream, the less seriously people will take you.  And if you take stronger action, then you're no different than the doxxers and sexists who threaten women.

Gamergaters have already lost.  Because they're closely linked with toxic sexists, the movement will never be taken seriously, and outside the gaming community, no one cares about integrity in gaming jounralism.  No one cares about integrity in journalism period, else Fox News wouldn't the the #1 news channel, despite being fact-checked at about a 50% lie rate.  All that's in doubt is how much of the gamer culture will crash and burn with it.

As a lifelong gamer, a liberal feminist, a woman who is approaching thirty far faster than I ever care to think about, and as someone who remembers this from the beginning, and has a few experiences that I can identify with from this group on either side.

I more or less agree with Katisara on this one. I think his post nails it most for me, short though it may be. What I've seen from the initial movement are just matters I can't condone. I agree with most of Katisara's points, but one last one in particular is the one that irks me the most.



That's the one that gets me. By all accounts, even the GamerGate side, this started with the account of developer Zoey Quinn, and the accusation that she slept around for favorable reviews of her game Depression Quest. These have since been so very thoroughly debunked, thanks in large part due to the unreliable narrator who publicized these details in the first place (a bitter ex-boyfriend). But why did it require that decidedly sexist jumping point to get the ball rolling on what is declared to be a serious, community wide cry against of journalistic payola and the inappropriately close ties between developers and journalistic institutions?

You already pointed out, Sciencemile, that there are a number of journalists, including males journalists, along with websites, magazines, and developers who the GamerGate have taken to task of for inappropriate behavior. That's great! So why now? It's not like it wasn't a known issue for years by this point. Jeff Gerstman, for example, was fired from Gamespot for giving a less than glowing review to a game that was being heavily advertized by the site. That happened back in 2007. Why didn't the outrage come back then? Why did it take the inclusion of a salacious story involving a woman sleeping around for favorable reviews (which involved some incredibly insulting assumptions to even begin taking seriously), and the less-than-noble shitstorm that followed for the gaming community to start this?

Look, I completely understand the majority of GamerGate supporters, who are concerned about their blanket condemnation and how the community is being portrayed as a boy's club. I was a gamer in the 90s. I missed the worst parts back in the 80s and the Satanism, thankfully, but I certainly remember the strange looks, insults, the concerned parental lectures, the scapegoating for societal ills and popular dismissal you get as identifying as a gamer back then. Heck, I remember the strange reactions I got from fellow gamers back when gaming really was a boys club, because gaming girls were often considered something of an oddity or a phony trying to get nerd cred. The gaming community has come a hell of a long way since then, and I completely understand wanting to represent the diversity that now comes with the territory of being a gamer.

But I'm sorry, this movement has been tainted with misogyny from it's conception. It's cool that some, maybe even most, GamerGate advocates are trying to take it back from it's misogynistic roots. I truly believe most of it's supporters are well-meaning in their intentions, and just trying to stick up for their fellow gamers. But to the popular media, to the feminist community, and to much of the world at this point, you've lost them. It's been too mired with rapey threats and anti-femininst charges, and the sad thing is, there's a small basis of reality that will always follow those wild accusations, even if those elements have been managed to be thrown out, simply by it's past actions before the movement became serious.

My advice, to a fellow gamer truly concerned about the cause? Give up the name. The name's the problem, not the cause. Feminists don't really have any issue with the concern for journalistic integrity, they just question it's sincerity. They see the GamerGate advocates as either misogynists who are resisting women being included in their hobby and want to keep their highly-sexualized characters and uber masculine protagonists, or people who are trying to save face for the community by changing the original focus of the cause to a more politically acceptable one, or even to try and make themselves seem like the victims. Until you all let the GamerGate label die, any progress it makes will be brushed aside because people already associate the label with the boy's club xenophobia and with harassing female developers. Let the hashtag die. Once the dust has settled, and people have largely forgotten about it (which won't take long in this era, really), bring up the issue of journalistic integrity once again, under a new name (GamerGate kinda sucked as a name anyway, it's nothing like WaterGate, try GamingIntegrity or Game-ola or something). Oh, and make sure the founding intent stays far away from women's sex lives, unlike this one, or men's for that matter. That way, maybe you'll have a chance of the larger media actually listening to your charges.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:11, Wed 05 Nov 2014.

I'd just like to compliment Vexen on an excellent post. Not being a PC or console gamer, I don't have an interest here and have only tangentially heard about what's going on with GG, so I have nothing to add to the conversation. Still, I've been reading what SM and GMC have been writing on this thread, and they've been talking past each other the way that so often happens in this "game".

