#Gamergate, as we know it now, is a hate group.

October 13, 2014 8:42 PM

I do not say this to make the people of #Gamergate seem any more important, or effective, or powerful, or to give any sort of new credence to their ideas. Rather, this is just a structural designation: as immediately dismissible as their tactics and stances might be (at least to anyone who has not become victim to them), I believe it's important to note that group was formed like a hate group and functions like a hate group in every way.

Social researcher Jennifer Allaway examines the ways in which #GamerGate functions as a hate group, using a 2004 study by Linda Woolf and Michale Hulsizer called Hate Groups for Dummies: How to Build a Successful Hate Group as her framework. In it, she identifies four essential elements to any hate group:

• the leadership which originally inspired the movement,
• the recruitment strategy it uses to appeal to insecure and impressionable gamers,
• the social-psychological techniques by which it spreads its message and enflames its members' beliefs,
• and, finally, the process by which it dehumanizes its victims, and turns them into targets whose attacking earns group praise.

posted by rorgy (2146 comments total)

Good.
posted by boo_radley at 8:54 PM on October 13, 2014 [9 favorites]

As I said in the other thread about it, it's basically a bunch of older men manipulating children into being their personal army.
posted by empath at 8:57 PM on October 13, 2014 [19 favorites]

I wish I was a little bit lamer
I wish I was a gamer
Wish I knew a girl on the net,
I would shame her.
posted by Jimbob at 8:58 PM on October 13, 2014 [202 favorites]

Needs to be said.
posted by mephron at 9:03 PM on October 13, 2014

As soon as I saw this I was like "and now the great assault on Jezebel begins". Is anything like #jizzabullshit trending yet? Because it will be.

It isn't even just a hate group, it's like an actual insurgent fighting force. I realized that when they got intel to back down.
posted by emptythought at 9:04 PM on October 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

And everyone wants to ban football....
posted by fshgrl at 9:05 PM on October 13, 2014 [6 favorites]

Good for her.

I've made games for near 20 years. I've been told I'm worse than Hitler, told I should be dragged into the street in a sack and kicked to death, told that I should've killed myself when Jeff Freeman, a close friend and co-worked did.

I consciously do not do press or anything public anymore because, I don't want to deal with it.

It's nothing compared to the shit that's going on nowadays.

I still love making games. I'm thrilled it's ubiquitous and a significant cultural foundation.

But goddammit, self described gamers can be fucking monsters.

This bullshit should be treated the same as if you heard someone spouting it in public. No more coddling, no more wink-wink boys willbe boys he's got some valid points.

Enough. Grow the fuck up, we would all like to get on with the business of making and playing video games you relentless, immature, racist, misogynistic fucks.
posted by Lord_Pall at 9:05 PM on October 13, 2014 [184 favorites]

I'm still not entirely sure of what the GG community is fighting for. Corruption in gaming journalism is always been a thing but didn't seem to matter as long as whatever AAA bro-gamer game got 9/10 scores consistently.

But for the most part it just seems to be a fight to keep gaming BOYZONE only which is guess makes sense if you are a young boy that thinks you can get SJW cooties through a gaming console but I'm not sure why gaming being more inclusive to alternate gamers is somehow going to diminish the enjoyment of the latest FPS game?

Is it just that everyone believes that gaming is a zero sum game? That resources going to casual gamers and female gamers would take away resources for bro-games? It seems like the ecosystem can grow to accomodate a plethora of game styles and just because there might be more non-sexist games doesn't mean that there won't be a market to exploit for traditional games.

At this point it time it just doesn't seem like they are focused on anything achievable at all. Gaming journalism will continue to be mediocre, companies will chase the money if there is money in being more inclusive and the BOYZONE will continue to be eroded bit by bit. I understand that might be scary but thems the facts.
posted by vuron at 9:07 PM on October 13, 2014 [7 favorites]

Simple principle: Anybody who considers "Social Justice" to be a pejorative is a bigot and a hateful individual.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:09 PM on October 13, 2014 [125 favorites]

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02224055

I wonder if there are people who are just into weird ants trying to parse through this whole thing terribly confused.

Correction: I am sorry there are people who are just into weird ants trying to parse through this whole thing horribly confused
posted by passerby at 9:10 PM on October 13, 2014 [7 favorites]

I'm taking a class right now on techniques and technologies of propaganda, and I keep waiting for Gamergate to be one of the things we discuss... I think there's a module coming up on "new media" propaganda so maybe that's where it'll show up, although one would think it would fit into the definition of an ideological campaign, which is what we're on this week (yay, a week of Rush Limbaugh and ISIS and Sandy Hook truthers, I'm so lucky).
posted by palomar at 9:11 PM on October 13, 2014 [3 favorites]

But goddammit, self described gamers can be fucking monsters.

No shit. It was that way back when I was doing tech support for MMOs in the 90s and it's not that the culture has gotten worse - it's that it's remained steadfastly the same. What's changed is that so many other things have gotten better and awesome and this lamergate douchetards are still stuck in their 1995 usenet flamewar asshole behavior.

I just don't understand.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 9:12 PM on October 13, 2014 [25 favorites]

I've read that PDF and you could easily apply it to Metafilter or any other group of people with a perspective who fight about stuff on the Internet, really.
posted by michaelh at 9:12 PM on October 13, 2014 [15 favorites]

And how screwed up is it that I'm vaguely concerned about my obscure comment here getting picked up by the aforementioned crowd.

Ick. Just ick.
posted by Lord_Pall at 9:13 PM on October 13, 2014 [5 favorites]

I'm still not entirely sure of what the GG community is fighting for. Corruption in gaming journalism is always been a thing but didn't seem to matter as long as whatever AAA bro-gamer game got 9/10 scores...

I think the "no, it's about corruption in gaming journalism" was because they figured out it was bad to be honest about what they were really fighting for.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:14 PM on October 13, 2014 [21 favorites]

I just can't believe it's all still going on, a month later. With the same amount of vitriol and intensity. It really feels like these are people with nothing else to be passionate about. Their main pursuit in life is Under Attack and they're still raging mad about it. When they're not actively being shitty and harrassing, I might almost feel bad for them. Maybe someone should do an "It Gets Better" series of videos for people coming to terms with new media criticism.
posted by naju at 9:18 PM on October 13, 2014 [3 favorites]

Someone should tweet about this post and use the hashtag. MetaFilter will make ten thousand dollars off all the gaters storming the thread to give "their side."
posted by valrus at 9:20 PM on October 13, 2014 [19 favorites]

EmpressCallipygos: I think the "no, it's about corruption in gaming journalism" was because they figured out it was bad to be honest about what they were really fighting for.

It's that a lot of the "moderates" no longer openly buy the attention whore concept, even if they passively and subconsciously could still be sold it. They need to be slow walked into supporting it as part of a larger problem.

I actually see it as progress that in 2014 you can't directly sell an attack on a woman, or women, to nerds unless you soft sell it. Except for the really disgusting bitter angry ones, who started all this in the first place

I mean at this point I have to see something positive in this so my head doesn't explode.
posted by emptythought at 9:24 PM on October 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter will make ten thousand dollars off all the gaters storming the thread to give "their side."

And that ten thousand dollars should go directly to the mods who will have to handle all the flies and dung that fart out of their mouths all over the site.
posted by Mizu at 9:25 PM on October 13, 2014 [31 favorites]

I think this tactic is spreading around internet forums to topics completely unrelated to gender, gaming, gamergate, or anything like that. Recently I have been seeing irrational levels of hostility in response to completely innocent remarks. This isn't just the same old flaming. This is associating a person with some group identity that they hate. Now you're one of them and you're a target. I am sick of this crap.
posted by charlie don't surf at 9:26 PM on October 13, 2014 [7 favorites]

the leadership which originally inspired the movement,

Had a "leader" now it's leaderless. Well, not actually someone who was pulling the strings, more just like an initial spark and a couple of IRC chats that aren't posted. No one mentions him as a leader anywhere apart from the video but hate groups can be leaderless!

the recruitment strategy it uses to appeal to insecure and impressionable gamers

You declared a grouping of insecure and impressionable members of society, 4chan/8chan members, as doing things insecure and impressionable people do? No shit!

the social-psychological techniques by which it spreads its message and enflames its members' beliefs,

Absolutely. The messages are so not clear coming out of the gamergate tag. It seems there are a good number concerned with the original journalistic integrity position. Maybe other members of the internet saw an opportunity to say whatever they wanted and hide under the websites all calling them "gamergaters" so they can't be so easily individualized. It's way more awesome to do it as a team then alone. Being alone on the internet is why people go to 4chan and 8 chan. To find belonging more easily than most other places on the web.

and, finally, the process by which it dehumanizes

This especially is true of people harassing women in the gaming industry, under the gamergate banner or not. They forget their actions have consequences on the other end. Or even they do know what happens and fuck it, that sounds like the kind of shit that makes the news or at least mentioned on twitter and a blog or two.

An application of Occam's Razor if I can: Massive grouping of gamers clearly haters of women and anyone who supports them conspires against all women in the gaming industry who speak out against them. Evidenced by harassment on social media extending to possibly threats to their and others safety.
OR
4chan/8chan members see opportunity to apply their puritanical judgement on their gender opposite under the same controversy of a journalists ethics. Using similar tactics applied in the past when "raiding" or targetting people they go after the biggest female targets when the opportunity arises. For example, whenever a woman with a significant role in the gaming industry speaks out against it. When that occurs the gaming industry news covers those events bringing notoriety to the group.
posted by FiveNines at 9:27 PM on October 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

And that ten thousand dollars should go directly to the mods who will have to handle all the flies and dung that fart out of their mouths all over the site.

Do you really think these idiots are willing to spend $5 to try?

If I'm wrong and they are, do you really think the mods have forgotten the ban hammer?

And if the idiots are willing to spend another $5? Well, hey, maybe we've just funded the site.

#GamerGate #DareYou #YouCantHandleTheTruth #PineapplePizzaGate
posted by eriko at 9:30 PM on October 13, 2014 [5 favorites]

Is Twitter where this all happens? Or where? Because I'm mostly hearing about GamerGate on Metafilter at this point. Maybe I just don't hang out where the cool kids are.
posted by Justinian at 9:32 PM on October 13, 2014 [8 favorites]

There was a Gamergate creep harassing women outside of the XOXO conference. He only tried to bother women (unsurprisingly) and tried to foist his gibberish handouts at them.

The idiots trying to hijack the hashtag for the conference were so blatantly plants and stuck out like a sore thumb. It made me long for Vinge's True Names to be real, so they could have their internet licenses taken away forever, as they are why we cannot have nice things.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 9:34 PM on October 13, 2014

Twitter is certainly the place where a single use of the #GamerGate tag will instantly leave you swamped with anime-avatar-arseholes explaining to you the error of your ways and how it's all about ethics in journalism, or, if you're female, rape and death threats.
posted by Jimbob at 9:36 PM on October 13, 2014 [24 favorites]

It happens anywhere they can sneak onto the internet, really. It used to be they'd organize themselves on 4chan and reddit, but 4chan got sick of them so now they use "8chan" instead. Reddit, of course, never tells anyone to go away.
posted by Artw at 9:36 PM on October 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

Twitter is certainly the place where a single use of the #GamerGate tag will instantly leave you swamped with arseholes explaining to you the error of your ways and how it's all about ethics in journalism, or, if you're female, rape and death threats.

Yep. The last time I made the mistake of using that hashtag, a stranger immediately tweeted at me comparing the state of games journalism with Nazi Germany. These are charming people.
posted by naju at 9:38 PM on October 13, 2014 [5 favorites]

Is Twitter where this all happens? Or where? Because I'm mostly hearing about GamerGate on Metafilter at this point. Maybe I just don't hang out where the cool kids are.

Yea, this is where I have to realize how out of touch I must be with my twitterless, non-following of the blogosphere existence. That said, I'm not trying to downplay the importance of anything here.

It's terrible, but I can't help but think how much ignorant (and thus, obviously, unspoken) support there is for the ladies in these shitty and terrible-for-all-of-us-that-play-games situations due to the cluelessness of the more casual or older and, likely, more mature members of the population at large.

Seriously, I just want my daughter to have an option to play [fun] games that feature or highlight female heroines or contain outfits that don't mandate bikini chainmail. We've got a few years, I'm not optimistic, nothing new there, but I'm glad these ladies are fighting the good fight to call bullshit where and when they see it.
posted by RolandOfEld at 9:40 PM on October 13, 2014 [4 favorites]

#gamergate is pretty bad but #notyourshield is FAR FAR worse.
posted by Talez at 9:41 PM on October 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

You'll also find a lot of abuse in the comments section of just about any article on GamerGate. Of course, sometimes the offenders get banned and their comments removed, which leads to claims of censorship.

Because not only should they have the right to threaten someone, but someone else should pay to host those threats....
posted by Woodroar at 9:41 PM on October 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

Alex Lifschitz storify-ed the outcome of a 2-part Escapist "We Salute Your Noble Cause!" Magazine story interviewing game developers about this. It's pretty gross.
posted by dumbland at 9:43 PM on October 13, 2014 [9 favorites]

Someone pointed out that my circle on Twitter has been talking about Gamergate longer than it talked about Ferguson or the Santa Barbara killings, which bummed me the hell out. Everything that could possibly be said about these nasty little fools has been said, and they just. Keep. Going.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 9:45 PM on October 13, 2014 [14 favorites]

The "ethics" they claim to be for make no sense, too. You make journalism more ethical and better by allowing a wide range of criticism.
posted by NoraReed at 9:46 PM on October 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

It used to be they'd organize themselves on 4chan and reddit, but 4chan got sick of them so now they use "8chan" instead. Reddit, of course, never tells anyone to go away.

"Worse than 4chan" is a new low for reddit.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 9:47 PM on October 13, 2014 [29 favorites]

If you really want an insight into the delusional fever pitch #GamerGate has reached, I recommend the Best of Outrage Culture subreddit; sort the posts by top-rated if you really want to get punch-drunk on gamers' delirium.

You get statements like this, voiced with a seeming utter lack of irony:

ISIS calls for death of the west. SJWs call for the death of half the population. ISIS is objectively less violent than internet feminists.

Or this, uttered in the middle of a lengthy tirade:

We see principles like freedom of speech as fundamental human liberties, they see them as weaknesses to be exploited to destroy us.

What you need to remember is that we're in the middle of a new wave of popular feminism, one that's affecting many different corners of our culture simultaneously. What used to be a more unconscious misogyny is now under attack, and as the more reasonable people who're abandoning their former misconceptions withdraw their support for this kind of behavior, the voices that remain are going to increasingly be the extremist minority — and they're listening increasingly to each other, to the exclusion of everybody else.

