GamerGate WTF?

[Rageaholic]

So now the quinnspiracy stuff is making sense. It's not so much the reviews, it's the censorship of anything bad about Quinn.

-Shit gets out about the sex life of a game developer.
-Mods on message boards go crazy censoring any thing that paints her in a bad light.
-People start to suspect foul play.
-MRA gets involved, accusing the mods of being pussywhipped (hence all the 'mangina' crap). Some assholes cross the line by sending rape and death threats.
-Now anyone who says anything about this is attacked by extremists on either side.

I still think the ones sending the death and rape threats are the worst, but on some of the sites I've been on, just mentioning this will result in a hoard of comments accusing the poster of trolling and painting them with the rape/death threat cowards.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

Just an aside - but Wikipedia talk pages are hilarious. I can see why the articles end up the way they do sometimes. I was reading the Gamergate talk page... honestly it's a better of summary of what this debate ends up being than the actual article.

It's just people invalidating each other's POV. People asking for neutrality are getting shouted down.

[Gravekeeper]

Screw it. I did have a long post explaining the entire thing but even being male and on a small obscure website I do not want to speak Voldemort's name out loud just in case.

[Rageaholic]

This is looking like one of those clusterfucks where you really don't know who's right because it's obvious that at least one party (or sub party) is not telling the whole story.

All of the anti gamergate stuff I initially read conveniently ignored the censorship from review sites. Anyone who tried to speak out against that was instantly labeled as an MRA troll who supports rape and death threats. Initially, this was understandable because the No True Scottsman stuff is very suspicious. But now I see there are legit concerns within the gaming community.

But how much of that is conspiracy crap?

I mean sure, the rapid censorship is very suspicious, but some of the accusations toward Quinn seem kind of baseless. Then there's the issue of feminists influencing video games. A lot of it is comparable to the so called "Homosexual Agenda" boogeyman (when all they want is equal rights).

I gotta stop before I get confused. I'm still suspicious of gamergate, but I understand them more and assuming that their concerns aren't just hyperbole, they might have a point. It just might not be being heard.

[Gravekeeper]

This is looking like one of those clusterfucks where you really don't know who's right because it's obvious that at least one party (or sub party) is not telling the whole story.

Well, I'll give you a hint. The whole "journalism ethics" and "censorship" thing was retroactively added after the shit storm and attacks on Quinn to try and make it seem like they had some legitimate cause.

Bah, here, read this. It should help.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

No Gravekeeper, it wasn't.

For those watching on Twitter (not reading about it on a secondary source) on day 1, there was nothing retroactive about it.

#Gamergate itself was an evolution of the tag #Quinnspiracy which also was full of bullshit, but also included ethics of gaming journalism. Gamergate hit the 27th of August. Quinnspiracy was around at least as early as the 15th of August.

I dunno.. the level of ad hominem occuring on both sides has been enough for me to not care about the topic in general other than a curiosity. I haven't been a "gamer" since my early 20's. No one's really discussing workable ideas. I find the rhetoric fascinating, but in the end it's a toxic mix of yellow journalism(on the anti side), ignorance (on both), and screwed up people (on the gamergate side). I know why people I generally agree with are saying what they are, but demonizing white male teenagers playing video games honestly already has a several decade old history.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

And even that's not fair now that I think about it, because even in the 90's it wasn't just young white boys playing it. But that was frequently how it was portrayed as the "core demographic."

[Gravekeeper]

No Gravekeeper, it wasn't.

For those watching on Twitter (not reading about it on a secondary source) on day 1, there was nothing retroactive about it.

Sorry, but if you think day 1 was on Twitter you're sadly mistaken. The only thing that occurred on the 27th was Baldwin coining a hashtag. The harassment began in December. The shift of focus to corruption in game journalism come about in September. The original focus was to essentially destroy Quinn herself.

Edit: Stop making me say Voldemort's name.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

You're reaching.

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/quinnspiracy

Quinn published a game in December. She made claims about harassment around that time which were contested.

The Ex-boyfriend thing that 99.99999% of the people who actually use the #GamerGate hashtag are referring to occurs in August.

So again, how you want to spin it comes down to what you want to talk about. I've included Slate.com's bipolar coverage in chronological order for funsies. Do I think she was harrassed prior? It wouldn't suprise me. It is the internet.

http://www.slate.com/articles/techno..._but_they.html

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor...gamasutra.html

http://www.slate.com/articles/techno...proves_it.html

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor...eting_zoe.html

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_te...gamergate.html

I mean, if you're happy with it being one thing, that's fine. It's just demonstrably false. Even Slate isn't keeping in straight.