That's not really putting your money down.  That's saying that you have money, since you didn't name any names but expect me to.  But very well, I will give you what you asked for and more.  15,413 GamerGate twitterers who have received harassment.  Not all of them are men, but I don't think that it will matter in terms of meeting the quota.

https://raw.githubusercontent....ster/block_names.txt

Even though you didn't say the kind of harassment they received, so I cannot be certain they did not receive similar harassment, here is a database of the harassment received by members of GamerGate throughout the lifetime of the event so you can compare.

http://gamergateharassment.tumblr.com/archive

I provide actual names and evidence of harassment via screenshots to match your claim of a number of unnamed people receiving undescribed harassment.  Yet I will probably be the one who has his claims dismissed.  At some point yes, you're going to have to take personal responsibility for not being able to tell the difference between us and members of NAMBLA, there's only so far we can go to accommodate your inability to tell the difference before it becomes your responsibility.



You keep saying journalistic integrity is dead in one way or another.  That's simply an unacceptable reality.

Either integrity needs to be restored to journalists and journalistic sites, or they need to be put out of a job, because a journalist without integrity is just another individual rumormonger, and one that doesn't deserve the special privileges and access journalists were originally granted because of their reputation for integrity.

So far, they've decided that it is better to go bankrupt than to be responsible.  So be it, they will be replaced by those who will be responsible.

If they have outlived their purpose in this internet age, then they won't be replaced by anyone, and we will have eliminated waste.  So be it.



It's only been 3 months since the movement started.  The people who need to take us seriously now are taking us seriously, and the popular perception doesn't matter.  We will debunk the false narrative with the overwhelming truth of our consumer action and its consequences.

The only people screaming louder and louder are the corrupt journalists who stand to lose their jobs if consumers continue to voice our displeasure to the industry and advertisers.  They do so via proxy, but then they did get their jobs because of connections, not competence.



Are you saying that an organization with toxic roots will never be taken seriously?
I disagree with your association of us, but even if the perception is there, history shows contemporary examples contrary to your claim.

And to say that we've lost is to not know what the game is.



I believe you highly underestimate how many people actually care about this.  Or maybe I overestimate.  We shall see.  But I think that, since the games press is funded by gamers and advertisers selling to gamers, that the gaming community is all that is needed to improve journalistic integrity in the games press.

If we are successful, who knows how many people outside of the gaming community who are watching this will feel re-enfranchised to their consumer power, who want what we want, but feel powerless to change things.



They'd have to kill every single one of us, destroy every single fetish, statuette, painting, museum, piece of pottery, and other monument to gaming culture.  We're not going away. No matter how many times they claim we're dead, we're not.

Just want to make some comments on a few things Vexen said.



Actually it's been confirmed that Nathan Grayson did not disclose their relationship, whatever it might have been at the time, at the time of publishing pieces that talk about her or her game. It's not even a matter of sex, they were friends beforehand, he is mentioned in the special thanks section of her game (not recently either, the game was last edited in February of 2013), and Zoe Quinn stated that he helped beta-test her game.  None of this was disclosed.

None of this in anyway is criticism of Zoey Quinn.  Robin Arnott, a judge who was responsible for giving her an award, rather than recusing himself from judging because of their relationship, is also not criticism of Zoey Quinn.  Nor is it criticism of her that a Married Man who was also her Boss engaged in a sexual relationship with her behind his wife's back.

All of these things are criticized because of those people's positions, and the violation of ethics that they're supposed to be held to.  A Journalist not disclosing his relationship with the subject, an Impartial Judge, a Boss sleeping with an employee.  Conflicts of Interest.



Streisand Effect.  That's what I think is the greatest amplifier of this is.



It did, it was called DoritoGate.  EDIT: Actually that was a seperate controversy, there was actually one called Gerstman-Gate (sigh, so many gates, you know the next controversy if this one dies is going to have a -gate too probably :/)


There's been outrage at each of these things, steadily growing, as has been the contempt for the audience on behalf of the press.

I remember the outrage at the Mass Effect 3 in 2012 ending bait-and-switch, and how the games press started insulting anyone who was dissatisfied with the way things had been advertised vs the way things had actually happened as "entitled".

http://www.forbes.com/sites/er...f-gamer-entitlement/



That wasn't actually what started it.  It was closing of ranks and the censoring that followed that started GamerGate.  The Streissand Effect.

The initial controversy was called The Quinnspiracy, or 5GuysBurgers&Fries, and they were focusing on Quinn definitely.  People discussing this were dismissed by people like me for the same reasons you are dismissing it.  Then came the banning and censoring across a huge number of the big sites, sites that you wouldn't expect to be banning things like that since they allow far far worse. Not just banning people for that, but for even discussing the possibility of ethical violations.

