I did a bit of research on Gamergate on my own time a few months ago, but know this: despite what people say or “revision” it did not start as one of journalistic integrity – that became a flag they claimed later that gathered many commenters on their side such as John Bain and countless others. Gamergate started as a hate campaign that indulged in unapologetic blunt comments from trolls and no-nonsense gamers. This is not to say that what Gamergate became or continued to be as once the “journalistic integrity” stance went out it only got larger. Gamergate is not a faction or club or anything – there’s no mission statement, accountability, or anything; the Mass Effect 3 Ending controversy’s anti-movement had far more accountability and structure than Gamergate has. What we have is a “movement” with no leadership and a hundred different opinions or perspectives alongside swaths of trolls, jerks, and idiots.
I do agree that the movement in its entirety shouldn’t be held accountable for the minority of trolls, however. I do not hold religious factions responsible for extremist cabals, and I thought most people would act the same. But the fact is Anita and Zoe despite their unfair assaults and abuse on their person by people they’ve never met have little patience for other critics or opposing viewpoints – if you look into their statements and quotations you will find they are some really disgusting people, and that’s not because they are women or even feminists, but just disgusting people. Anita is a professional liar and manipulator; who pushes her warped agenda, and Zoe is just a very self-absorbed narcissist at the core. Remember that the “SJW” side has its share of trolls and abusers as well; and these heralds sort of endorse sorts of behavior I cannot accept from anybody.
Also, I don’t think the way women are treated online is at root a “gamer mentality”, it is how all aggressive jerks react towards others on the internet given a lack of accountability/consequence through their anonymity. So let’s not single out gamers but how humanity chooses to treat each other when there is no consequences.
I’m sure I missed plenty of points to discuss, but I have a little time before work.
I did a bit of research on Gamergate on my own time a few months ago, but know this: despite what people say or “revision” it did not start as one of journalistic integrity – that became a flag they claimed later that gathered many commenters on their side such as John Bain and countless others. Gamergate started as a hate campaign that indulged in unapologetic blunt comments from trolls and no-nonsense gamers. This is not to say that what Gamergate became or continued to be as once the “journalistic integrity” stance went out it only got larger. Gamergate is not a faction or club or anything – there’s no mission statement, accountability, or anything; the Mass Effect 3 Ending controversy’s anti-movement had far more accountability and structure than Gamergate has. What we have is a “movement” with no leadership and a hundred different opinions or perspectives alongside swaths of trolls, jerks, and idiots.
Thank you for acknowledging the origins being less than pure. I agree with you that Gamergate is a wide swath of people who are largely unrelated, and I think this is the new template for contemporary movements, from small-consequence niche audience campaigns like Gamergate to large political movements like Occupy - clear objectives affirmed and shaped by a large base of constituents are increasingly going out of fashion as individuals become more aware of themselves as entering into certain conversations as part of an incomplete, fragmented whole that we conveniently label as "movements" because our organizational paradigms and the lexicon we use to describe them have not quite matured at the same rate as our technology.
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I do agree that the movement in its entirety shouldn’t be held accountable for the minority of trolls, however. I do not hold religious factions responsible for extremist cabals, and I thought most people would act the same. But the fact is Anita and Zoe despite their unfair assaults and abuse on their person by people they’ve never met have little patience for other critics or opposing viewpoints – if you look into their statements and quotations you will find they are some really disgusting people, and that’s not because they are women or even feminists, but just disgusting people. Anita is a professional liar and manipulator; who pushes her warped agenda, and Zoe is just a very self-absorbed narcissist at the core. Remember that the “SJW” side has its share of trolls and abusers as well; and these heralds sort of endorse sorts of behavior I cannot accept from anybody.
I agree that, in theory, movements should not be held as accountable for minorities; however, I think "gamers" are a more appropriate proxy for "the religious" in the example you provide. Gamergate, again, as all evidence I've been exposed to asserts, is more vocally symbolized by extremists, or at least people whose views on ethics in games journalism are more fleshed out and agreeable than their views on women. Unfortunately, even at r/kotakuinaction, where happymeal privately told me to look for "the real Gamergate," libertarianism and anti-feminism are prevailing ideologies that are quickly conflated with the "real" intentions of the movement, making it come across as a mass as a bullying attempt to silence dissent. This conflation and intertwining of toxic and pure elements is so deep at this point that it's difficult to parse the two.