This is what happens when a culture-wide problem starts to be seriously addressed. This kind of virulent sexism is so widespread that the "extremist minority", in this case, still constitutes many thousands of people, perhaps more. We're at the point where the extremism is so heightened that this hate attack is capable of being sustained across weeks and weeks, targets and targets, yet the number of people propagating it are still frighteningly numerous.

I want to think that these are the horrific symptoms of misogyny's finally being exposed to a coordinated attack that's doing it some major damage. The Internet has proven a fantastic resource for people to discuss feminist issues, and for former apathetics to get on board with learning to give a shit. It's not just feminism, either — I have been astonished, for instance, by how rapidly trans issues have become prominent among my assorted communities, and in only a handful of years — but sexism is one of the most pervasive issues our society faces, so the rise of feminism and the hate-group responses are among the most massive instances of this occurring. From what I've seen of today's youth culture, there are some extremely promising signs.

In the meantime, this is a problem that is terrifying for the people who become its targets, and it's a problem that has no easy fix. If you can find it in yourself to laugh at people who say things like this with a straight face...

We're the people who saw Pearl Harbor coming a mile away. We're going to be kooks until Pearl Harbor actually happens, which is on our enemy's time.

We need patience more than we need anything else.

...then more power to you. I for one oscillate between finding these comments hilarious and being absolutely sickened by them. But I feel it can only do good to spread this notion that the people behind #GamerGate aren't just hate-filled, they're also delusional, and to the point where they've become outright caricatures of themselves. When you listen to this group talk, it becomes hard to take them even remotely seriously, other than as pieces of shit who have a certain amount of power to wield.
posted by rorgy at 9:55 PM on October 13, 2014 [91 favorites]

Maybe someone should do an "It Gets Better" series of videos for people coming to terms with new media criticism.

Well, so far it's NOT getting better.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:56 PM on October 13, 2014 [9 favorites]

I love that 4chan, home to the stormfront nazi creeps of /pol/ and whatever /b/ is these days, has made it clear that gamergate is not welcome there. Like how big of an asshole do you have to be for moot to give you the boot?
posted by boubelium at 9:56 PM on October 13, 2014 [35 favorites]

One thing that's good about all this is that the vast majority of people who come into contact with GamerGate nonsense seem to respond with "Eww, you're kidding, right?" People are, in general, not buying that it's anything but disgusting misogyny, and that's a good thing.

Reddit, of course, never tells anyone to go away.

Not true, but not false in the way we'd like it to be.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:57 PM on October 13, 2014 [8 favorites]

Pretty cool that Allaway, a junior in sociology, got a grant to study this before she'd even earned her B.A. I like to see these opportunities opening up for smart young people.
posted by misha at 9:59 PM on October 13, 2014 [7 favorites]

Twitter is certainly the place where a single use of the #GamerGate tag will instantly leave you swamped with arseholes explaining to you the error of your ways and how it's all about ethics in journalism, or, if you're female, rape and death threats.

Seconded, use the hashtag on twitter today and immediately had a bunch of ggers turned up on my feed to spout their hypocrisy. Did not engage, so fortunately have seen no further activity.
posted by Neale at 10:01 PM on October 13, 2014

We see principles like freedom of speech as fundamental human liberties, they see them as weaknesses to be exploited to destroy us them.

FTFY to describe the #lamergaters to a T.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:01 PM on October 13, 2014

Pope Guilty: Hooooooly fucking shit. I have to quote this from the admin's response to the /r/blackladies moderator who was asking them to do something about the racists attacking her subreddit:

Sure, you're being targeted. You know why? Because you break site rules, and we target people who break site rules.

That they said this to a banned user whose offense was asking for help against racist spammers is outrageous enough. That they said it in the context of several months of Reddit being used to distribute stolen nude images and organize a hate campaign is just... I literally can't even. That is remarkable. That's some fuckin' Dolores Umbridge shit right there.
posted by rorgy at 10:03 PM on October 13, 2014 [76 favorites]

Twitter is certainly the place where a single use of the #GamerGate tag will instantly leave you swamped with arseholes explaining to you the error of your ways and how it's all about ethics in journalism, or, if you're female, rape and death threats.

Does twitter ban people for death threats and rape threats? If not, why not? If not, why are we (the people not making death and rape threats) not shaming twitter into banning people who make such threats?
posted by el io at 10:06 PM on October 13, 2014 [7 favorites]

Anyone with #GG reports from the Seattle GeekGirl Con this last weekend? I didn't see anything but awesomeness. I kinda zipped (well, limped, with one foot in a cast) into my session, did a quick tour of the merch area, and left. Normally I'd have made it a major social weekend, but I'm just too miserably immobilized right now.
posted by Dreidl at 10:08 PM on October 13, 2014

Justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow: "Worse than 4chan" is a new low for reddit.

This is nothing new. That's been their tagline and selling point for a while now. 4chan banned people for posting child porn since the beginning. Reddit? It took a media campaign and tons of pressure until they finally went "ugh fiiiine" like a kid who's mom was telling them to throw the laundry in the dryer. And they didn't even ban anyone involved, just deleted the subreddit.

And so, so many other things.
posted by emptythought at 10:10 PM on October 13, 2014 [12 favorites]

el io: Does twitter ban people for death threats and rape threats? If not, why not? If not, why are we (the people not making death and rape threats) not shaming twitter into banning people who make such threats?

Twitter like, "doesn't moderate for content". I've covered this in other threads, but no social media platform wants to admit they can and that it isn't an insurmountable problem because then they'll get criticized for every single thing they don't deal with and sued for not preventing harassment and bla bla bla.

And all those things SHOULD happen, but as long as they pretend they couldn't possible do it and they'd need a staff of millions and shit then they're at least for now, blame free.
posted by emptythought at 10:13 PM on October 13, 2014 [5 favorites]

dumbland: "Alex Lifschitz storify-ed the outcome of a 2-part Escapist "We Salute Your Noble Cause!" Magazine story interviewing game developers about this. It's pretty gross."

Escapist editor interviews developer about gamersgate; simultaneously crowdfunds that dev's CHRONICLES OF GOR roleplaying game
posted by boo_radley at 10:14 PM on October 13, 2014 [14 favorites]

I was at GeekGirlCob this weekend. As far as I know there wasn't any GamerGate nonsense. There were awful people spamming threats and vileness against Anita Sarkeesian to anyone using the con hashtag (#ggc14) since Sarkeesian had the "gall" to talk at GGC.
posted by R343L at 10:17 PM on October 13, 2014

I love that 4chan, home to the stormfront nazi creeps of /pol/ and whatever /b/ is these days, has made it clear that gamergate is not welcome there.

one of the most amazing threads I've ever followed was on 4chan a few years back. In amongst all the usual appalling stuff, a guy suddenly confessed he thought he was having a nervous breakdown ... and proceeded to describe a harrowing car accident he'd survived as a kid. Everybody else in the car, including his two best friends were killed. He was eleven at the time.

Suddenly, the "worst community on the internet" rallied around this guy, offered support, asked him the right questions, walked him through it, made it clear to him that He Was Not Alone.

so there's that.
posted by philip-random at 10:20 PM on October 13, 2014 [9 favorites]

emptythought: I consider myself a free speech maximalist (darned near a free speech absolutist), but death/rape threats are not protected speech - they are illegal speech.

And I would imagine that death/rape threats violate terms of service. Twitter seems pretty comfortable invoking ToS violations when deleting these accounts for issuing threats on their service.

Or perhaps death threats are only unacceptable if the people issuing them are brown.
posted by el io at 10:24 PM on October 13, 2014 [5 favorites]

So, I study video games, but not from a social critique approach like Anita, Ian Bogost, etc. I examine the role games can play in teaching and education. I even wrote a semi-popular book on this, and have some peer-reviewed papers examining gamification, speak at conferences, etc. So not only has GamerGate been upsetting as it effect friends and an industry I care about (though my little patch is mostly outside of what GG cares about), but it has, for the first time, made me embarrassed that I have anything to do with games. I have spent a long time defending the importance and legitimacy of games for teaching to skeptical academic and policy audiences, and encouraging inclusivity to make gaming better and more accepted, and then GamerGate both undermines this progress and makes me start to regret being associated with games, given that this is, apparently, what gamers do.

The whole thing is depressing, but I have found some worthwhile commentary. Here is some of the best stuff I have read on GamerGate in the past couple days:

Vox on how GamerGate is poison
Response by Katherine Cross, transfeminist sociologist [her label], on why GamerGate doesn't get peer review, and
Takedown of the Escapist (the most pro-GG of the various major publications) interviewing male developers.
Analysis of how much mainstream gaming press is actually about gender (.41%)
Zoe Quinn's AMA on Reddit

On the plus side, I think today was a turning point - the main "journalist" supporting GamerGate dropped out (Breitbart writer), MSNBC covered Brianna Wu, and more people are actually speaking out.
posted by blahblahblah at 10:24 PM on October 13, 2014 [41 favorites]

Anyone with #GG reports from the Seattle GeekGirl Con this last weekend? I didn't see anything but awesomeness.

Nothing that actually came to pass, but I believe there was a bomb threat called in against Anita Sarkeesian for the apparent crime of being a women speaking in public. (As has happened the last couple times she's spoken at an avent)

In other words, this is completely horrific, and were the perpetrators actually carrying out their threat, they would've seen you and everyone else there (missed it, myself) as either a target or as collateral damage.
posted by CrystalDave at 10:25 PM on October 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

the "worst community on the internet" rallied around this guy, offered support, asked him the right questions, walked him through it, made it clear to him that He Was Not Alone.

Even the worst people on the internet/on earth will very frequently rally around one of their own going through bad stuff. Doesn't excuse anything. In fact, camaraderie can be a great mind control tool for them. (currently resisting urge to google examples of Nazis or ISIS doing the same)
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:28 PM on October 13, 2014 [8 favorites]

FiveNines: "It seems there are a good number concerned with the original journalistic integrity position."

Citation needed that there was anything "original" about that position. Every history of GamerGate I have heard starts with anti-feminist harassment.
posted by idiopath at 10:34 PM on October 13, 2014 [8 favorites]

4chan has a rule (Global Rule 4) in effect on all boards prohibiting doxxing and raids, because it's been around long enough for it to have been a problem. It also has a rule against racism on most boards, but there isn't enough enforcement. All 4chan staff are volunteers AFAIK, not too many people want to clean up that cesspool for free, with nary a Hot Pocket in appreciation.
posted by Small Dollar at 10:40 PM on October 13, 2014

The "journalistic integrity" thing is pure junk. If that was what they were bothered about, they'd be attacking the major gaming sites who get free booty constantly from the big gaming companies. Instead, they are attacking female and pro-feminist bloggers and indy devs, including complaining about them _paying for the games they review_. Yes. That's how ridiculous this is. The people that are getting free games and gear and trips from the gaming industry, those guys (and it's nearly all guys, of course) get a pass. The ones who pay for the games they review are getting viciously attacked.

There is fucking nothing about this that is about "journalistic integrity", and anyone who says so is lying. It's about misogyny.
posted by tavella at 10:40 PM on October 13, 2014 [37 favorites]

Also, just coming in now, Huffington Post blind-invited Zoe Quinn to an interview, which turned out last-minute to be a 'fair and balanced' panel debate against the founder of 8chan (the site which #GG fled to after 4chan ejected them, and which continues to host stolen nudes and doxxing efforts).

This really underscores what continued silence about this topic does. It allows journalists to imagine there's two sides and that it's safe to just stick people up like that on national television. I'm trying to imagine what an equivalent analogy would be. "Hey, parents of Mike Brown, here's an interview. Surprise! You're debating Darren Wilson!", maybe?

And yes, the police and FBI have been involved, multiple times. (That was also a tactic, claiming that because they said anything about the threats, that they must be lying, and that because the police didn't immediately talk to anyone who asked about their involvement in investigating these threats, they must also be lying)
posted by CrystalDave at 10:47 PM on October 13, 2014 [18 favorites]

Could you give a link to that?
posted by Small Dollar at 10:50 PM on October 13, 2014

Escapist editor interviews developer about gamersgate; simultaneously crowdfunds that dev's CHRONICLES OF GOR roleplaying game

Of course Desborough is pro #GG. Thanks for pointing this out for use the next time someone tells me how progressive the tabletop community is these days.

Meanwhile, Business Insider has taken on GG: Video Gamers Are Having A Bizarre Debate Over Whether Sending Death Threats To Women Is A Serious Issue Or Not.
posted by immlass at 10:50 PM on October 13, 2014 [19 favorites]

Ugh to "both sides" bullshit.

And no, GamerGate has never had anything to do with journalistic ethics.
posted by Artw at 10:51 PM on October 13, 2014 [7 favorites]

Games are a red herring. The game industry is pushing $100 billion! The AAA FPS is not going away. We also have other flavors of Internet misogyny from Pick Up to redpill to Men's Rights. We have not yet begun to seen the peak of this latest anti-feminist backlash, I'm afraid.

Hate groups, cults and gangs all recruit from people who see themselves as disenfranchised and individually powerless. Folks with busy, fulfilling lives don't read the rant of a scorned ex and say, "gosh, he has some good ideas, I should follow him!"

Thing is, we were all disenfranchised by the recession, by a do-nothing Congress and by a mainstream media environment where Fox News is literally the most trusted name in news according to popular polls.

In 1999, Susan Faludi followed her book Backlash with Stiffed. This thesis has been around for a while: Men in our society are sold a narrative when they are boys that says that they will be leaders, individualist islands unto themselves, breadwinners. Our 1%er owned world then stamps down on that dream of being a self-made man and the discouraged man then lashes out to easy targets. It's easier to land punches down compared to punching up and any influence feels productive.

Dostoyevsky once witnessed a government official beat a horse driver who was beneath the official in rank. In turn, the driver beat the horse. "Here every blow dealt the animal leaped out of the blow dealt at the man [...] My first personal insult, the horse, the courier."

That's not to make excuses for misogyny hate groups. They are reprehensible and petty. They are also born out of the circumstances of right now and the most core causes of this resurgency of misogyny are not immediately clear.

How do we continue to enfranchise traditionally harmed outgroups while also ensuring that boys do not grow into petty, harmful or left behind men?

It's the 1990s Angry White Male problem all over again.
posted by Skwirl at 10:54 PM on October 13, 2014 [30 favorites]

MeFi self-link, but I think it's relevant ...

How to talk to Terrorists
posted by philip-random at 10:54 PM on October 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

Could you give a link to that?

This will be decreasingly useful as time goes on, but: Scroll down.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 11:03 PM on October 13, 2014

I wasn't around for Sarkeesian's talk but now that I think about it, con security and police presence seemed more intense than most Washington State Convention Center events I've attended in the last year. There was a lot of chatter about #GG; with my crowd, as another aspect of *lack* of social justice in tech.
posted by Dreidl at 11:07 PM on October 13, 2014

Could you give a link to that?
This will be decreasingly useful as time goes on, but: Scroll down.