People like me saw people closing ranks around this issue instead of letting it burn out, and it made us go "wait, maybe there's something more to this", and holy crap was there ever something more to this.



I understand your concerns, however I cannot with good conscience follow such a course of action despite not following it in every other example you could apply it to.

I am still a citizen of the United States, and I still vote Democrat.  Neither of these group's roots will convince me to expatriate myself, or to vote Republican now.

EDIT: I kinda wish it wasn't called GamerGate, all the -Gates are pretty silly...but Adam Baldwin started the Hashtag and that's history :/
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:34, Wed 05 Nov 2014.

That site has a very broad definition of "harassment".  Hurting your feelings is not the same as active threats, and none of the "harassers" are identified as feminists.  It looks like a site where people got trolled, to be honest.

However, I will acknowledge that I may have been overly broad.  I've seen reports from about 300 women that they're received threats from someone who identified as part of gamergate.  These threats range from  "Bitch, I'll fuck you up" at the mild end, and death threats at the high end.  What can you produce to compare to that?  And don't just post people who have been trolled, if that;s your standard, I can proivde a list of thousands.


Movements that fail to acknowledge reality are doomed from the start.

This saddens me.  Sciencemile, I know how smart you are.  But you seem to have blinded yourself to the fact that social movements are won in the court of public opinion.  If gamergate had a legitimate social issue (it doesn't) and if it was a legitimate social movement (it's not), it would still fail if it does not recognize this fact.  Popular perception matters, and there, you've already lost.


Not unless they take extreme steps to disassociate themselves from their toxic members.  During the Civil Rights movement, the two biggest voices for black rights were Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.  King's movement took strong steps to separate themselves from the pro-violence Black Panthers, and ultimately, they became dominant.

There are many others. During the early 80's, NAMBLA was held up as an example of how evil the gay community was.  It took years for them to separate themselves, and now, gay marriage is legal across the country.  The Islamic-American community nearly circled the wagons after 9/11, but a concerted effort from the president on down convinced people to stop harassing American Muslims, by making sure people understood the difference.


First, the battle for journalism is long over.

Second, nobody cares.  Gaming is becoming more popular, but honestly, I haven't looked at a gaming magazine in years, online or otherwise.  When I want information on a game, I look up information on several sites, usually fan-based.  Or, I'll check a forum or three and read the responses.

What this means is, only a fraction of gamers actually consume gaming journalism.  It's a niche market in a niche market, and was almost dead anyway.  Most of the "journalists" you complain about aren't true journalists, they're bloggers.  They're individuals with an internet soapbox, and are about as trustworthy as any other internet source.

Third, the more your compare yourself to a real social movement, the harder it will be for real social movements to gain hold.  The general public is already dismissive of gamergate, if future geek-based social movements appear, the public will say: "Oh, it's just gamergate all over again", and dismiss them.

Fourth: You've got an interesting contradiction going here.  On the one hand, you claim public perception doesn't matter.  On the other, you claim you've got a majority of something on your side. Those statements are inconsistent: if your movement is right without being numerous, why are you so concerned with the number of members?

Fifth: are you familiar with the concept of groupthink?  You seem to be showing signs of it.  You're intelligent, but you're also repeating the party line.

See, the popular perception of gamergaters is the traditional troll in someone's basement.  The sexism moved them from "harmless" to "threat".  But if you spend most of your time talking to other people who agree with you, your perceptions will drift far away from reality.  There's a lot of examples of this you can research.

Also, even within the gamer community, gamergaters are a minority.  I'm on multiple major gaming forums, and every one is shaking their head at gamergate.  Nobody is willing to support them after the crimes committed under their flag.

My advice?  Take some time away from your usual feeds, and look long and hard at what others are saying.  Try and see things from another perspective.

Wow, martyrdom.  And people wonder why gamergaters have trouble being taken seriously?

Ok, Sciencemile.  I see that you've been persecuted for being a gamer.  And I feel for you, I really do, the persecution was bad in my day.  But, you've made it clear that my generation's persecution complex is still part of the gamer identity.  That persecution was part of what gave gamers counterculture cred back in the day.

Gaming is mainstream, now. Gaming doesn't make you counterculture anymore.  The way gamergaters are acting, they seem to think gaming is some secret persecuted underground movement, just waiting for its turn for a civil rights movement.  That's not the case, and I'd debate rather or not it was ever the case.  But, it is true that gamers still have a persecution complex, inherited from my generation; and now, even if they don't have an enemy persecuting them, they make ones up.