I engage with Anita only insofar as her videos go. I think this is the only real way to position her viewpoints against the viewpoints of Gamergators, as her personal identity, as Zoe's, are largely irrelevant when talking about these larger problems. Her videos seek to challenge systems directly, while her personal identity, just like anyone's personal identity, does not and cannot seek to be 100% a challenge. If you have claims that dispute her produced material that explicitly seeks to rail against the larger monolith of "gaming culture," I am interested in hearing and dissecting those claims. I claim no allegiance to her or Zoe as individuals (or what passes for individuals in the current age - namely, Twitter feeds, public thinkpiece dramas, etc.).
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Also, I don’t think the way women are treated online is at root a “gamer mentality”, it is how all aggressive jerks react towards others on the internet given a lack of accountability/consequence through their anonymity. So let’s not single out gamers but how humanity chooses to treat each other when there is no consequences.
Ignoring your pessimistic and ahistorical view of "humans," which I would claim should be more accurately rendered as "western modern humans" to fit the current topic of discussion, I will say that I agree that this is not at root a "gamer mentality." This, I think, is not a good argument against the prevalence of misogyny in "gamer culture," or more accurately, how that culture manifests itself in public spaces, but it is important to keep in mind that these problems exist within the larger system of neoliberalism (individuals and markets are the two levels we are allowed to engage with) and patriarchy (women are very widely maligned and subject to deeply-ingrained cultural norms such that abuses are made all the more silent, as Squishy more eloquently related earlier in the thread). I would hesitate to dilute the problem the way you do to "aggressive jerks react[ing]" because that simplifies the problem too much and again allows actors to work within a vacuum void of cultural contexts.
No one, I think, is "singling out" gamers, but as has been so repeatedly mentioned in this thread, you can't attack patriarchy as a whole and really think you're doing anything. I think that focused and sustained criticism of the video game industry seeks no more and no less than a shifting of the discussions going on in that specific area with the hopes that because it is an industry with a large amount of influence that it will become more in line with film, music, literature, and other artforms - territories that are not perfectly anti-sexist, but rather provide fair footing for the kinds of intensely thought-provoking discourses that exist in those other media. Sure, Anita Sarkeesian is no bell hooks, and I don't want to be seen as conflating the two women's influence (and I'm sure Anita would be one of the first to adamantly deny equal footing to the latter genius), but change has to begin in some critique, and I thank her for providing it, iconoclasm and exaggerations aside.
The thing is there is an outside discussion about sexism and minimal (or, at times, non-existant) portrayel of women in video games because the industry itselfs refuses to openly discuss any valid criticism & insights about how that overlapping trend of poor, dichotomic representation and violent treatment of women in games affects an increasingly co-ed consumer base. Not to mention a good number online gamers (Im not saying all) who also refuse to confront the issue and use misogynistic language and casual death threats as a sort of "don't intrude on my fantasy world" statement. If the status quo refuses to address the issue, than those who are affected by it will and they have every right to state their argument as the video devolpers have the right to make their games.
Yes, at the end of the day it really is the industry's responibility to not only address the issue but also work for a fairier, more equal treatment of everybody in the games they so treasure. The thing is games will become much richer if they take on a wider scope and put in different perspectives, both masculine and feminine, rather than just pre-dominantly cater to a macho-male fantasy view of things. However, if they want to keep going with the latter and refuse to consider critical outside viewpoints, then they have to deal with perhaps losing more and more of a burgeoning audience and continued criticisms of the un-equal and flagrantly near-sided indulgence that still, and perhaps will continue, to affect both the industry and the video-gaming audience at large.
This is a real-issue with wider consequences, not something to be swept under the rug because video games are deemed less important or because some people should just shut up and deal with the established powers that be.
I think that this is one of the better editorials I've read about Gamergate and am interested in reactions.
If Gamergate discourse has run its course here, I think this is a more timely article from the same publication that might evolve into a good conversation here.
Thanks for taking the time to respond so far. I've had a good time going back and forth on this issue and think there's been good, if not mind-changing conversation, and this is one of the better threads I've engaged with on BEA.