Here's a Storify link I quickly put together for something more-persistent/easier to read (disclosure, I did make this myself, but the only thing I 'added' was the title): https://storify.com/cdaveross/huffington-post-invites-zoe-quinn-to-interview-tur
posted by CrystalDave at 11:09 PM on October 13, 2014 [8 favorites]

I hope she releases the name of the Huffington Post journalist who tried to arrange this debate.

It's really useful for people that are going to engage with the media to be able to find out if they are reasonable journalists - she can help others avoid walking into traps by naming names. Not enough to name the HP - the journalist will undoubtably be working for someone else in the future.
posted by el io at 11:16 PM on October 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

Oh for fucks sake. I'm so sick of GamerGate, be it as a topic of discussion, a hashtag, or whatever.

It's literally become a case of "he said, she said" and has become such a deep pit of accusation and counter accusation that whatever intent it may or may not have had has become a distant, long forgotten story.

Now it's just a buzzword for two sides of some of the internet's most vocal communities to hurl shit at each other until one is utterly discredited and/or destroyed. In the process, real gamers (as in, people who would rather be playing Destiny or Shadows of Mordor or Mario Kart 8 right now rather than sitting on Twitter obsessively attacking other users) are being dragged through the mud simply by association with a past time that is and should be enjoyable.

I don't care which side or which sacred cow you hold dear in the GamerGate saga. Just stop talking about GamerGate and it will all go away.

In short, stop tweeting and go kill some fucking Orcs you goddamn morons.
posted by Effigy2000 at 11:17 PM on October 13, 2014 [4 favorites]

I don't care which side or which sacred cow you hold dear in the GamerGate saga.

Free tip: when one side is women working for greater representation in a space and the other is men using threats of violence to prevent that, those are not morally equal sides.

Just stop talking about GamerGate and it will all go away.

Is there anything that this is true of? All "just ignore it" has ever or will ever means is "Stop bothering me about it".
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:21 PM on October 13, 2014 [182 favorites]

Effigy: Yeah, I'm really uninterested in stories about sports - they are all over the friggin internet.

My solution to that problem is to not click them.

As far as 'two sides', yeah, there are two sides. So many people yelling and shouting bad things at those westboro baptist church people and those westboro people yelling and shouting bad things at other people - it's hard to distinguish them both, right? Oh, no, actually, even though both sides are pretty passionate about what they are yelling at, one side seems much much more awful than the other.

Just stop reading about GG and it will go away. Why aren't you killing orcs right now, instead of reading this thread?
posted by el io at 11:22 PM on October 13, 2014 [9 favorites]

John Walker's excellent blogpost on the subject.
posted by rifflesby at 11:22 PM on October 13, 2014 [6 favorites]

I don't care which side or which sacred cow you hold dear in the GamerGate saga. Just stop talking about GamerGate and it will all go away.

Tell you what (and I say this as someone currently playing the new Borderlands game, for whatever 'gamer cred' is required here), once the death threats (Warning, direct gendered threats of violence in-link) stop, people may be able to get to this being an ignorable state. Otherwise, saying "just stop talking about it" is granting cover to these same people.
posted by CrystalDave at 11:22 PM on October 13, 2014 [39 favorites]

If you stop talking about something, it is literally not a thing that is. It is a thing that was and it also means that it's gone.

But fine, whatever. How about "stop using GamerGate as a hashtag" and call it something more appropriate. Because I, as a gamer, don't identify with anything in GamerGate and would prefer to spend my down time actually playing games.

Which is what I'm off to do now. Folgum Guard Master is an Orc that needs killing and I think today's the day to do it.
posted by Effigy2000 at 11:27 PM on October 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

I just grow wheat, here.
posted by angerbot at 11:29 PM on October 13, 2014 [4 favorites]

Yeah, both sides are equally bad! For every side hurling the most vile death threats and digging up personal information on people who dare to say something, there's the other side being driven into silence, withdrawing from public life, or being forced to leave their homes due to the threats on their person. Yep, completely equal on the merits!

Pull the other one, it's got bells on.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 11:30 PM on October 13, 2014 [55 favorites]

If you stop talking about something, it is literally not a thing that is. It is a thing that was and it also means that it's gone.

This is just plainly, demonstrably not true. I don't know where you're even getting an idea like this.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:31 PM on October 13, 2014 [68 favorites]

If you stop talking about something, it is literally not a thing that is. It is a thing that was and it also means that it's gone.

That's only true if every other person on the planet stops talking about it too, and also maybe stops making all those thousands of rape and death threats that make #GamerGate impossible for its numerous victims to ignore.

Once you grow up past the age of two years old, putting your hands over your eyes ceases to make the rest of the world go away.
posted by rorgy at 11:34 PM on October 13, 2014 [57 favorites]

This is just plainly, demonstrably not true. I don't know where you're even getting an idea like this.

Gamers are accustomed to things despawning if they ignore them.
posted by Celsius1414 at 11:35 PM on October 13, 2014 [37 favorites]

I sorta feel like ignoring harassments and threats to women is equivalent to saying I don't think it's a problem or I don't think it's important. It is a problem and it is important.
posted by aubilenon at 11:35 PM on October 13, 2014 [62 favorites]

If you stop talking about something, it is literally not a thing that is. It is a thing that was and it also means that it's gone.

This is not even up to the standards of the halfbaked philosophical ideas of a 14 year old.
posted by deadwax at 11:36 PM on October 13, 2014 [15 favorites]

If you stop talking about something, it is literally not a thing that is. It is a thing that was and it also means that it's gone.

I mean, if this were true, misogyny would have definitely been dead by the 1950's. And yet, alas, here we are.
posted by jetlagaddict at 11:36 PM on October 13, 2014 [11 favorites]

In other words: you shouldn't be telling us to stop talking about this. Go on Twitter and tell all of #GamerGate's advocates that they should stop caring about this. Go to /r/KotakuInAction, go to 8chan, and tell them to stop threatening women with rape and murder just because they happen to develop video games whilst being female.

Ranting to us about all this is ranting to a community that sides with the victims of this bullshit. Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian aren't perpetrating #GamerGate. They're just bein' women. By telling them to stop caring about the people who are attacking them and threatening their safety, you are siding with their assaulters. It's as simple as that.
posted by rorgy at 11:38 PM on October 13, 2014 [36 favorites]

It's time for people who love playing video games to stand up against "gamers".

Yes, the usual opponents of video games are pro-censorship killjoys but are you really going to tell me that that misogyny, racism, jingoism, and glorification of violence aren't problems in video games? Is it a mystery why people who make games that aren't total ultra violent pap are the targets of "gamer" wrath?
posted by chaz at 11:41 PM on October 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

If you stop talking about something, it is literally not a thing that is. It is a thing that was and it also means that it's gone.

You're wrong. trust me.
I tried this with the Stephen Harper govt.
Five times.
posted by philip-random at 11:44 PM on October 13, 2014 [41 favorites]

Maybe someone should do an "It Gets Better" series of videos for people coming to terms with new media criticism.

Well, so far it's NOT getting better.

I initially assumed (incorrectly) that (s)he meant videos for the gamergate* proponents (many of whom i think are vicious in part because they feel under siege). I know I've had The Talk with a friend of a friend who felt that way and was falling under the influence of gamergate feelings, I don't know what effect I had, but my impression was that showing the bright world beyond the dark tunnel is another good tool in the toolbox for those not fully committed?

*Heh, my phone tried to correct this to "gamer hate"
posted by anonymisc at 11:46 PM on October 13, 2014

Mod note: Hey, comment deleted -- maybe not so much with the "here's how I predict my comment will be received"? That's a kind of prophecy that tends to self-fulfill. Thanks.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane (staff) at 11:59 PM on October 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

I don't like sports and I do my best to ignore them. I don't know player names, or pay attention to how any of the local teams are doing, and sports haven't gone away yet.

In fact, I sometimes get stuck in awful traffic around the United Center and Wrigley Field and Comiskey Park on game day. It's like ignoring the problem made it affect me more.
posted by elr at 12:07 AM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

'Both sides are doing it!' is one of the #gamergate talking points to excuse their doxing and death threats against women, and it's completely false.

One side is full of hateful young men who see feminism as their enemy. That they might just lose their privileged position of being heavily catered to by every single mainstream studio and publisher, or their steady stream of games positioned to appeal to them, complete with male power fantasies and subservient female characters, who are either there to be slutty win conditions, or slutty background furniture (the usual dead hookers/strippers). They see that as under threat by women playing games, writing games, and writing about games. Men who have a problem with the state of gaming are pussy-whipped, 'social justice warriors' who deserve scorn and hatred. Every woman that dares speak up, write a game or even play games needs to be reminded of her place as only there as a c**t to be fucked by a man, and she should shut the fuck up or she'll be raped and murdered into submission. Any talk of journalism ethics is simply an excuse to make up bullshit about women using sex to get ahead, and attack any publication that says anything even slightly uncomplimentary with spurious crap.

The other side would just like to write and play and talk about games that are about all sorts of things, see less sexism in mainstream games, and not have women be threatened with rape and death in very graphic terms by people posting their address for daring to have an opinion.

Keeping quiet is siding with the way things are, and siding with those who encourage and support those who make speaking out about sexism in gaming a very scary experience. Women have literally fled their homes because they have had very specific death threats made by what would be called stalkers in other circumstances.
posted by ArkhanJG at 12:09 AM on October 14, 2014 [49 favorites]

Women have literally fled their homes because they have had very specific death threats made by what would be called stalkers in other circumstances.

And the complete lack of legal repercussions for the individuals responsible is baffling and horrifying.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:12 AM on October 14, 2014 [15 favorites]

michaelh: I've read that PDF and you could easily apply it to Metafilter or any other group of people with a perspective who fight about stuff on the Internet, really.

How on earth do you come to that conclusion?

I've said it to a few friends but it's like all those shitlords who screamed "suck my dick" at me in CS, then told me that "this is just how gaming is, they're just words, if you can't handle it GTFO of the kitchen bitch" are now screaming because those words are being used against them and they mean something afterall and what is accountability?

I stopped gaming because I couldn't handle the heat, as it were. I can't just drop it though - between the nerd I married and the fact I still like the damn form and my BFF is a games journo - so I'm here on the sidelines, cheering the ones who stayed.

And a part of myself wants to scream IF YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE HEAT GET OUTTA MY KITCHEN SON
posted by geek anachronism at 12:12 AM on October 14, 2014 [21 favorites]

el io: I consider myself a free speech maximalist (darned near a free speech absolutist), but death/rape threats are not protected speech - they are illegal speech.

And I would imagine that death/rape threats violate terms of service. Twitter seems pretty comfortable invoking ToS violations when deleting these accounts for issuing threats on their service.

The lolle-reality of this is that EVERY site has this in their TOS, and these sites just massive selectively enforce it. It's a fig leaf, or boilerplate, or whatever in case they finally get sued like they should by someone whose been harassed so they can point to it and go "well they were breaking our TOS!" or... something.

It seems to exist more so they have an excuse to point at when they silence someone they don't like. This happens on reddit very occasionally, and on twitter seemingly basically never. Twitter seems to never want to intervene, even when someones account is blatantly hacked and stolen.

There's more to it than what you said about them having a double standard about the person harassing being brown. I really think it's more like what i said above where it's them not wanting to act like they can, or do intervene. It isn't just defense of the right to free speech*, it's this free for all people will self police concept of like, anything goes.

Which is a really pollyannaish attitude, in the most charitable way i can possibly describe it, that needs to dieeeeeee.

* and to be clear here, since we're not middle school kids restating the "you can't tell me what i can't say, free speech!" point, a private entity deleting things on a private service they run is NOT an infringement on our rights. If the government was intervening and demanding twitter posts be deleted, then we could maybe bring that up.
posted by emptythought at 12:29 AM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

I was talking with a friend about this tonight--a guy, both of us people who always would have described ourselves as "gamers" to some degree even if the games we play aren't necessarily all first-person shooters. To people who've only peripherally heard about it, this is completely baffling. When the mainstream media's starting to cover it, they seem completely confused about how this is even a thing. It's not just the people who're issuing the threats. It's that, say, the Business Insider article--in the comments, you get people coming in trying to argue why the targets of all this harassment deserved it. Like there's some possible way to deserve death threats that doesn't involve actually literally being Hitler. They're playing by 4chan's set of rules--the ones where they "invaded" Tumblr awhile back because they thought the SJWs on Tumblr had invaded them first, when nobody outside of that community thinks of websites as a thing that can be invaded. They think of themselves as belonging to an army, they think of themselves as being at war, they're responding as though they're at war, the specifics of why they're at war are irrelevant because the important thing isn't being rhetorically right, it's winning.

So, you have an army that thinks they're at war and really badly wants to win that war, but they don't have an opposing army, they have a civilian population who they think looks vaguely like the enemy but they're having a hard time distinguishing one from the other. And in the absence of a real conflict to fight, they're going after whoever feels vaguely threatening. Strangely enough, just like every other time this happens, it's going incredibly poorly.

We really need to, as a society, come up with some better way of young men working out their aggressions than making them soldiers, cops, or "gamers".
posted by Sequence at 12:32 AM on October 14, 2014 [25 favorites]

How on earth do you come to that conclusion?

Just curious if you read it. It's basically "how to start and market a community" with "for example, Stormfront" thrown in to make the steps sound hateful. Many of the cites are of general research about groups. It only wanders into specifics with the dehumanization section, but all the mechanisms are still standard, like how groups reinforce beliefs about outsiders to reduce cognitive dissonance - everybody does that, but the authors added something about causing harm to make it hateful.

It would be more meaningful if, for example, a specific threshold of a certain type of brain activity was observed more often in members of hate groups, which was proven to be caused by a certain deliberate sequence of events, and that same brain activity was measured in people who are promoting the current news story. I realize the student wouldn't have been able to get access to data that good, but that doesn't make their project meaningful.
posted by michaelh at 12:39 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Is there any group more prone to butthurt and entitled whining than gamers.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:48 AM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

Is there any group more prone to butthurt and entitled whining than gamers.

Redditors?
posted by Jimbob at 12:51 AM on October 14, 2014

butthurt

I believe the use of this expression has been deprecated in these parts.
posted by Wolof at 12:54 AM on October 14, 2014 [41 favorites]

emptythought: "and to be clear here, since we're not middle school kids restating the "you can't tell me what i can't say, free speech!" point, a private entity deleting things on a private service they run is NOT an infringement on our rights. If the government was intervening and demanding twitter posts be deleted, then we could maybe bring that up."