Gamergate is dead, it just hasn't stopped moving yet.  In the battle for public opinion, the only battle that matters, gamergate has not just lost, it's been whipped and sent running with its head hanging in shame.  All that matters is how much thrashing the corpse can manage, and how many gamers it takes down with it.

Really, gamergate is similar to the backlash from any entity that realizes it's losing power and cohesiveness.  I've seen some arguments that the gamer identity is dying, and gamergate is the last gasp of the old mentality.  Given that you're using last stand language, I'd say there's some truth to it.  The gamer identity is dying, they're acknowledging they're on their last breath, and it's only a question as to what legacy the gamer identity will leave behind.  Unfortunately, it may end up being the sexism of gamergate.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:39, Wed 05 Nov 2014.

EDIT: I say several times here and in previous comments that this is "Not a Social Movement".  Now, in some senses it can be said to be a social movement.  However, in the contexts of set goals, and the ways in which people intend to achieve these goals, it cannot be said to be behaving as a social movement.  It's behavior is more descriptive of a consumer movement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_movement



I and other people have accused of victim blaming and misogyny for making that very same argument.



Perhaps we should establish how to identify genuine harassment from being trolled before we can proceed.  Establish standards before we start dismissing anything as not meeting our standards.  Because I'm not sure by what standards you conclude "Bitch, I'll fuck you up" is harassment, but that the below message is only trolling.

http://38.media.tumblr.com/29d...My1tkhroeo1_1280.png





Like I said, you're missing what game this is.  It's not a social movement.




Come on, clearly this isn't true.  You don't care, but a lot of people do.



Except when they want access to E3 or a review copy of a game in advance, or some other benefit that being a blogger wouldn't get them, then they're journalists.

 

And they will either become deserving of the privilege they have over other soapboxers, or lose that privilege.



This is why changing the movement's name or giving up now and waiting until later is pointless, the fool's compromise.



It's not a contradiction, you're simply still looking at this as a social movement.

The public perception doesn't matter, because even though gaming has become more mainstream, the public at large still doesn't purchase video-games.

The majority that is on our side, the majority that matters, are the advertisers and the publishers. People who base their actions and support around the bottom line and market demographics more than the nebulous public opinion, and have reacted appropriately; advertisers have begun to pull their campaigns from the offending sites, and Press Badges, Advance Copies, and Exclusive interviews have been withheld and given to other outlets who have revised their ethics standards.



Listen, if "Popular Perception" as informed by a corrupt media isn't an example of groupthink, I don't know what is.  I don't accuse you of these things because I respect your ability to think for yourself.

I see you repeating claims that have been made of us on the media and I don't accuse you of "towing the party line", I think that you have found somebody else's claim and considered it valid enough to present.

I'd really appreciate if you could extend the same courtesy to me.
I've presented news articles both positive and negative towards GamerGate.



I don't think you understand the intent of my comment.  The point isn't martyrdom, it's to point out the ridiculousness that somehow this push is going to go away, like we somehow only exist on the internet.

and that continuing to say things like this:



Doesn't make it true, because all you're doing is saying it.



I'm sorry you feel that way, and you can see that the sentiment is what informs the actions of our opposition, but it really isn't true, and if what we believe will happen comes to pass, it'll be a harsh reminder that The Customer is always right.
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:49, Wed 05 Nov 2014.

If none of this is a criticism of Zoey Quinn, or her sex-life, why include it in the first place? Why did you feel the need to mention the alleged affair? Why was this significant enough for any one to inspect this woman's sex life and memorize it? Like Katisara said, there seems to be a strange obsession with the female developers and their personal lives. If it's not important, why bring it up?

I ask because, as someone who isn't particularly involved in GamerGate, and is trying to be sympathetic to the plight of the gaming community I like to consider myself a part of, that is a strange detail that I just don't see any justification for. If it's not important, why is there so much attention to the details of her personal life?

As a side note, married men are supposed to publish the details of their extramarital affairs now? I mean, you say this isn't about the affair itself, but rather, that he didn't disclose it. I mean, sure, you can push for that, but I don't really see married men wanting to disclose their extramarital affairs they're presuming to hide from their wives simply out of journalistic integrity. That might be an unreasonable expectation.



Except DoritoGate Gerstman-Gate didn't get this big. It was rather short-lived. It didn't catch the passion of the gamer community as a whole, just a small minority, and it certainly didn't catch media attention at large. So the question remains: why Zoey Quinn?



Hold on. I thought this cause was supposed to be about the close relationships between gaming media and game developers. Granted, this story doesn't paint gamers in a good light, but what does this have to do with that? Colin Moriarty isn't accused of having too close a tie to developers, just being sympathetic to their concerns. Is it a sin now, according to GamerGate, to not agree with the consumer complaints? Cause I think the man's entitled to his opinion, even if it happens to be an unpopular one.