Thanks for taking the time to respond so far. I've had a good time going back and forth on this issue and think there's been good, if not mind-changing conversation, and this is one of the better threads I've engaged with on BEA.
Just a heads up that anything you link me to that vaguely smells of Chicago School economics or some equally disgusting ideology will not get read
I do not adhere to ideologies. I think each case should be viewed with the relevant evidence and a decision should be made based upon that.
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1. You need to explain, in the case of video game journalism, what censorship is going on, why it is inherently destructive, and why it is worse than an epidemic of sexism in the industry, as analyzed by journalists within and outside of the industry. I can provide specific articles and videos if you would like to bolster the latter part of that statement, but you seem familiar with the relevant literature, or at least you are familiar enough with it to say that it is all falsehood when held against "the real Gamergate," a movement the limits of which have still not been defined adequately to me and seem more like Squishy's "no true Scotsman" claim than anything else.
I've already linked you via private message to several things including the subreddit for GG related discussion. I'm not stating that this will change your mind, but the relevant evidence in a package has been delivered. I've never stated shit that x was true gamergate or x wasn't true gamergate, just that a lot of the attacks on various media characters get conflated with gamergate when, in truth, those are made by independent people or parties or whatever. Whether those are trolls or not is irrelevant. However, I will concede there has been some harassment (I believe 1% of tweets with the #gamergate though I'll have to look over the stats again) involved in the gamergate hashtag, but it's so minimal that basing your perspective on an entire movement because of that 1% is insane.
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2. You need to engage with what I am saying about sexism in this argument, as I am trying to articulate the ideas of people like Anita Sarkeesian and others in a way that you might perceive as less threatening or at least more nuanced. Your replies to my direct discussions of how dialectical engagement with systems works has been to come through with vague, tired platitudes about composite parts of a system. If you need me to articulate my point further or I wasn't clear that I value individuals and systems, I can. Once you acknowledge this point, I can discuss how solutions to problems happen when you have this view of how systems are created and perpetuated and how individuals act and are affected. Until you do that, I really can't engage because we are talking past each other.
You engaged me on this system discussion. I honestly don't care about this portion of the discussion as I've already stated I believe that there is no sexism in gaming in a systemic sense. There are certainly some (a minimal amount of) sexists and there are certainly assholes. However, this minority, unless proven otherwise, does not represent the whole.
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3. I am more than willing to provide them
Evidence is important especially when it's you making the assertions. Don't be like religion. You have a variety of assertions that I engaged you on and when evidence isn't presented, it's impossible for me to engage those points. I don't believe in god because there is no strong evidence that suggests it exists. That's the same way as not believing in your points unless evidence is provided. However, if you have proper evidence for every assertion you've made and are willing to present it, then go ahead. I will attempt to wade through it, but that doesn't mean I'll be able to do it in a timely manner.
That article is a portion of the evidence proving Nathan had a relationship with Zoe. I'm not sure why you're showing me this. The problem Gamergaters had with this response is that Stephen Totilo had not upheld ethical standards previously until he was called out on it which put into question Kotaku's ethics as a whole. In regards to this situation, this video will put the gamergater viewpoint into perspective better than I can https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wt8k-3xD5s
It's a very complex and nuanced event.
Gowi wrote:
I did a bit of research on Gamergate on my own time a few months ago, but know this: despite what people say or “revision” it did not start as one of journalistic integrity – that became a flag they claimed later that gathered many commenters on their side such as John Bain and countless others
I find you to be an intelligent character who does a very thorough job on topics typically, but this is just dishonest. Internetaristocrat, Mundanematt, Sargon of akkad, Jennie Bharaj, etc., all prominent GGers, were creating videos, making tweets, creating responses to things, etc. ever since the beginning. I typically assume you research things thoroughly, but I'm calling this claim as bullshit. I'm not stating there weren't harassers, but trying to state that GG did not start out as something involving journalistic integrity is flat out lying.
i, too, have been to high school. try not to be such a pedant.
Lol, I think there's a huge distinction between presenting a fundamental portion of discussion and publicizing obscure knowledge. If asking for evidence is "pedantic", then so be it. I see nothing wrong with questioning the validity of claims instead of outright believing them.
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