[Gravekeeper]

There are 3756 pages of chat logs dumped by 4chan about this that detail the plans and efforts from the get go. They are full of the most horrific things imaginable. The words ethics or journalism ( and they are not calls for either ) aren't even uttered until the 22nd of Aug. After days of death threats, rape threats, rape fantasies about her, doxxing her, planning to destroy her life, hoping to drive her to suicide, hacking nudes of her ( and sending them to her family, coworkers and tweeting them to her ) etc etc etc etc. Quinn's shitsmear of an ex even drops in from time to time to do Q&A's about how Quinn is fatter than the kind of girls he usual dates.

But by all means, use knowyourmeme as a source and assume I haven't been watching this from the get go.

[Mytical]

Not really touching all of this mess. Why? Because the second you voice a contrary opinion you are labeled Misogynist or a produce of the Misogynistic culture. However, I will comment on one thing..

Anita Sarkeesian (spelling). Ok, I agree that the rape threat, et al, is horrible. No argument there from me. Anita, however, has other .. issues. Like taking over 100k to do youtube videos I think 2 years ago, and maybe 1 or 2 have been done (LOTS more have been promised). She allows no dissenting voice (for the most part) in her videos. Anybody who disagrees with her is automatically either an evil male, or a female brainwashed by the evil men. So.. yeah.. take that as you will.

It's come to the point where if you don't activiely say, every waking moment, that you agree with everything the feminist says, then you are trying to keep them down. Now mind you the other side is just as bad. You are 'P***y whipped if you don't agree with everything THEY say. So hey lose/lose.

[lordlundar]

It's come to the point where if you don't activiely say, every waking moment, that you agree with everything the feminist says, then you are trying to keep them down. Now mind you the other side is just as bad. You are 'P***y whipped if you don't agree with everything THEY say. So hey lose/lose.

It's a case of the extremists on both sides being the only ones allowed to speak. The vast majority see both sides as having valid points (though to varying degrees) and are more than willing to discuss things rationally and actually trying to come up with solutions. Then the extremists on both sides or some assholes looking to get some shits and giggles out of setting off a firecracker do something stupid that one or both sides use as evidence of the others wrongdoing and forces the entrenchment.

John Bain (aka Totalbiscuit who has been a far more reasonable person in this than most with a soapbox) put it best:

If you're being called a nazi by one group and an sjw liberal by another, you're pissing off the right kind of idiots.

[Jetfire]

Following it on a message board that's been letting a pro-GG discussion go a long time. (Board itself is officially neutral), and mainly letting it be.

But apparently, the latest wrinkle in this mess is with respect to Internet Archives. GG folk have been using it to capture "incriminating" data (Tweets, websites, etc...) that are later deleted/changed. Apparently DMCA notices are going out now, to make the archive remove that archived data.

Personally, I'm trying to remain neutral on this, and think both sides have a lot of very loud idiots (when I chose to wade in and look at the latest in any case). But one side effectively destroying information certainly doesn't look good. Better to acknowledge it, air it out and be done with it, than to try and hide it. (Hell GG probably wouldn't have happened if that had been done in the first place but oh well).

[Rageaholic]

Following it on a message board that's been letting a pro-GG discussion go a long time. (Board itself is officially neutral), and mainly letting it be.

But apparently, the latest wrinkle in this mess is with respect to Internet Archives. GG folk have been using it to capture "incriminating" data (Tweets, websites, etc...) that are later deleted/changed. Apparently DMCA notices are going out now, to make the archive remove that archived data.

Personally, I'm trying to remain neutral on this, and think both sides have a lot of very loud idiots (when I chose to wade in and look at the latest in any case). But one side effectively destroying information certainly doesn't look good. Better to acknowledge it, air it out and be done with it, than to try and hide it. (Hell GG probably wouldn't have happened if that had been done in the first place but oh well).

Yeah, both sides have their share of idiots, but from my view, the majority of the idiots are on the GG side. This cracked article points out the flaws in gamergate (though I disagree with point 3, you don't have to experience an injustice to fight against it.) The only way I see the other side being wrong (aside from the SJW wannabes on tumblr) is the silencing they've done on message boards. But even that could be justified if they were anticipating the kind of harassment Quinn would receive.

[RayvenQ]

Yeah, both sides have their share of idiots, but from my view, the majority of the idiots are on the GG side. This cracked article points out the flaws in gamergate (though I disagree with point 3, you don't have to experience an injustice to fight against it.) The only way I see the other side being wrong (aside from the SJW wannabes on tumblr) is the silencing they've done on message boards. But even that could be justified if they were anticipating the kind of harassment Quinn would receive.

And from my view, the majority of the idiots are on the AGG side, though mostly the higher profile people on that side.

If you think GG are the bad guys, or have hounded and harassed and threatened women in the gaming industry as one, then I'm sorry, but you've had the wool pulled over your eyes by the media narrative.

That's all I'll say about the clusterfrak of the the that is GG/AGG, as frankly there are far too many things to look up, pull up and dig out from the past to show you how this is the case. And Frankly I'm exhausted from having to explain it to people everytime I've gotten attacked for being a gamer who just wants to enjoy games, and look at open, honest, fair and informed video games media. And so have many others.