That's a strange thread I also found while investigating your claims. That list of journalists for example. I was actually familiar with Ezra Kline. So, naturally, when you mentioned his name as someone GamerGate is targeting, I was curious enough to look into it. But, after looking through a few pro-GamerGate sites, I found that the largest criticism against the man was for not taking the GamerGate side, and making some inaccurate generalizations about the population he's likely not a part of (a sin, no doubt, but hardly one limited to him). Is that worthy of the cause now? Because it's starting to look less like this is about journalistic integrity, and more like targeting anyone who disagrees with the majority of the gaming community.

And, I have to say, if that's the concern, it paints the GamerGate cause as a far less noble one than I originally was taking it for. You have to let people have opinions, even disagreeable ones. That shouldn't be a basis for targeting. Stay focused on the original cause. Otherwise, it just looks like lashing out against anyone you disagree with, and running with a persecution complex, and that's not going to win over the perfectly rational people you're trying to appeal to.



It sounds like you're trying to dismiss my statement on a technicality. The "Quinnspiracy" is what got the ball rolling. So much so that GamerGate activists, even well-meaning ones like yourself, have taken the time and effort to document and memorize intimate details of this woman's personal life, even as they try to prove she wasn't at any point involved. It's silly to say that it wasn't related to how this got started. Even by your own account, GamerGate wouldn't had started in the first place if it wasn't for the Quinnspiracy, even if you're reluctant to tie the two together.

Ever think that, maybe, just maybe, these matters were initially dismissed and people banned because it had gotten out of hand, just like you thought it did initially? Most people thought the whole Zoey Quinn thing was unjustified, but so many people were shouting to the hills about it. I remember 4chan at the time, the threads were constant, unending. Why couldn't it had been just being sick of the subject? Or, from the more popular forms of media when this stuff was starting to be protested, just wanting to rid themselves of a decidedly sexist cause?

I think there's a lot of fantasy thinking going on by the GamerGate side here, attaching conspiracy theories or sinister intentions where there likely isn't any. It's understandable, because they feel persecuted (and to a degree, they are right to feel that way), but panic and anger don't lend themselves to an objective look at their opposition's perspective. There are self-serving interest, perhaps, in the way that all businesses tend to be, but not as complex as some of the GamerGate notions seem to make them out. Some websites and businesses do take pre-emptive measures to save themselves from possible PR follies. Considering how much the Zoey Quinn thing was getting out of hand, and how obviously misogynistic it was initially (or just appeared to be from the outset), they might had just wanted to nip it in the bud before they were going to be tagged with being associated with it.

I think there are often perfectly reasonable, non-sinister causes the explain away much of these controversies. Not innocent, perhaps, but not quite as all-encompassing evil. Dogmatism rarely lends itself to rational and thoughtful consideration. You have to be willing to look at things from the other side. And, thusfar, while I understand the concerns that the gaming journalism culture sees itself as different than the gamer culture as a whole, I just don't see their actions thusfar as particularly sinister. Quick to judgement, maybe, but not ill-intended.



I'd say a country and a political movement that has a century or two of acceptance and trust established within it's popular culture is a bit different from a fringe sub-culture that's challenging their stigmatization. It's not that it's any less pure, just that the established institutions (America and the Democratic party in this instance) have had a century or more to build themselves up to main acceptance, or were accepted from the start. They can afford the scandal now, because there's plenty of people who will still associate it with good principles.

Gamers just don't have that luxury. You're a relatively small community (growing larger all the time, but still not quite mainstream) that's trying to challenge a stigmatization and earn mainstream acceptance. It can't afford unnecessary black-eyes now. Not yet. GamerGate is too tainted to redeem, justified or not. You need to cast it away before it gets associated with the gaming community as a whole.

It's like the Swastika. Was it always about Nazism? No, absolutely not. It actually had an innocent history. But Nazism changed that in the world's eyes. Now, if a German Nationalist party wants to redeem itself, it's certainly possible. But, to do so, after it had been cast out by society at large, it needs to purge itself from all ties from the vilified movement. Even something as relatively innocent as the swastika. Not because it's inherently evil. But because it's just too tainted. You can fight to the end of your life to try to redeem the Swastika, but I think that energy would be put to better use by focusing on the ultimate cause of German nationalist interest, rather than dying for a relatively minor element of the cause.