That's true as far as it goes. However, a service with several hundred million users, used by a huge number of celebrities, journalists, politicians, and other public figures as one of their main channels to communicate with the public is not just any "private entity" running a "private service".

Once corporations reach a certain size and market penetration, even near-monopolistic status, their actions can indeed amount to censorship in a sense approaching that of government censorship. It's pretty disingenuous to say that they can do what they want with no practical impact on free speech.

(Not defending the gamergate assholes here, particularly, but I'm a bit tired of the "if it's not the government, it's can't be censorship" argument.)
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 12:57 AM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

As it happens, I am just now in a massively long Facebook debate with a close friend of mine, a super-intelligent and reasonable academically-minded fellow, who happens to be both a social conservative and a practicing Catholic, whose outlook on sexuality is shaped considerably by his faith. It's an enjoyable enough argumentation, but the more we talk about the nature of sex in society the more it becomes clear that there is a huuuuge array of expectations being placed by many people upon sex, having sex, moving beyond sex, and really anything involving physical intimacy of a more-than-cuddles variety.

I'm not talking vague, nebulous superstitions; I'm talking codified views on what sex ought to be and on the morality of having sex that are extensive enough that even a smart person who is reasonably appalled by the most obvious manifestations of misogyny in our culture can wind up holding beliefs which are, on some level, entirely of a piece with some of the worst and scummiest anti-woman bullshit that you can find anywhere. There are certain ideas which, although they can be stated calmly and by people who otherwise have thought a great deal about these issues, pervert the concepts that they address enough that they open a window for all the assorted evils and hatreds that plague us today.

Make no mistake: not only does #GamerGate center around a fierce hatred of women, it centers around a hatred of women that is primarily sexual in nature. Anita Sarkeesian received death threats simply for announcing that she wanted to make a series studying the sexual objectification of women in video games. Zoe Quinn was initially attacked, nominally, for not only cheating on her boyfriend but for doing so with five separate men. The number of men she allegedly slept with doesn't matter because it proves the extent of her infidelity; it matters because it proves that she's a promiscuous woman, and because sexual promiscuity is still sufficient reason to denigrate and victimize a woman, even as the sexists of our culture have learned (or been conditioned) to avoid saying as much explicitly.

Women, flat-out, are treated as capital. Men are valued for their ability to attain women of particular value; this value, for women, is determined first and foremost by their sexual desirability, usually according to a measure of "sexual desirability" which is torturous or highly-problematic. Any other trait a woman possesses, anything along the lines of "what makes them a human being", is only of secondary importance. Anita Sarkeesian is fond of saying that patriarchy isn't men-versus-women, it's men-versus-men in a game that treats women as the ball; at the heart of this, I am pretty sure, is the "sexual conquest" that I've just outlined above.

I believe, and I am sympathetic to, the idea that this game of conquest hurts men, not just women. It furthermore pressures men into accepting a series of misogynistic beliefs which they may not even be comfortable with. If a man is judged for his ability to sleep with women of a certain skewed "valuation", then the skewing of women's value also skews the particular traits which a man ought to have that make them desirable to women, and (OBVIOUSLY) the notion of evaluating men for their ability to pick up women is already skewed. There's a multidimensionality to the pressures which men face in a system like this that makes it very difficult to look at the entire process by which their perspectives are warped; it took me several (unpublished!) essays to even be able to articulate the basic summary I'm putting forth in this paragraph, and I'm still not satisfied to the depth with which I'm explaining this.*

But the nature of this "women-are-the-ball" phenomenon is that every injury a man might suffer because of this system is magnified by several orders of magnitude when it inflicts itself upon women. Because the ways in which we value women are profoundly different from the ways in which we value men, and they are enforced both systemically, by the assertion of this setup wherein women are expected to exist for the sake of male desire, and individually, by every single man who buys into this system even a little and attempts to inflict their own attempts at self-worth upon the women in their wake. Even the men in this system who are theoretically self-actualized and capable of detaching themselves from this mode of thinking will wind up reinforcing this system of values, because unless they abstain from sex or desire altogether their (perfectly healthy, decently-expressed) needs will feed into the distorted way that things currently function.

When women speak up about this, when women go about making video games of their own, when women talk about games that men have created which reinforce, in a multitude of ways, this perverted sexualization of an entire gender, the men who form hate groups like #GamerGate don't see it as a request from peers, or an enlightened argument about the ways that men treat women. They see it as a threat to their own valuation. They see it as an evil group of women refusing to play the game, refusing to be the ball, and in the process denying men a chance to use them as a proof of their own masculinity. The danger, to them, is existential in nature, because they have been taught to view "access to women" as the defining value of a man. When they are told that women are more than sexual objects, they interpret that as: Somebody is trying to take away my chance for worth.

This is why it mattered to them, ostensibly, that Zoe Quinn cheated on her boyfriend and then lied to him about it. Infidelity, according to this mindset, is the worst thing that a woman can possibly do — it robs a man of his value while deluding him into thinking he is worth a damn. It also tinges the accusation that Quinn is proof of a "corrupt" gaming media; being paid to write a good review is one thing, but if sex is what makes you valuable, then it is the height of corruption to bribe a man with an offer that literally makes him more worthwhile of a person. (I often get the impression that, to a certain flavor of man, other markers of power such as money or fame or influence only matter for how much more desirable they make you to women; for many men, sex is the ultimate objective, rather than even one of a series of perverted desires.)

This is why, when Anita Sarkeesian points out obviously foul examples of women being placed in video games for purposes of titillation or violent abuse, a certain kind of male gamer roars out in fury. The traditional arguments of "it's there for artistic expression" or "it's there to show how much a villain sucks" or "it's SATIRE, don't you get it??" only make sense when you understand the underlying assumption, which is that women do exist for male gratification. Sexualized women are a depiction of ideal womanhood! Those villains are evil because of what they do with their power over women! This is satirical because it's true, because women do put too much effort into being valuable for men, because women do take jobs as sex workers pleasing men for something as trivial as money, because women are only valued for things which I, as a man, think make them more desirable to me. It's all a commentary, don't you see?

It's sick — literally sick. It's like a mental rot. It prevents men from seeing women accurately, warps their perceptions of anybody for whom there might be a sexual attraction, perverts the ways in which they treat women to an extent that runs deeper than I suspect most women, or men who were fortunate enough not to be ensnared by this system, understand. It is incredibly horrible and it is propagated in all sorts of ways within our culture and it has become, for many men, a belief so fundamental that they find it difficult even to doubt, on a level that I don't think many of them are fully aware of.

It certainly colors my outlook in a number of ways that I'm not proud of, and that I almost certainly still don't recognize the full extent of. I'd like to think I was never wholly a piece of shit — certainly I never sunk as deep as anybody involved in #GamerGate is — but in retrospect I had a lot of problematic behaviors that lost me a variety of friendships with women, and which occasionally did them harm. So I empathize, and even sympathize, with the burdens that men legitimately face, and I do my best to understand them, and to understand my own, and to articulate them as best I can for the sake of the men and the women that I know alike.

But I don't just do that for my sake, and I sure as shit don't do it just for the sake of these men. I try to make sense of this mindset because it's an insidious fucking virus, and it gives rise to men whose outlook on women is so horrendously twisted that to treat them like reasonable people who are able to respond to debate is, and I hate to say it, oftentimes a complete goddamn waste. Rather, the level you'd have to debate these people on to make any headway is such a profound and multifaceted one that it would cost you a whole lot of effort to even try, and the people you're trying to reach are likely too apathetic or too mistrusting to even give your arguments a chance in the first place.

The more you understand how fucked-up the men who belong to this culture have become, the more it starts to seem like good faith is utterly wasted on them. It's far more important to show solidarity for their victims, to offer support to them, to offer your voice up not to strike a blow against the #GamerGate misogynists but to reassure everybody who's thinking reasonably here that they're not alone, that there are in fact multitudes of people who understand this to be a fucked-up battle against a fucked-up bunch of people. It's why I appreciate communities like Shit Reddit Says or GamerGhazi or Jezebel which don't bother taking their "opponents" in good faith; it's why Zoe Quinn seems to've made it a policy to mock and belittle the people who are threatening her, even as she takes all the threats against her life and well-being incredibly seriously. There is little conversation to be had with the people who believe this virulent misogyny most deeply; there is room, however, to talk with the people who are not as fiercely in favor of the causes which #GamerGate most stringently opposes, and repeating the fact that #GamerGate is delusional to the point of absurdity really matters, because there is literally no way to respect their arguments even a little without buying into their appalling worldview.

Laughter, mockery, derision, and scorn are all valuable devices here. When you're dealing with a group that is incapable of seeing reason on their own, all you can do is make that fact explicit. Over time, it will convince some of them to doubt themselves and reexamine their beliefs — I know this because that happened to me — but in the meantime it will remind everybody else that this is not a serious movement. It is a joke. A big, horrifying, dangerous joke that still may not have reached its peak.

There's no way to stop it from happening, best as I can see. All that's left is to offer comfort to those in need of comfort, and to try as best we can from letting the people behind this movement feel like they're having any effect on their culture whatsoever.

_______

* Factor in the need people have to socially perform views which they might not actually hold, or the way in which attempts to escape this mindset can:

a) be thwarted by unrecognized baggage that a man can't put behind him, and
b) ultimately reinforce their belief that the mindset is accurate after a) happens,

and things get really goddamn tricky. Even as I'm saying this I feel the need to implore you that these ideas are still gestating for me as I write them down.
posted by rorgy at 12:59 AM on October 14, 2014 [225 favorites]

I believe, and I am sympathetic to, the idea that this game of conquest hurts men, not just women.

Yep. Saw this the other day, it's great and I don't understand why so many men don't get it.
posted by Jimbob at 1:10 AM on October 14, 2014 [52 favorites]

An interesting curiosity: #GamerGate has been using a service called Thunderclap to mass-spam tweets that will keep #GG trending on Twitter. Assuming that at this point this is a pretty closely-knit group, their most recent Thunderclap would suggest that #GamerGate only has just over 3,700 supporters total. That's not a lot, as far as movements go (and this one seems like it will only dwindle over time).

The Internet means that four thousand people who want to make a lot of noise at once will seem really damn overwhelming, but all the noise may just be a concentrated attempt at maintaining an illusion that large quantities of people even care. /r/KotakuInAction, one of the large #GG subreddits, only has 11,000 readers total, and I doubt all of those are active participants at that.
posted by rorgy at 1:12 AM on October 14, 2014 [12 favorites]

Does twitter ban people for death threats and rape threats?

Yeah, if enough people report an account for making them.

The thing is, the person can just come back and make another account and start over. And half the time it's gg folks doing the reporting, so I do not doubt that this is something set up behind the scenes where someone agrees to take the hit so everyone else can "report them" and then be all, "see, we don't condone that either" and meanwhile are high-giving the guy behind the scenes.

--

Rorgy - what you realize is eloquently put. However, it also strikes me that it is also exactly what feminists have been trying to tell everyone for fifty years. Still, I'm glad you but it so well.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:32 AM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

My first memory I have is at my grandparents diner, a little truck stop they owned back in the seventies, standing on a chair and playing the Elvis pinball game they had. As I stood there, failing so very badly to properly play pinball (since I was 4), the man on the TV made the announcement that Elvis had died earlier that morning. There I was, my mom trying not to cry as she bussed a table, grown men all around me breaking down and I realized something profound about the meaning of life; if I shook the table just a little bit to the left when I hit the ball I could nudge it closer to where I wanted it to be.

That was the day I became a gamer.

It wasn't the hours of Pong I played with the babysitter's daughter, the Christmas morning I awoke to find a Colecovision under the tree, the day I skipped school so I could secretly open the brightly wrapped box with my NES in it and play for an hour before my mom got home. It wasn't the three days I spent on the phone with Origin tech support trying to get my 486 SX 25 to run Ultima 7 or selling my comic collection to buy an SNES. It wasn't the N64 I bought that "fell off the the back of a truck" or that time a guy just up and gave me his Dreamcast because, as he put it, "shit's bullshit, man!".

No, it was the day Elvis died and I learned to play pinball.

Since then I've been a lifelong devotee. An advocate of the medium to all that cared to listen. The importance of gaming, the culture that sprang up around it, the fandom, the dingy arcades in the back of ill frequented bars and bowling alleys, everything. Then things changed.

It was slowly at first, we barely noticed what was happening, we were so of the moment. First it was the LAN...

DOOM. The first step to our downfall. Collective, competitive gaming. It wasn't bad those early days, but there was a noticeable shift. Before DOOM there was trash talking, but now it was, just a bit, harsher. More personal. Then Quake. Lag was the early bane, the thing that would set that one guy off. But we brushed it off, just letting off steam we said and moved on.

By the time Counter Strike arrived we were used to it. Then things got SO much worse. The frat boys, the jocks, and the bullys had discovered gaming. Now it was all faggot this fuck you that, and I _________ your ___________ while _________ your _________ watches. A whole new level of hate. Halo and XBOX live ratcheted that hate up past 11. Anger, for no good goddamned reason became the norm. The slightest error led to a public shaming unlike anything seen in the west since the early days of the Red Scare.

The culture of gaming became poisoned with the fruit of the "Alpha Males".

Gaming, as so much of so-called nerd culture, has always been made of of, well, nerds like me. Then the bros came. They couldn't attack you anymore by how you looked but they could attack you for any other reason. Anyone who didn't act, speak, or play like them were a target. So we nerds shut up and let them play, hoping against hope, they would get bored and just go away.

They did not.

In fact, with this current generation of games, they grew. Both in population and power, they took our thing from us, tried to force everyone to conform to their ideas and language. Many did.

I am a gamer. As much as I am a husband and a father, I am a gamer. And what I see in the community sickens me. From the toxicity of DOTAs to the acceptance of gamersgate as something about "ethics", we are quickly falling into a chasm it might be impossible to climb out of.

Anyone who speaks out in the community gets dogpiled on. That's just the truth of the thing. And if you happen to be female (something games in general need) then here comes the rape train jackasses with their pitchforks and torches, out for blood.

Normally I'm one of those guys, you know, the ones with big ideas that they have no hope of ever making reality. The dreamer who tells you not only how things could be but how those things CAN be... but not this time. I'm at a loss. How do we take back the culture from those who only hate? How do we change without losing our right to remain anonymous?

I don't know. I hope someone does.
posted by gideonswann at 1:34 AM on October 14, 2014 [38 favorites]

Yeah, if enough people report an account for making them.