The "GamerGate" name is a small price to pay in the scheme of things. If they are serious about making this an issue and reforming gaming journalism, and the reputation of gamers, then they need to focus on the larger issue, and not get caught up in dogmatic purist hang-ups.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:52, Wed 05 Nov 2014.

Honesty, I guess?  It's important to show your work.  What would the alternative be, not mentioning where investigations started?



The ethical concerns really aren't about her, it's about the people with whom the ethical concerns actually apply, whom happen to be all men by the way.



Because people ask how the controversy started, and we don't believe in historical revisionism, even by omission.

The omissive answer to "How did GamerGate Start" would be "It was started by Adam Baldwin as a result of the massive outpouring of "Gamers are Dead" articles over the course of 2 days, as well as massive censorship in response to any outrage over the articles."

Would you prefer that instead?  How would you feel if we left out the other part, even though it really doesn't matter?



Like I said, her personal life isn't important, it is only by nature that it takes 2+ to tango that she is mentioned at all.  As to the personal lives of journalists, that's only important so far as it applies to undisclosed conflicts of interest, which are important to disclose so as not to mislead the reader.  If you are friends with somebody and are talking about them or their game, you should state in the article that you are friends with them.  If you're a judge and one of the contestants is your friend, you need to recuse yourself from judging their game.  If you're an employer, you're not supposed to sleep with employees, because you're taking advantage of a position of power.



No, it's not even the affair part.  You're not supposed to abuse your position of power, or even appear to be abusing your position of power, by dating people under your employ/management.  Most people in other industries and fields would be fired for that, and have.  It's one of the things they teach you in those company meetings on sexual harassment in the workplace.

Edit-----------------------------------------

Here's a pamphlet, relevant section begins on page 5, but the whole things good, really.

As I've said before I am also a feminist and I'm very familiar with a lot of things like this that were implemented to educate and enforce a safer workplace environment for everybody.

http://www.hrhero.com/basictraining/BTE_Ethics_6.pdf

-------------------------------------------



As I've said, each event that has happened has resulted in a larger outcry over a longer period of time, with more and more people.  And actually the Mass Effect 3 ending did reach the mainstream media.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIq0ehGsdKE



That is one of the concerns.  The concerns also involve other ethical things, like the close relationships between competing press outlets.  Ethics an professionalism throughout the entire industry.  I pointed out three distinct examples earlier in this post and also in previous posts.



Perhaps.  Everyone's entitled to their opinion.  If you're consistently disagreeing with majority consumer complaints in a consumer press magazine, however, you should find it very hard to monetize that opinion.

Frankly, that is a separate issue, but I included it because it did catch the passion of the community at large for many of the same reasons, and there is a general consensus that you shouldn't be coming out against the consumer when you're the consumer press.  And it's not like it was just Colin Moriarty, it was similar to the "Gamers are Dead" statement, where tons of articles and videos from across the press came out in a short period of time.

The thing is has in common with this movement is the games press's contempt for its readership, which has only escalated since then.





I would certainly not want Ezra Klein on GamerGate's side, no idea what site you're on that would be suggesting that.

Klein is responsible for founding JournoList, an example of independant press outlets colluding to push a uniform narrative during election season.  It resulted in a lot of controversy in the press, and a lot of journalists ended up getting fired/resigning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList

Ezra Klein is currently the EiC at Vox.com, which Polygon is a press outlet of.

A private google+ Group, called "GameJournoPros", containing EiC, Journalists, and PR people from across the media, including Polygon, was discovered to be colluding in private to push uniform narratives throughout the Games Press, as well as to fire and blacklist people who did not fit the narratives.

The establishing post of GJP, made by Kyle Orland of Arstechnica, credited the inspiration of the list's creation to JournoList.



I hope you now have the proper context and can be assured the interest in Klein is still ethically-minded.




Either we're reluctant to tie them together, or we keep bringing it up.  I don't think these two mesh very well together.  We have a desire for the truth, if you accept this statement then our statements regarding the origins of this despite our declarations of distance make sense.

World War 1 wouldn't have started if it wasn't for the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.  This doesn't mean that the vast number of people who entered the war later were doing so for his sake, even if that's how it initially started, because that's not the reason they were drawn in, and that's not what they were fighting for.

It's important to remember that here, too.



The thought crossed my mind in the past 3 months, yes.  The thought has become less and less credible the longer things have gone on and the more that has been brought to light.



That was a really bad mistake.  The thing is, the internet is like a stratographic volcano.  You do not prevent an eruption by blocking off the vents.  A lot of people in the movement want their PR departments fired as well, because they clearly don't understand public relations.  If they did, they would have had the offending parties offer apologies, kept them off twitter from making stupid comments, and then proceeded with business as usual.

What you don't do, in regards to public relations, is hire trolls to infiltrate a movement and attempt to break it up.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1lXHzECMAA55gJ.png



I'll again refer to the GJP, as well as the union-busting tactics described in the above screencap.



http://i.imgur.com/EnIgbnB.png

You don't say.



And despite the Democratic party being anti-abolitionist and conservative in the past, I still vote Democrat.  You know what the Democratic party didn't do to change its reputation?  Change its name or dismantle the party.



That's not really what we're trying to do.  If somebody says something horrible about us, we will challenge it, but that's not our goal.  It's pretty motivating though, if you just look at the history of the movement.  The more they insult us, the larger the movement grows.

Mainstream will never accept gaming culture until the older generation is gone.  It's like Rock Music or R-Rated Movies in that way.  The perception has an Ozymandian permanency for now.

What we're trying to do, is to show our consumer dissatisfaction with the current quality of the product we're consuming.  So far that tactic has been working.



I'll let Grandmaster Cain tell you why that wouldn't help anything, since nobody listened to me when I said it.


This message was last edited by the GM at 00:14, Thu 06 Nov 2014.

Fine.  Any credible threat issued to someone, generally involving rape or death threats, but also includes threats of hacking, doxxing, or other electronic damage.  And, it must be from someone who identifies as either a gamergate member, or identifies as a social justice warrior.


Ok, you say this is a consumer movement.  What percentage of consumers go to E3?


That's where you're wrong.  In the marketplace, when a businesses name is tarnished beyond repair, they have to change their name.  If gamergate is actually a consumer movement, it has to be aware of that fact.

You're wrong on multiple points.

First, public perception does matter, because without the ability to sway other consumers to your side, you will never succeed.  At the very least, you have to look like you can do so, and gamergate does not.

Second, the public at large does matter, because they're the majority of the game market.  According to Wikipedia (not a reliable site, but probably unbiased in this regard) the Xbox 360 has sold 78.2 million units worldwide since its release.  Let's assume this is correct for now.  What percentage of that market are gamergate members?  And that's just the Xbox, there's still other consoles and the PC market to consider.

Next, the advertisers and the publishers are not on your side.  Intel was originally listed as an advertiser who pulled ads in response to gamergate, but once they found out, they not only reinstated the ads but put out a public apology for even looking like they were associated with it.

Finally, a consumer movement is still dependent on large numbers and the ability to affect change.  In this case, the change is supposedly the bottom line.  I don't see any evidence that gamergate has any ability to affect the bottom line of even a niche game.


If you don't understand why you need popular perception on your side, you have indeed already lost.  Consumer movements can't win unless they have the ability to sway large numbers of people.

Look, back in the 80's, there was a church group that threatened to boycott, well, nearly everything that offended them.  The reason they were so successful was that, even though they only have a handful of members, they convinced everyone that they had hundreds of thousands of christians who'd follow their lead.  That's the power of public perception.

Well, while I admit to creative license, I was trying to show that you've crossed all the way over into purple prose.  Gamergaters are using very overdramatic language, which makes them very hard to take seriously.

*sigh* It may not be what you're trying to do, but it's what you're achieving.  And honestly, I'm the older generation.  Every gamer of my era that I know is shaking our heads at gamergate.

What's more, we're the ones who are making gaming mainstream.  Us old fogies tend to be more settled in their careers (or, in my case, retired), and we have more disposable income for games.  We also tend to have families, and we raised our kids with games (and in some cases, grandkids).  I taught my daughter to play RPG's when she was 4, and she's trying to write her own video game now.  We taught *you* to game, after all.

Actually, I believe I've said similar things, repeatedly.  If you do not separate out the toxic parts of your movement, you will fail.  You will have to abandon the name "gamergate", and whatever comes next will have to work triply hard to avoid any sign of sexism, but it is possible.  In fact, that is your only hope-- not fur success, but for any hope of recovery.

Are you referring perhaps to this statement?

http://newsroom.intel.com/comm...amasutra-advertising

Did they make a secondary statement reinstating the advertisements?  I'd very much like to know your source for this.

I believe that was it.  I've heard they reinstated the ads, but I'm not actually paying attention.  Gamergate isn't an issue in my real life, it only exists when I internet in certain places.  Which is true for most people, I might add.

Well I would like to know if you can remember where you heard it.  Some articles have been misleading about what the statement actually says, I know that much.  But maybe things have changed.

I also heard the same thing about Mercedes-Benz reinstating its ads at Gawker after pulling out, but I haven't been able to verify that either.

In both cases the publication's response to the advertisers were to write insulting articles about them, so I'm kind of skeptical that they would want to do business with such people in the near future.