I tried to report an account for making death/rape threats against someone a few months ago - and the process Twitter made me go through ended with the site telling me that because I, personally, wasn't the target of the threats, my report wouldn't be considered as such. I had to provide links, if I recall, to the tweets, showing evidence of the threats of that account against my account. But it wasn't me being threatened. Fucking hopeless.
posted by Jimbob at 1:51 AM on October 14, 2014 [13 favorites]

An account making threats against Brianna Wu was banned. A lot of the gamer gate tweets right before we're urging each other to report him.

If Twitter is still such a stickler about that today, that makes it even kinda worse, because then the gamer gate guys can say "oh let's report him" knowing it won't matter.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:57 AM on October 14, 2014

Taking a slightly closer look at KotakuInAction, the highest voted thread, 26 days ago, has 1362 karma, with 92% upvoted. The exact number of votes is unknown, thanks to Reddit's vote fudging algorithms, but it's probably close enough for our purposes. That particular thread was the exposure of the gaming journalists' mailing list, the sort of thing which would make almost every Gator feel like victory was at hand. The #2 thread was about Intel's capitulation to pressure and received 1274 karma, 94%, and, again, was the sort of story which would probably get a majority of active GG supporters to at least hit the up arrow.

So I think those vote totals is a decent rough estimate of the active GG-favoring Redditors. Fits in nicely, in ballpark figures, with the Thunderclap numbers rorgy quoted above.

And something encouraging is the drop off. The #3 thread, 7 days old, didn't crack 900.
posted by honestcoyote at 1:58 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Jimbob is correct. Twitter does not accept complaints about harassment or threats unless the person doing the reporting is the harassee or their representative.

Meanwhile, ello banned a GamerGater for hate speech and they all seemed to flip their shit, which was hilarious.
posted by NoraReed at 2:08 AM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

I'm still not entirely sure of what the GG community is fighting for.

They're fighting because Eron Gjoni, Zoe Quinn's ex boyfriend came to 4chan with a tale of woe and asked to let them and her fight. Several thousands of obnoxious, easily lead spoiled manchildren letting their id lose on the internet later and you got GamersGate.

More structurally, GamersGate is a byproduct of the institutionalisation of Republican Culture Wars online which has taught a whole generation of dickheads that a) everything that doesn't adhere to a narrow ideological vision is suspect, b) everything is political and c) everything is justified in winning.

These are the children of Breidbart.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:09 AM on October 14, 2014 [16 favorites]

It only wanders into specifics with the dehumanization section, but all the mechanisms are still standard, like how groups reinforce beliefs about outsiders to reduce cognitive dissonance - everybody does that, but the authors added something about causing harm to make it hateful.

It would be more meaningful if, for example, a specific threshold of a certain type of brain activity was observed more often in members of hate groups, which was proven to be caused by a certain deliberate sequence of events, and that same brain activity was measured in people who are promoting the current news story. I realize the student wouldn't have been able to get access to data that good, but that doesn't make their project meaningful.

So even though one of four elements is totally missing from Metafilter (and most internet arguments), it still applies? And the logical conclusion of hateful groups causing harm? This is pretty bad as far as 'it totally applies to everything' because so far you've taken out one of the main parts of the schematic AND gone down some random rabbithole of 'then they added something about harm' as if that weren't the whole damn point of hate groups. Those two things - dehumanisation and causing harm - are the main aspects of hate groups and why they're different to 'normal' groups. That's like saying 'lasagne is just spaghetti bolognese with long flat noodles and bechamel and baked in the oven'. Yes, those things are true, they're also self-evident and necessary to be identified as such.

And only quantitative applies as evidence as well? Really? That's kind of classic goalpost shifting - there is evidence but since you can twist it to apply to anything and everything, you need cold hard numbers about brain activity? How the hell does that point out anything? There's a matrix of behaviour around hate groups (distinct from other community groups) and GG exhibits those behaviours (and are thus distinct from community groups).
posted by geek anachronism at 2:23 AM on October 14, 2014 [10 favorites]

I wish the "Leadership" section of the article was stronger. I don't have any evidence, but it feels to me like there's a small group of 10 people at the center of GamerGate keeping the fires burning. The messaging is too consistent to be a true leaderless / grassroots thing, particularly for messaging that's so incoherent and confusing. I'd be curious to know more about who they are.

OTOH she's totally right in her analysis of Social-Psychological Techniques, the feeling of group membership. My reading is a lot of the GamerGate folks are boys who just like to be contrary, and now that Ayn Rand and Bitcoin are out of fashion that same type of person picks up on a woman-hating bandwagon. Like I said in the previous discussion, I'm really worried some unstable GG-follower is going to start taking the violent threat making seriously and act on it.

Reddit can be terrible but it can also be good, depending on the subreddit. This Zoë Quinn AMA yesterday is quite personal and well moderated. Then again yesterday someone on the LoL reddit called me a "feminist", I think as a slur. Guess I started Doing it Right.

The GG folks have called for a boycott of Borderlands: the Pre-Sequel, the hot new game being released today. Good luck with that.
posted by Nelson at 2:51 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

EmpressCallipygos: I think the "no, it's about corruption in gaming journalism" was because they figured out it was bad to be honest about what they were really fighting for.

Indeed. Not to mention that I can think of one gaming journalist who got out of the business last year after they received threats against their family because of a bad review. Savagery was a tactic used by many of these same Internet tough-guys long before any of them had heard of Depression Quest.

Payola has been a problem in the gaming press for many years. I'd love for there to be a more robust journalistic ethics surrounding reviews especially but I'll be damned if I'll make common cause with a bunch of reactionary, false-chivalric, hat-wearing, red-pill assholes.
posted by ob1quixote at 2:55 AM on October 14, 2014 [4 favorites]

Well put, rorgy. Well put.
posted by flippant at 3:03 AM on October 14, 2014

It wasn't the three days I spent on the phone with Origin tech support trying to get my 486 SX 25 to run Ultima 7

Did you get it to work? Because if you didn't, you should do it right now.

Always asking the important questions...
posted by Pyrogenesis at 3:10 AM on October 14, 2014

The GG folks have called for a boycott of Borderlands: the Pre-Sequel

That's the first thing that's made me feel good about spending $60 for it. Still... why?
posted by zompist at 3:16 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Apparently some Borderlands game maker said mean things about GamerGate so they are rising up in righteous anger. They're going to have a hard time with their loyalty tests, though, most of the mainstream gaming industry has made strong public statements against harassment and wanton misogyny.

Also: a timely editorial from The Guardian. Gamergate's vicious right-wing swell means there can be no neutral stance.
posted by Nelson at 3:19 AM on October 14, 2014 [7 favorites]

I tried to report an account for making death/rape threats against someone a few months ago - and the process Twitter made me go through ended with the site telling me that because I, personally, wasn't the target of the threats, my report wouldn't be considered as such. I had to provide links, if I recall, to the tweets, showing evidence of the threats of that account against my account. But it wasn't me being threatened. Fucking hopeless.

I went through something similar recently with Facebook. Facebook goes to extreme lengths to encourage you to respond to threats and harassment by simply blocking the offender (less work for Facebook!). If you actually want Facebook to take action against the aggressor account, you have to do all the documentation yourself, and absolutely no provision is made for third-parties. This means that the victimised account must not block the aggressor in order to be able to simply see the evidence that they need to collect. Which means that the victimised person has to tolerate hate speech (or worse - say nude photos) directed against them in a public space, and maybe personally wade through heaps of horrific possibly triggering shit. So of course the alternative is for the victim to play whack-a-mole with the block button as the harassers spin up new accounts, ignore the abuse (a blocked account can still post abusive content you just can't see it), and finally leave social media entirely. But, you know, less work for Facebook.

When someone in Zuckerberg's family has to go through this, maybe we'll see some improvement...
posted by tempythethird at 3:33 AM on October 14, 2014 [7 favorites]

honestcoyote: Taking a slightly closer look at KotakuInAction, the highest voted thread, 26 days ago, has 1362 karma, with 92% upvoted. The exact number of votes is unknown, thanks to Reddit's vote fudging algorithms, but it's probably close enough for our purposes. That particular thread was the exposure of the gaming journalists' mailing list, the sort of thing which would make almost every Gator feel like victory was at hand. The #2 thread was about Intel's capitulation to pressure and received 1274 karma, 94%, and, again, was the sort of story which would probably get a majority of active GG supporters to at least hit the up arrow.

So I think those vote totals is a decent rough estimate of the active GG-favoring Redditors. Fits in nicely, in ballpark figures, with the Thunderclap numbers rorgy quoted above.

This... doesn't surprise me? even the huge 4chan invasions and harassment campaigns were never very big groups of people, maybe a few hundred. Often seemingly like, 50.

One of the worst things about the internet is that a torch and pitchfork mob can do a horrendous amount of damage without being very big. A couple thousand people online, with some back channel organization(irc channels, google hangouts, etc), is basically an army. Especially when you consider the force multipliers of scripting and the various automation tools they seem to be using, even if those tools are at times just ctrl+c and ctrl+v(the templated tweets that say almost exactly the same thing but with phrases swapped really seem like they're generated by some script or skiddy tool though. anyone remember LOIC? skiddy tools would be nothing new for this sort of thing)

Somehow i never really thought this was that big of a movement from the attack front, it just managed to grab a lot of attention online using stuff like thunderclap. There's a lot of people retweeting, tweeting, and talking about it elsewhere online that don't actually participate in harassing people or calling them out when they use the hashtag.

I think the scariest detail about this, outside of the actual harassment of specific people, is that a professionally organized force of maybe several hundred people with lots of purpose built tools and automation could probably create a similar or larger ruckus. Anyone looking to run a political, marketing, or just general propaganda campaign is probably licking their fucking chops looking at this right now. It seems like all you really need is a bunch of public IPs and dummy email accounts to register a shitload of twitter accounts, config them with random photos from google images(or a huge folder on your server), and start farting out tweets and eventually coalescing in to something like this.

The internet feels really big sometimes, but at moments like this it's like the goddamn early 2000s again. It only takes a shitty-phpbb-board-about-some-free-MMO's worth of people to create this much of a shitstorm. And it probably only took 5 or 10 people, or even less starting all this and knowing what to post where to rile it all up in the first place.

It's sort of cyberpunk, but in the really shitty depressing way.
posted by emptythought at 3:53 AM on October 14, 2014 [12 favorites]

The internet feels really big sometimes, but at moments like this it's like the goddamn early 2000s again. It only takes a shitty-phpbb-board-about-some-free-MMO's worth of people to create this much of a shitstorm. And it probably only took 5 or 10 people, or even less starting all this and knowing what to post where to rile it all up in the first place.

It strikes me that this fact is the answer to gideonswan's lament above, where he wonders how the regular gamers can take gaming back from these guys.

Gideonswan - you want to know who can take gaming back? You can. Fight fire with fire and beat them at their own game.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:34 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

The GG folks have called for a boycott of Borderlands: the Pre-Sequel

Well, shit. I wasn't terribly interested in it before (despite enjoying Borderlands 2 quite a bit), but I guess I should go out and buy it now. Anything that gets the GamerGate crowd to have a collective tantrum can't be all bad.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 4:40 AM on October 14, 2014

Taking a slightly closer look at KotakuInAction, the highest voted thread, 26 days ago, has 1362 karma, with 92% upvoted. The exact number of votes is unknown, thanks to Reddit's vote fudging algorithms, but it's probably close enough for our purposes.

I'm no Reddit expert, but in my scant experience with Reddit, user engagement (upvote / downvote) is roughly 1% of view count so this allows you to extrapolate total views from votes, with % up / down indicating general opinion. I sometimes post personal content (it's discouraged, you can get banned, but whatever) and this allows me to correlate user engagement in Reddit versus actual content views, so for example, a post with 60,000 click-throughs generates roughly 600 votes.

I'm sure it varies by subreddit too so who knows. But at face value a 1,300 karma post would have a clickthrough rate of 130,000.
posted by xdvesper at 4:41 AM on October 14, 2014

"Gamers" has basically always been a label that could be so broad that it meant very little--when it was used in a marketing sense it was narrowed down to "consumers of a particularly lucrative subset of games who also happen to have an unusually high level of disposable income and free time", but that's never been an authentic picture of the whole of the industry. But as far as the viewpoints of the consumers themselves--there's always been a tendency for certain groups to see themselves as The Only Real Gamers, and it's never been true, but how do you convince them of that?

It's not even just a nerd/bro thing. Back in the mid-1990s, I was insufficiently serious about it because I mostly played JRPGs--or was it just playing RPGs in general? Is it wimpy to play RPGs at all if everything isn't represented by different text characters? Is real time strategy the One True Gaming, or is it the first-person shooter? Okay, maybe too recent, go back to the 80s, are you playing King's Quest or Mario? Gauntlet or Below the Root? Zork or Mystery House? Certain sorts of people always wanted to be the most hardcore about it and make out about how much more challenging it was to be them. It's like having somebody march up to your house and announce that they own it and, indeed, your whole block, and then trying to convince them to give your house back.
posted by Sequence at 5:09 AM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

I think, if you want to talk about roots of this crap, it's actually even deeper than the current style of in/out politics; I think this both are the natural outgrowth of the consumer identity. Rather than building communities, the vast bulk of people now identify themselves as part of groups defined for them, because, after all, they are consumers, not citizens or members of society.

This has dire implications when you have chosen as your group a meaningless and moderately vile label like "gamer" or "brony" or what have you. (Yes, I include all the trendy fandoms in this category.) The consumption of entertainment as identity politics means that you put too much of your self into something that cannot bear the weight; and when anything arises that threatens that, you feel more threatened than you would in a traditional community, because the connections between people are so tenuous that a slight redrawing of the lines might not enlarge the group but instead just move it a few inches in the wrong direction and leave you outside.

If you combine this with the steady march of technology and a social malaise that leaves most of these men feeling useless, we've got a problem. There are, at least, thousands of men who end up feeling insecure and completely without self-worth, attaching themselves to labels that most people (who have achieved self-actualization in other ways) will find baffling or offensive. It's all a performance game to reinforce the applicability of their identity politics; #GamerGate is a blessing in disguise for them because it allows a more specific and issue-centric label to apply to a more strongly-defined identity marker than simply "gamer," which anyone who plays Clash of Clans can appropriate.

Sarkeesian makes the point that the "patriarchy" is competition between males. Follow that to its conclusion. If one defining trait of a patriarchal society is competition between males, and we live in a patriarchal society, the majority of men must be in some degree "losers" in that competition. Historically, in a society with more strict gender roles, even these men would largely be able to form family units because there are roughly equal numbers of men and women. There were exceptions, but they were largely exceptional—the mentally ill, physically disabled, developmentally disabled, or indigent. However, once gender roles are loosened, it becomes easier for more successful men to "compete for" multiple women, both because they don't need to support them and the women feel less social pressure to be purely monogamous. By contrast, the unsuccessful male is likely to never have a meaningful, adult relationship.