I'll take your word for it.  It's hardly ebola or the midterm elections.  But I'm not a doctor or a politician.

Interesting discussion.  I'd never heard of Gamergate before all of this and had to look it up.  Strange stuff.

A few thoughts here.

1) Regarding Quinn, if the issue is journalists, how come the story is still about Quinn? Specifically, we're told about all the people she slept with. But the journalist is the issue. How come we don't know how many people the journalists have slept with? One person isn't enough to establish a pattern of behavior (unless, of course, the target is Quinn).

2) As you point out, the hashtag is started by Adam Baldwin--who also said and continues to say all sorts of nonsense stuff you REALLY don't want to hitch your wagon to. Again, my conclusion is that of all of the people I'd want to be the face of 'journalistic integrity', 'crazy guy with a lot of twitter followers' is *probably* not my first choice.

Right now from my perspective, when you say you're from Gamer Gate, I have an image in my mind of a house on fire with people jumping on everything and throwing poo. If you're going to convince me of anything, you have a long way to go just to convince me I should listen to you (and that by listening and possibly disagreeing with you, I won't get hit by poo).

That seques nicely into ...

3)  I'm pretty active in the gaming community. Mostly RPGs, but there's  a LOT of computer/platform gamers there too (no surprise, right?) I'm talking people who actually get designed to make stuff. Not just people who game a lot, but people whose names are listed on the spine of some of the big name products you probably own.

Among those people, they publicly speak out against Gamer Gate consistently. They make it clear they believe the movement is fundamentally flawed and hurting a lot of people.

Now granted, these aren't game journalists. And they aren't video game designers. (Well, except Mike Mulhvill, but he's a little out of his element there still.) But they're *really* close to that same community, and they feed many of the same fans.

They have made it clear that anything associated with GG should be cut loose. So among the people you most want to impress (the content producers) GG has already lost, and I'm pretty sure that can never be undone.


4) Totally jumping tracks here, but ...

It's all about the money. Unfortunately, the guy who shares my interests plays second fiddle to the guy who pays my mortgage. And with news sites being a race to the bottom with prices, who is paying now? Yes, when was the last time you paid money for your news (game or otherwise)? My news is free thanks to CNN and Weekly World News being posted to free web sites.

Recognize that I'm not their customers. Customers pay for a service. Their customers are advertisers.

I'm their product.

I am what CNN provides to expedia.com in exchange for a pay check.

As long as I am the product and advertisers are the consumers, how am I possibly going to make a real impact on them?

If you really want journalistic integrity, you need to put your money where your mouth is, which is to say -- pay for it.

Honestly wouldn't know, as I don't actually follow most gamer media.  I honestly don't know many people who do. If we want to find reviews or news on a game, we look it up directly or google a few dozen reviews.  I don't ever follow professional reviews.

But, if I, as a gamer, can't be bothered to follow gamergate, what makes you think non-gamers will as well?  To most people, gamergate is a total non-issue; when they make a huge mess of things, they get regarded as an annoyance.  And since companies are made up of "most people", they're even less likely to care about your grievances than I am.  They'll just see the sexist mess and stay away.

Wow!  That's a really good explanation of the state of the media these days, and one I hadn't seen put so clearly before.

Yeah.  I was digging around for a reliable source for this, but apparently, Fox News is the #1 news channel out there.  That's despite the fact that they're fact-checked to be inaccurate about 50% of the time.  If anyone's interested, I'll look for the link.

But interestingly, Fox's major competition isn't a hard news source either-- it's Jon Stewart and the Daily Show.  Now, Stewart is witty and more than a little controversial, but he's also very clear that he's not a responsible news source.  He's a comedian, on Comedy Central, and is not a reporter by any stretch of the imagination.

What this tells me is that people aren't going to responsible journalists for their news anymore.  They're going to entertainment channels that have a few news-y trappings.  This is why journalistic ethics are dead, nobody pays much attention to ethical journalism anymore.  And this is not new, this has been coming for at least thirty years, if not longer.

Unfortunately, it's incorrect.  Advertisement is a service.  Customers are not their product, advertising space is.  The value of that advertising space is based on the customer numbers, demographics, and the reputation of the site.

This is why, if customers complain about advertisers purchasing advertising space on a website, they might consider withdrawing that advertisement.

Most businesses do not view viewers at an advertising space as product, they view them as their customers.

Were the viewpoint of customers as product accurate, contacting advertisers would not be an effective boycotting tactic, but it is.  No business I know of looks at their relationship with advertisers from the aforementioned perspective.
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:42, Fri 07 Nov 2014.

"IS TOO!!!"

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.