The solution to this is, unfortunately, not simple: it is to provide routes to genuine self-actualization for these men and boys. They need to have a way to feel connections to communities at large, with rich relationships that include young and old, men and women. How do you achieve that? Is it even possible?
posted by sonic meat machine at 5:17 AM on October 14, 2014 [20 favorites]

Twitter like, "doesn't moderate for content". I've covered this in other threads, but no social media platform wants to admit they can and that it isn't an insurmountable problem because then they'll get criticized for every single thing they don't deal with and sued for not preventing harassment and bla bla bla.

And all those things SHOULD happen, but as long as they pretend they couldn't possible do it and they'd need a staff of millions and shit then they're at least for now, blame free.

What you say is completely true, but it still makes no sense to me. If I go downtown and stand on a street corner, I can talk about whatever I want and literally have free speech. But if I call the local police and tell them that some dude is threatening to rape and kill me, I can expect that to be taken at least a bit seriously – that is criminal activity and deserves a clear police response. Twitter's continued refusal to treat rape and death threats with even the tiniest degree of importance would seem like something that should be opening the company to enormous liability, and is demonstrably harming the people being threatened.

I don't play games myself, but I'd guess that most people I know play them at least casually. This awfulness is clearly not reflective of the majority of the people who enjoy games, but it is also connected somehow to the industry and way it has nurtured its core fanbase. There is something rotten inside the enterprise, and I hope that people find a way to remove the awfulness because games are clearly fun for most people and there's no reason to have this kind of open misogyny connected to it.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:31 AM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

Taking a slightly closer look at KotakuInAction, the highest voted thread, 26 days ago, has 1362 karma, with 92% upvoted. The exact number of votes is unknown, thanks to Reddit's vote fudging algorithms, but it's probably close enough for our purposes.

1,300 displayed net upvotes is something like 1,900-2,600 actual net upvotes, supposedly. Same ballpark, though.
posted by michaelh at 5:46 AM on October 14, 2014

The latest tactics of #gamergate appear to be telling women they're abusing that they're reacting to said abuse incorrectly.
posted by almostmanda at 5:46 AM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

There's two "sides" to the #GamerGate discussion in the same way as there are two "sides" in a debate between fixing the allowable feces level in drinking water at 1 pound per gallon and 0 pounds per gallon. A "neutral" or "even-handed" approach is nothing more than agreeing to a lifetime of drinking a shit slurry in the name of "fairness".

The most positive thing you can say about a #GamerGate proponent is that it's possible that instead of being a horrible misogynist, they're just a complete idiot who has been fooled by unbelievably obvious tactics being coordinated by people who pretty much wear their misogyny on their sleeve. As I've said previously, that's some pretty faint praise.
posted by tocts at 5:51 AM on October 14, 2014 [15 favorites]

I'm no Reddit expert, but in my scant experience with Reddit, user engagement (upvote / downvote) is roughly 1% of view count so this allows you to extrapolate total views from votes, with % up / down indicating general opinion. I sometimes post personal content (it's discouraged, you can get banned, but whatever) and this allows me to correlate user engagement in Reddit versus actual content views, so for example, a post with 60,000 click-throughs generates roughly 600 votes.

I'm sure it varies by subreddit too so who knows. But at face value a 1,300 karma post would have a clickthrough rate of 130,000.

At /r/TheoryOfReddit, the consensus is that for the average subreddit, for every 100 people that view, 10 people vote and 1 person comments. I think it may be more skewed on mega-popular subreddits like /r/pics.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 6:04 AM on October 14, 2014

Follow that to its conclusion.

I'm not sure that's actually a conclusion that follows, though. The patriarchal competition between males isn't just for mates, and while there's plenty of ways that modern society is still patriarchal, we haven't regressed to the point that women don't get to choose their own partners. Behaving like a jerk towards women on the internet would seem to damage one's relationship chances much more than any change in gender roles. Lots of guys who aren't exactly going to be CEOs or sports stars or senators nevertheless have satisfying relationships just by being decent guys. Any guy who "never [has] a meaningful, adult relationship" outside of disability and the like either has unreasonable standards or a poor excuse for a personality. It's not a real risk.

Not that we don't all need things that give us meaning aside from our relationships, but any idea that they're going to lash out because women aren't going to find male geeks attractive is just silly. Thinkgeek has a whole section for baby and kid stuff, now, and there are whole internet discussions about whether you should allow your children to watch Star Wars Episode 1 and what to do if said kid turns out to actually like JarJar. Feminism hasn't suddenly rendered relationships and families inaccessible to these guys. If they're inaccessible, it's because they're never actually interacting with real live women.
posted by Sequence at 6:05 AM on October 14, 2014 [8 favorites]

One thing that's good about all this is that the vast majority of people who come into contact with GamerGate nonsense seem to respond with "Eww, you're kidding, right?" People are, in general, not buying that it's anything but disgusting misogyny, and that's a good thing.

Hey now, stalwarts of justice like Richard Dawkins, James Desborough, and Adam Baldwin are on the GG side, so they must be doing something right!
posted by kmz at 6:35 AM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

Twitter is certainly the place where a single use of the #GamerGate tag will instantly leave you swamped with anime-avatar-arseholes explaining to you the error of your ways and how it's all about ethics in journalism, or, if you're female, rape and death threats.

I didn't even use the hashtag, but did fire off an angry tweet at Intel for their role in this debacle.

I don't tweet often, and have very few followers, so I was surprised to see how many hate-tweets were sent my way after that. Like, holy shit, somebody was monitoring Twitter for all uses of "Intel," and indiscriminately shouting at anybody who mentioned it.
posted by schmod at 6:36 AM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

Years and years before GG, before 4chan or twitter even existed, I was a developer in an online MMO; I was in charge of the magic system.

I had people telling me they wished I'd die of cancer or a bus accident or any number of unpleasant things because I dared to implement something for a class they didn't play instead of working on theirs, or because I had the gall to adjust game balance or fix a bug that they thought was in their favor, or because I (temporarily) banned someone for harassing other players.

At the time, the market was smaller, the assholes less organized, and it was all easier to laugh off. But still, it didn't exactly make one feel good.

I worked in the game industry for about 17 years. Sometimes I still miss it, but there are definitely things I don't miss. I have never had an engineer wish brain hemorrhages upon me because I worked on the wrong feature.
posted by Foosnark at 6:39 AM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

Mod note: Derail about the Southern Poverty Law Center nixed, seems a little out of place here.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane (staff) at 6:49 AM on October 14, 2014

Hey now, stalwarts of justice like Richard Dawkins, James Desborough, and Adam Baldwin are on the GG side, so they must be doing something right!

Wait, Dawkins is pro-GG, seriously? How on earth did I miss that one?
posted by Andrhia at 6:49 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

The patriarchal competition between males isn't just for mates, and while there's plenty of ways that modern society is still patriarchal, we haven't regressed to the point that women don't get to choose their own partners.

That's true. However, relationships are one of the most important (if not the most important) aspects of peoples' lives; changes in relationship dynamics have an outsize impact on feelings of belonging and well-being.

Behaving like a jerk towards women on the internet would seem to damage one's relationship chances much more than any change in gender roles.

Doubtful. Most of these people are remaining anonymous, unless their vitriol crosses into illegal activity: they can shed the identity and be a "normal" guy in situations that require it. That's part of what encourages this type of behavior.

Lots of guys who aren't exactly going to be CEOs or sports stars or senators nevertheless have satisfying relationships just by being decent guys. Any guy who "never [has] a meaningful, adult relationship" outside of disability and the like either has unreasonable standards or a poor excuse for a personality. It's not a real risk.

I disagree with this. I don't have data on it, but my experience says that there are a relatively large number of men (many of my friends) who are worthwhile people and who would be good partners in the long term who are not, in fact, competitive in a short-term sense. They are shy, or are less physically attractive, than is required to succeed in most modern social situations. In a bygone era they would've likely been set up with a similarly shy, "mousy" girl by their mother. Not ideal for either partner, but it meant that most people formed a family.

Not that we don't all need things that give us meaning aside from our relationships, but any idea that they're going to lash out because women aren't going to find male geeks attractive is just silly.

I don't have a response to this. I don't think it's silly. Relationships and mating are fundamental to our self-worth and are, in fact, at the root of many biological urges. I think it's a little weird to assume that sexual actualization is important (and difficult) for everyone who isn't a heterosexual cismale, but that unexamined issues in this area can't be a source for psychological problems in the cishet population as well.

Thinkgeek has a whole section for baby and kid stuff, now...

Sure, being a geek doesn't necessarily entail that you are a social isolate. Many people, even geeks, do find each other; my argument is not absolutist.

If they're inaccessible, it's because they're never actually interacting with real live women.

Yes, this is true. The question is: where would they? We age-segregate all of our education, so you're with the same pool of people for 13 years in public schools. College is a finite term, which many people can't afford or must spend working in order to support their education. Work, where people can have meaningful and long-term interactions, and thus get to know each other, is a brutal place to try to date (there are simply too many potential complications). Bars are a non-starter for a shy man. They simply don't work.

I mean, I met my wife through okcupid; I was lucky. If not for that, I wouldn't have found her, and I'd likely still be in the demographic I am discussing here. There aren't a lot of good options.

Also, I want to clarify: the gamergate stuff is pathological. It is a sign of mental illness. I am arguing that its genesis is in social isolation and a lack of meaningful relationships, not that it is a defensible or rational position.
posted by sonic meat machine at 6:59 AM on October 14, 2014 [4 favorites]

At /r/TheoryOfReddit, the consensus is that for the average subreddit, for every 100 people that view, 10 people vote and 1 person comments. I think it may be more skewed on mega-popular subreddits like /r/pics.

I'd guess that for a subreddit built around activism the vote/view ratio is going to be even closer.
posted by empath at 6:59 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Side note: "social justice warrior" does indeed seem to be making it into mainstream use in a non(?)-derogatory use, cf. the seventh paragraph in this article about Ferguson October. (Let's make a new thread to talk about Ferguson October rather than derail in here.)

(Also note re: Southern Poverty Law Center being a derail. I didn't see the original comment so not trying to comment about it or the mod message, but SPLC is the main group in the US that monitors and, sort of semi-officially "certifies" whether or not groups are hate groups, so it could be relevant to bring them up in this thread, depending on how it was raised. They are generally concerned with officially organized groups, or else less organized groups like the Sovereign Citizens that have been going on for a longer duration than a couple months, however, and I can certainly think of SPLC-related comments that would be a derail here though, and as mentioned, did not see the comment, so not trying to take issue with any moderation decision.)
posted by eviemath at 7:00 AM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

Didn't read the thread yet, but some of #gamergate reminds me of The Third Wave

The Third Wave was a social experiment to demonstrate that even democratic societies are not immune to the appeal of fascism. It was undertaken by history teacher Ron Jones with sophomore high school students attending his "Contemporary World" history class as part of a study of Nazi Germany.

The appeal of being part of something larger, the structure, their marching orders... I've encountered a number of gaters that are obviously just kids who are desperately lonely, and have told me in no uncertain terms that #gamergate makes them feel welcome and listens to their problems when no one else would.

The TV movie version that we watched way back in school: The Wave
posted by Theta States at 7:01 AM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

I disagree with this. I don't have data on it, but my experience says that there are a relatively large number of men (many of my friends) who are worthwhile people and who would be good partners in the long term who are not, in fact, competitive in a short-term sense. 

this describes many women too and yet they aren't ganging up and threatening to rape and kill men in droves.
posted by nadawi at 7:14 AM on October 14, 2014 [56 favorites]

ProTip: These techniques can be reverse-engineered and modified to create love groups rather than hate groups.
posted by Johann Georg Faust at 7:17 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

The true irony, though?

Had #Gamergate participated in my survey honestly, as a researcher, I would gladly have taken their data. After all, I recognize that they play games, and to exclude their data purely on the grounds of our moral disagreement would be unethical. They would have added a layer of diverse opinions to the data set. I would have valued those opinions. The relationship to data, and ultimately my participants, for me, is sacred.

Their hatred has literally blinded them to their group's purported cause, and they squandered the exact opportunity to have their opinions taken seriously.
posted by Johann Georg Faust at 7:17 AM on October 14, 2014 [10 favorites]

Also, I want to clarify: the gamergate stuff is pathological. It is a sign of mental illness. I am arguing that its genesis is in social isolation and a lack of meaningful relationships, not that it is a defensible or rational position.

I think a lot of participants are also just very young and probably haven't really cemented as people yet. Anecdotally, it seems like many young men don't really develop empathy (both in general and for women) until some outside pressure triggers it. Their first serious relationship, or a job in customer service, or a friend with depression, or something. If you have a movement at least partially comprised of teenage boys, of course some of them are going to see this all as "feminists are jerks who want to take my toys away" rather than "women are fighting to do things I take for granted". They don't have the life experience to see things that way.

And I'm not sure how to separate out the grown men who consciously hate women and are deliberate in their harassment from the young boys and grown men who lack empathy for women. I don't know if we should separate them out. They seem like two separate problems to tackle, but the effect on women is the same either way.
posted by almostmanda at 7:24 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

It's time for people who love playing video games to stand up against "gamers"

I have played video games since my first Intellivision back in 1980-whatever. Now I only really have time for maybe an hour or so of Minecraft with my 7 year-old son. I've been following this in horror basically since it first broke, but I'm not really sure what I can do -- I don't tweet, I've abandoned Facebook and my real-life friends are mostly self-selected to not be "gamers". What can I do to help?
posted by Jugwine at 7:26 AM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

What you're doing right now. Expressing your disgust with the actions of the Gamergaters whenever they come up in conversation.

Because you never know who else could be listening, and whether they have Twitter feeds of their own.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:30 AM on October 14, 2014 [8 favorites]

find out if your town has hacker spaces for girls/women and donate to them. give to the patreon accounts of affected women. as he ages, teach your son to respect women and keep a look out for these types of men gaining influence in spaces he inhabits.
posted by nadawi at 7:30 AM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

sonic meat machine, you seem to want some kind of welfare program that helps socially awkward males to get sex/relationships, the implication being that women/society need to get on this or else things like GamerGate will happen. The problem with that is that that job is not anyone else's; it's theirs. You went to OKCupid and met someone. You said you were "lucky" unlike your friends. On the contrary, I'd say you took initiative and took responsibility for your own mental and social health. Which is what your friends should also do.

I would also posit that, it is not awkwardness holding a lot of these boys back but the exact unwitting feeling of entitlement you exhibit here. Life/society/womankind owes them sexual happiness. And they are angry that it has not happened! Why isn't Someone Doing Something about this?

The problem is with that first assumption. Not just because it's unjust, deeply unjust, for any group of people to demand that the rest of society find them romantic partners so that they do not become violent, but because it would not work anyway. Figuring out who you are, how you relate to others, how to create your soul--this is not work anyone else can do for you. This is what it means to be a human being; to assume responsibility for your own happiness.

(Also, what we know about people who commit acts of sexual violence is that it is about power, not lack of access to sex. Many rapists have been married or had girlfriends and were able to get sex. But what they wanted was power over women, and the ability to humiliate them. In other words, a man's tendency to use sexual harassment and rape threats cannot be cured by a willing woman giving that man sex).

To assume that men, or a large group of men, are so fundamentally broken that they must be coddled and catered too sexually or they will become dangerous is to make a huge leap of logic that is not, so far as I know, backed up by any actual facts. If men are expected to treat women as human beings, raised to do so, I believe they are entirely capable of it. If a lot of men have not been raised this way and exhibit pathological behavior as a result, that is a matter for therapy and, when necessary, criminal charges. If only because we do not want this to keep happening.
posted by emjaybee at 7:35 AM on October 14, 2014 [65 favorites]

I don't have data on it, but my experience says that there are a relatively large number of men (many of my friends) who are worthwhile people and who would be good partners in the long term who are not, in fact, competitive in a short-term sense. They are shy, or are less physically attractive, than is required to succeed in most modern social situations. In a bygone era they would've likely been set up with a similarly shy, "mousy" girl by their mother.

So why isn't there societal pressure for these shy, mousy guys to suck it up and go on OKCupid, the way that the shy mousy girls of today are told to do?

I'm exactly the kind of person that would have to have had my mother set me up with someone in that "bygone era" you're talking about. I was similarly shy in my 20's. And you know what, I got myself over it, and so should these yutzes.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:39 AM on October 14, 2014 [28 favorites]

I've been a gamer for two decades now. Here's what I don't understand. Even if you ignore all the misogyny and take the GG folks at face value... who actually cares about game journalism?! Since the beginning, the gaming media has been all about building hype and providing gaming-related entertainment outside of games. AND WE KNEW THIS! We used to spend hours reading stacks PC Gamers for fun, laughing at the dumb jokes, drooling over the screenshots, and at no point did any of us complain about "ethics" or "corruption". I mean, these guys weren't exactly producing hard-hitting journalism under enemy fire. Even if there is "corruption", the worst that's going to happen is that somebody's gonna spend $50 on a game that maybe isn't as good as they had hoped.

I'm saying this not because I think GG as a whole is actually about ethics (clearly it's not), but because there are certainly people in the GG movement who believe this and stick with the movement for this reason. You're gonna throw your lot in with these unpleasant people because of gaming reviews? I really don't get it.
posted by archagon at 7:42 AM on October 14, 2014 [17 favorites]

I'm saying this not because I think GG as a whole is actually about ethics (clearly it's not), but because there are certainly people in the GG movement who believe this and stick with the movement for this reason. You're gonna throw your lot in with these unpleasant people because of gaming reviews?

No, see, they say it's about gaming reviews the way that some people say that the Civil War was about "states' rights" or that the Tea Party is about "small government" - because they're unable to face their own prejudice and admit that they're actually fighting for the right to stay racist and sexist.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:54 AM on October 14, 2014 [21 favorites]

emjaybee, you have deeply misunderstood my point. I am not arguing for any particular action (or even that the feeling of entitlement is justified or good). I am saying that there is a demographic of men who feel disenfranchised/socially isolated, and trying to think about the cause of that and its consequences.

I'm beanplating, rather than proposing social programs for these yutzes.
posted by sonic meat machine at 7:55 AM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

We used to spend hours reading stacks PC Gamers for fun, laughing at the dumb jokes, drooling over the screenshots, and at no point did any of us complain about "ethics" or "corruption".

Complaining about the lack of good gaming journalism has been a thing for decades, but yeah, I don't know anyone who has half a brain that really expected that much anyway.

Besides, if the complaint were really that Gaming Journalism is vapid and dumb, then why bag on Anita Sarkeesian ? You don't have to agree with all of her points (and I certainly don't) to see that she has taken game criticism to a whole nother level. Yet, she gets rape and death threats from people who insist that games and "gamers" should be taken more seriously.

They're full of shit, is what I'm saying. They're just hateful morons.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 7:57 AM on October 14, 2014 [7 favorites]

So why isn't there societal pressure for these shy, mousy guys to suck it up and go on OKCupid, the way that the shy mousy girls of today are told to do?

Does it work for them in the same way?
posted by sonic meat machine at 7:58 AM on October 14, 2014

In a couple of years this clusterfuck will be a goldmine of opportunities to sabotage/destroy the careers of a lot of hateful men who deserve it. The cops aren't doing anything about these threatening morons now (because they're cops, duh), but sooooo many PR disasters are hiding out there on the horizon waiting to happen.

...so there's that, I guess?

Seriously. Data-mine the hell out of these hastags, think about semantic analysis, and keep the results close to your vest for the right moment. Windows of opportunity are marching toward us in time.
posted by aramaic at 7:58 AM on October 14, 2014 [11 favorites]

Most of these people are remaining anonymous, unless their vitriol crosses into illegal activity: they can shed the identity and be a "normal" guy in situations that require it.

In the not-yet-distant-enough past, I dated a guy who was active on 4chan. Believe me, they do not pass for normal very well. Not that he walked around with a giant label on, but the attitude doesn't magically melt away when they get off the computer. It really doesn't. If you don't respect women and POC online, you don't respect them in the real world, either. Oh, the memorable "I'm allowed to use antisemitic slurs because I think one of my grandparents was raised Jewish although I don't have any documentation of that and my living family is made up entirely of conservative Christians" conversation. Charmer. And even if he isn't alone forever.

They are shy, or are less physically attractive, than is required to succeed in most modern social situations.

And this is the fundamental missing part: There are roughly as many girls who are also shy and/or less physically attractive than is socially ideal as there are guys. These aren't guy-only things. Either half the population is just doomed to be alone forever, or we invent things like the internet and OKcupid and gaming meetups and whatever where the socially awkward can meet each other and make socially awkward babies. They really are doing that all the time already. "We met on the internet" is no longer this fringe thing.

I can see how it might contribute if there were an actual shortage of female human beings in the younger age bracket, but I don't see how anybody can actually regard the world as presenting a serious risk of lifelong solitude unless someone else was feeding them that garbage, which is a very different thing from them springing naturally to that conclusion based on available evidence.
posted by Sequence at 8:02 AM on October 14, 2014 [20 favorites]

Also, Metafilter's own Jscalzi has trolled the morons with #PineapplePizzaGate, primarily in response to the response to this.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:04 AM on October 14, 2014 [16 favorites]

in my experience as an anti social, not showering regularly, nerdy girl - the boys who complained about no girls wanting them and only wanting jerks rarely considered girls like me worthy of romantic attention, while simultaneously complaining that i could have any boy i wanted (demonstrably untrue) and going on and on about how unfair it was.
posted by nadawi at 8:07 AM on October 14, 2014 [53 favorites]

Because of the more recent critical eye turning towards gaming as legit artform and entertainment Gators are getting scared that companies will decide to not release Murder Simulator 2017 anymore.

They're going apeshit about 'journalist ethics' because a bunch of indie leaning folks had some (what should have been private) drama and they think they can use that to drive all the journalists and commentators who might dare not give Gunz Online! 9/10 bacon stars out of the industry while they can.
posted by PenDevil at 8:07 AM on October 14, 2014

won't someone, anyone, please think of the shy men who are screwed by modern gender roles & sexual liberation who are totally 100% relevant to this thread and for whose existence I have lots of evidence, like a hunch
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 8:11 AM on October 14, 2014 [40 favorites]

I've been a gamer for two decades now. Here's what I don't understand. Even if you ignore all the misogyny and take the GG folks at face value... who actually cares about game journalism?! Since the beginning, the gaming media has been all about building hype and providing gaming-related entertainment outside of games. AND WE KNEW THIS!

I've been paying more attention to #gamergate than is probably healthy, so I'll try to explain it. The "corruption" they're worried about aren't the well-known ties between game publishers and press, that's the status quo they want to preserve (explicitly so: see their campaigns to pressure advertisers to stop advertising on sites they don't like). They're shouting about what they perceive as ideological corruption. #gamergate believes that games journalists are forgoing their "duty to inform the consumer" in order to push some kind of radical left-wing agenda.

This is in response to an increase in the last few years of socially-conscious game criticism, of which Anita Sarkeesian is probably the most prominent example. It's also filtered through this paranoia of "they're coming for your games!" because the last time someone got attention criticizing the content in video games, it was Jack Thompson trying to ban Grand Theft Auto. (A Twitter search for "jack thompson #gamergate" is revealing.)
posted by skymt at 8:14 AM on October 14, 2014 [8 favorites]

Jenni Goodchild is beating her head against a wall trying to explain like basic logic 101 syllogism stuff to a bunch of GGers, and it is depressing as hell.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 8:15 AM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

You're right, Rustic Etruscan. There's no use in thinking about potential reasons this pathological, anti-female behavior has emerged in this subculture with which I am familiar. I will stop expressing my ideas about it in this discussion forum until sociologists have written doctoral dissertations on the subject.
posted by sonic meat machine at 8:16 AM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

Jenni Goodchild is beating her head against a wall trying to explain like basic logic 101 syllogism stuff to a bunch of GGers, and it is depressing as hell.

I'm having horrible flashbacks to that logic class I took in undergrad that was half philosophy majors and half people who figured it would help them pass the bar. The latter group was... interesting.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:17 AM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

won't someone, anyone, please think of the shy men who are screwed by modern gender roles & sexual liberation who are totally 100% relevant to this thread and for whose existence I have lots of evidence, like a hunch

They should just play World of Warcraft to find a wife like I did.
posted by Talez at 8:20 AM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

I am saying that there is a demographic of men who feel disenfranchised/socially isolated, and trying to think about the cause of that and its consequences.

I am a shy, mousy person who felt very disenfranchised and socially isolated in my teens and twenties. I'm also a woman. Instead of acting out by harassing women online and sending them rape threats, I self-injured and developed an eating disorder. My experience isn't unusual; it's so common that it's a cliché.

There are scores of both men and women who feel terribly isolated and inadequate because they don't fit the social mold. It's not a problem disproportionately experienced by either gender. Yet men respond by blaming women and women respond by blaming themselves.
posted by Metroid Baby at 8:20 AM on October 14, 2014 [76 favorites]

You're right, Rustic Etruscan. There's no use in thinking about potential reasons this pathological, anti-female behavior has emerged in this subculture with which I am familiar. I will stop expressing my ideas about it in this discussion forum until sociologists have written doctoral dissertations on the subject.

It's kind of not necessary to speculate why this pathological behavior has emerged in the subculture because there are plenty of other people in the subculture who've already pinpointed why, and there are plenty of people outside the subculture who've already pinpoitned why, and it's kind of also visible from space why.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:20 AM on October 14, 2014 [7 favorites]

My understanding is that World of Warcraft's status as a game has been disavowed now. I think the only games are Call of Duty: Whatever and League of Legends.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 8:21 AM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

These children need to be spanked. Especially the grown ones.
posted by echocollate at 8:22 AM on October 14, 2014

We're all Social Justice Warriors here, echocollate, and are opposed to corporal punishment. Maybe we could make a sticker chart, where if they behave themselves on Twitter 20 times this week, they can go to Gamestop and pick out any game they want.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 8:23 AM on October 14, 2014 [6 favorites]

It's kind of not necessary to speculate why this pathological behavior has emerged in the subculture because there are plenty of other people in the subculture who've already pinpointed why, and there are plenty of people outside the subculture who've already pinpoitned why, and it's kind of also visible from space why.

What do I need to do in order to become someone with valid ideas?
posted by sonic meat machine at 8:26 AM on October 14, 2014 [4 favorites]

I agree that the Gamers are too organized and on message to not have a leadership; within minutes of any mainstream news article on #gamergate a flood of on-message posts will begin. I recall on, I think the NPR article, one of the Gamers actually screwed up and posted the same post twice from different accounts. So they have a reserve of posts that they probably stockpile during off times, which means they can flood any discussion with "on message"posts.

Even with a leadership of a dozen or so, maybe 1000 activist True Believers, and 10,000 duped supporters, #gamergaters are an army that's highly effective. The current structure of the internet means they can act with impunity, and they have organization and numbers their opponents can't match. I doubt an individual Gster even has to spend much time or effort on support. They really are becoming a model other hate groups are undeniably studying.

Long term, only a major shift in the way the internet is structured will end the threat. In the short term, I honestly don't know what to do to stop them other than publishing information out about them.
posted by happyroach at 8:28 AM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

What do I need to do in order to become someone with valid ideas?

Let's try a process of elimination. Passive-aggressive sarcasm didn't seem to work. So there's progress.
posted by Talez at 8:29 AM on October 14, 2014 [15 favorites]

It's kind of not necessary to speculate why this pathological behavior has emerged in the subculture because there are plenty of other people in the subculture who've already pinpointed why, and there are plenty of people outside the subculture who've already pinpoitned why, and it's kind of also visible from space why.

It's necessary because we have no idea how to fix it. Clearly, something needs to change to keep this from being the new normal. Social networks have to change, or men have to change. It's worth investigating every angle of how to address it, because what we're doing now isn't working. I get that no one here feels pity for these vile young men, and of course the women being harassed are the real victims, but "how do we keep men from joining hate groups?" is pretty relevant to the topic at hand.
posted by almostmanda at 8:32 AM on October 14, 2014 [7 favorites]

I don't have data on it, but my experience says that there are a relatively large number of men (many of my friends) who are worthwhile people and who would be good partners in the long term who are not, in fact, competitive in a short-term sense. They are shy, or are less physically attractive, than is required to succeed in most modern social situations.

I mean, I met my wife through okcupid; I was lucky. If not for that, I wouldn't have found her, and I'd likely still be in the demographic I am discussing here. There aren't a lot of good options.

But the larger issue, that ties GamerGate in with our patriarchal society considered as a whole, is encapsulated in your use of the word "competitive."

Because women are not a finite resource, like ammo or manna or hit points, and another male getting romantic with [Particular Woman] first doesn't mean they win and you lose, and you don't "level up" if you make a love connection with a "high value" woman.

Or, at least, lots of us think relations between the genders shouldn't be viewed this way - but they are, which is a symptom of a patriarchal culture. Tons of men think about relationships this way, even if they're not gamers; maybe they'd be more familiar with sports or financial analogies, but they're still thinking of establishing a relationship with a woman in terms of "competing with other men."

And so GamerGate (and the other backlashes against women or feminism that've popped up in the last few years in other "geek culture" contexts, like the Skepchick ElevatorGate incident, or some of the fights surrounding harassment at SF cons) are examples of how we still exist in a noticeably sexist society.

The "good option" is to quit thinking of it as a competition.

Which can be very very difficult, true, given the society we currently live in. But various people speaking out against GamerGate is one way to point out that thinking that men have to be "competitive" for the attention of women is bullshit.
posted by soundguy99 at 8:35 AM on October 14, 2014 [15 favorites]

What do I need to do in order to become someone with valid ideas?

The reason you're getting such pushback is that you appear more concerned with the poor forever-alones than with the women getting death threats. Honestly, your comments have come off a bit like "well if some women would just fuck these guys, everything would be fine." I get that you're not trying to say that, but that's how I read your first few comments.

Besides, if we're going to talk about the social forces that lead to hordes of angry, aimless young men, we should probably start with our shitty economy before we bemoan that these poor young men just can't seem to capture the attention of any of those mean women they are so entitled to.
posted by dialetheia at 8:36 AM on October 14, 2014 [30 favorites]

What do I need to do in order to become someone with valid ideas?

Well, one, don't assume that these guys are only doing this because they can't get into, or won't try to get into, a mature, healthy, relationship, since that line assumes facts not in evidence: You can be in a relationship and still be a horrific misogynist. And if you're going to start on that line, use better reasoning tools than abstract, ahistorical notions of how new families formed at some unspecified time and place.

On preview, dialetheia said it better.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 8:38 AM on October 14, 2014 [6 favorites]

It's worth investigating every angle of how to address it, because what we're doing now isn't working. I get that no one here feels pity for these vile young men, and of course the women being harassed are the real victims, but "how do we keep men from joining hate groups?" is pretty relevant to the topic at hand.

See, though, we already had this kind of conversation back when Elliot Rodger did his thing, and there were plenty of really awesome theories proposed then for this same problem so trying to re-analyze this is kind of retreading the same damn ground.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:39 AM on October 14, 2014

That's interesting, because I felt like a lot of that Elliot Rodger thread was men distancing themselves from the obvious misogyny or denying the part it played. The "gamer" identity is a much more widely adopted identity than MRA or PUA, and the misogyny at play here is even more obvious. This seems like fertile ground for continued discussion, because more men will see themselves as involved.
posted by almostmanda at 8:44 AM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

trying to explain like basic logic 101 syllogism stuff

oh my GOD apparently like 2/3rds of the alumni of my logic 101 class are now gamergaters =(
posted by ominous_paws at 8:53 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

I felt like a lot of that Elliot Rodger thread was men distancing themselves from the obvious misogyny or denying the part it played. The "gamer" identity is a much more widely adopted identity than MRA or PUA, and the misogyny at play here is even more obvious.

I'm sure you can appreciate, therefore, why so many of the women in the Elliot Rodger thread are frustrated that so many men tried to distance themselves from the misogyny at hand and are reluctant to re-tread the same ground all over again - because hell, it felt way obvious back then, and so many men still were resistant, so with something more obvious wouldn't they just resist and deny even harder and so who needs that?....
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:54 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

men feel entitled to women/sex/love and when they don't get it they can turn violent isn't a new groundbreaking idea. the only workable solution is to stop socializing boys to see women as lesser, as a reward, as a side kick. certain men and women will find themselves forever alone. why do the defenders of shy guys only seem to care about half of those people?
posted by nadawi at 8:56 AM on October 14, 2014 [13 favorites]

why do the defenders of shy guys only seem to care about half of those people?

Who do you see defending them?
posted by sonic meat machine at 8:59 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

I followed the "Zoe Quinn Conspiracy" for the space of perhaps a day when the subject blew up on Reddit, aided by onerous (and arguably unnecessary) censorship of discussion by the moderators of many of the largest gaming subreddits, but jumped off as soon as it became clear the central charge of quid-pro-quo (which always strained credulity) was completely unsupported by the extant evidence, and the partisans' focus on Quinn, rather than any of the other alleged players in the so-called scandal, bespoke misogyny as their motivation rather than any true concern for the state of gaming and journalism.

This, in my opinion, placed them within male society's vortex of misogynistic bullshit, a space also occupied by The Red Pill, Mens' Rights Activists, and Pick-Up Artists, so I got the fuck out long before it got rolled up into a ball with Anita Sarkeesian harassment and the backlash to burgeoning social consciousness in video games journalism under the GamerGate label.

Sidebar: That the various manifestations of male misogyny often claim to be at odds with each other (with Men's Rights Activists, for example, claiming to hate the Red Pill mentality) does not diminish the misogyny that they have in common. In that respect, they are merely different faces of the same die.

I may be an unfortunate person, all told; my interactions with other people on Metafilter have certainly been fraught at times, but I am not that unfortunate, and I am not that easily led.
posted by The Confessor at 9:00 AM on October 14, 2014 [4 favorites]

I agree that the Gamers are too organized and on message to not have a leadership; within minutes of any mainstream news article on #gamergate a flood of on-message posts will begin. I recall on, I think the NPR article, one of the Gamers actually screwed up and posted the same post twice from different accounts. So they have a reserve of posts that they probably stockpile during off times, which means they can flood any discussion with "on message"posts.

This isn't new to GamerGate. #4thwavefeminism, #bikinibridge, and #endfathersday were all planned and organized ops with similar distributed structures. The only difference is that #gamergate has tapped into the gaming subculture's existing misognistic elements, while the others relied on pure antifeminism and racism.
posted by verb at 9:04 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

When these angry young men are already wrapped up enough in their cozy cocoon of self- and outward facing hatred and fear, they won't be fixed by the magical touch of a woman. Believe me, I've tried!

I've dated more than my share of those "nice" "shy" guys, aww poor socially awkward puppies, they just need someone to look past their tough guy armor of logic and no-feelings to see their mushy core and love happily ever after etc.! Not. If you're lucky, you end up being the living soundboard for their recriminations against everyone who isn't you... That's if you don't become the focus of their persecution complex.

Pussy ain't magic, sorry. Nothing but a long hard look inward at how their own thoughts and behaviours are hurting them, coupled with a sincere desire to change, can get those guys to let go of the hate. Sadly, that's not as immediately rewarding as bullying, making funny meme pics and chasing upvotes.
posted by Freyja at 9:05 AM on October 14, 2014 [43 favorites]

I am so tempted to tweet the following:

#gamergate if this is you, grow up, get a job, and move out of your mom's basement.


Because from the limited amount of understanding I have of this, only little boys would pull this kind of nonsense. Grown up human beings treat each other with respect.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 9:06 AM on October 14, 2014

St. Alia of the Bunnies, respectfully: I strongly advise that you not do that.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 9:09 AM on October 14, 2014 [21 favorites]

in my experience as an anti social, not showering regularly, nerdy girl - the boys who complained about no girls wanting them and only wanting jerks rarely considered girls like me worthy of romantic attention, while simultaneously complaining that i could have any boy i wanted (demonstrably untrue) and going on and on about how unfair it was.

YES. Holy shit, I've had it up to here with the cries of "what about the [str]awkward men?!" because it's always accompanied by the assumption that a shy man's experiences with awkwardness and disenfranchisement are much more severe and thus in need of corrective action than the awkwardness and disenfranchisement regularly experienced by young women. I'm guessing that the assumption continues to be made half because these supposedly pitiably awkward men are the only ones issuing death threats and chasing people out of their homes and half because we as a society have been taught to dismiss and discount women's lived experiences no matter what, but that's all just to say: What about the awkward women?!

Like, I'm a serious extrovert with a penchant for fancy bath products, but I'm also ugly, and to men like those under discussion, being ugly is one of the worst offenses a woman can commit -- second only perhaps to denying a man what he has ascertained to be a rightfully earned Sex Treat^TM. Being ugly makes me significantly feel more awkward than I'd like to, and that's putting it mildly.

Since a woman's value is derived mainly from her perceived attractiveness to men, when you're unattractive, you're not just nothing, not just unworthy of romantic attention, you're actually worse than nothing. Your whole self is viewed as an insult, beneath contempt. And oh, god, if you have a crush on a guy and you're not sure if he likes you back? If you feel so shy around him that you just want to crawl under a rock and hide? Tough shit, lady! Because as men will be very quick to tell you, over and over again, the fact that you are a woman is intended to override all of your actual experiences. Women, regardless of their inborn awkwardness or shyness or inability to socialize with ease, remain forever positioned as the arbiters of sex itself.

Whenever an actual woman points out that socializing or dating does not come to her naturally or easily, men will come out of the woodwork to remind her that even if she's having trouble with it as an individual, dating/relating/life is inherently better and easier for women qua women. That's pretty much the definition of blissfully ignorant, greener grass on the other side-inspired magical thinking, but it has real world effects. And these are usually the same dudes who believe that being a man means being born entitled to attention and affection from women who are not ugly, anti-social, awkward, or seething with barely-concealed resentment -- more explicitly, it's embodied in the belief that he is entitled to a relationship with a woman who is nothing like him. (Cue montage of all the shlubby guys on sitcoms who just so happen to be dating supermodels.)

Regardless, talking about dating as a "competition" where a woman's role is necessarily diminished to that of an object to be fought over and won by a "successful" man is both deeply gross and totally irrelevant when it comes to discussions about the proliferation of toxic misogyny online.
posted by divined by radio at 9:10 AM on October 14, 2014 [85 favorites]

Vague experiment.

Tweeted that I was making my twitter client filter out #gamergate because I'm sick of hearing about shitbags attacking women 'for games'. Within seconds I had a couple of total strangers (yes, with anime avatars) reply to it. One with a link to a video on MSNBC I didn't bother watching, and one saying 'nice blog'.

Both of 'em got blocked and reported for spam.

So yeah, there really are people (or robots?) watching that tag and leaping on ANYONE. God. Who the hell has the time to do something that boring? It must be robots.

And as I typed this another reply to it calling me a 'simpering twat' popped up. Wow. Another spam report. This is kinda fun! I kinda want to set up a little robot to automatically block and spam-report everyone who replies to that tweet now.
posted by egypturnash at 9:17 AM on October 14, 2014 [6 favorites]

Who do you see defending them?

defending, giving a pass too, trying to center the conversation on them, refusing to acknowledge that it's a people problem not a man problem, whatever you want to call it.
posted by nadawi at 9:24 AM on October 14, 2014 [9 favorites]

egypturnash: "So yeah, there really are people (or robots?) watching that tag"

The way to test if they're bothering to read your tweets is post gamegate facts.
posted by RobotHero at 9:27 AM on October 14, 2014 [7 favorites]

I guess for me, sonic meat machine, the fundamental problem is that I don't see any evidence that these young men are actually incapable of finding love and/or sex. Trying to solve the problem of their permanent lack of love and/or sex seems entirely misplaced if we still haven't actually established that it exists. And if these particular guys are having a much harder time attracting the attention they want, and yet other geek guys who aren't any better looking or whatever aren't, then it is another huge leap of logic to say that they're bitter because they can't get any, not that they can't get any because they're bitter. "What if they're just lonely and disaffected" therefore becomes entirely speculative. What if they're just lonely? What if they just all have low blood sugar? What if they all had bad relationships with their mothers?

There's no way to make sure that no young man ever has anything go wrong ever in order to prevent this sort of behavior, but the standard for establishing that this is something so wrong as to constitute a widespread social problem has really not been met. We don't have evidence of that; we do have evidence of the death threats against female game developers. So.
posted by Sequence at 9:27 AM on October 14, 2014 [7 favorites]

But I suppose obviously they have to decide if you're for or against GamerGate, to decide their reaction.
posted by RobotHero at 9:28 AM on October 14, 2014

or men have to change

That's the one, right there. These men/boys who are acting this way have to change. We cannot do it for them. We cannot make up for whatever hurts they think are driving them, mostly because the rest of us have our own hurts. We cannot make them develop a sense of proportion about themselves, or understand that life is worth living and love and happiness are possible even without everyone kissing your ass and soothing your hurt feelings and squashing themselves down to make you feel bigger.

They have to realize it. All the rest of us can do is point out the problem and help each other deal with the deluge of denial-via-rape-threats.

One of the funny things about patriarchy is how we all assume the problems of men (especially white men) as problems we all need to solve right now.

No. We don't. We can't, really, except for how we raise our own sons.

I am not on this planet to fix gamergaters, or red-pill MRAs, or people who threaten other people's children with death and assault. Life is too short and I have shit to do. I am not their mommy. They are not my responsibility. The tools are available to fix themselves. They need to do it. Or they can stay in their little hate-hovel, alone, till they die. It is entirely up to them.
posted by emjaybee at 9:29 AM on October 14, 2014 [40 favorites]

Fair enough, Sequence. I just can't conceive of people with meaningful, rich relationships with women being a part of this group.

I am bowing out of this thread. I think that there are interesting angles to be discussed, but perhaps I have approached it the wrong way. I don't think people have gotten what I was saying, originally, which is that the industry/commercialism is reinforcing this behavior.
posted by sonic meat machine at 9:30 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'll tell you what I AM DOING about #GG: supporting feminist (and female-as-self-described) geeks. I attended the con as I have the local and online events. I bought merch. I spread the word about the projects and games. I donate to projects like Feminist Frequency and We Hunted The Mammoth. I socialize with and date fellow geeks. I am trying to be a part of virtuous, rather than hateful, circles.
And I do not give a FF about the menz.
posted by Dreidl at 9:33 AM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

I'm actually vaguely fascinated by the way GamerGate types leap on anyone mentioning them (or anything relating to them) on Twitter.

It doesn't appear to be robots, but at the same time it doesn't appear to be fully human - it's appears to be an army of meatbots running scripted searches continually mad then firing off canned responses they've got from forums mixed with just enough as libbed material to appear like a real response.

So it's sentient being co-opted into a mechanical process. Zombies, essentially.

I wonder if anyone is fooled into thinking it's a grassroots movement? Because the reaction it seems to get from anyone I know encountering it is of distinct revolusion.
posted by Artw at 9:33 AM on October 14, 2014 [4 favorites]

I don't think people have gotten what I was saying, originally, which is that the industry/commercialism is reinforcing this behavior.

Oh, we got that, we just didn't think that "get them girlfriends" is the way to combat that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:34 AM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

I don't think people have gotten what I was saying, originally, which is that the industry/commercialism is reinforcing this behavior.

I think people are telling you that you're thinking too small and brainstorming things that wouldn't even be bandaids on the problem. This is a societal problem, not an industry problem, and it affects everybody not just men.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:36 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Also I think GamerGate highlights some practical steps Twitter could take to improve things all around.

1) make accounts less disposable, possibly by locking some features away from egg accounts, allowing people to opt out of being contacted by eggs, exclude them from searches etc.

2) pay attention to the "rando" pattern of behavior, where an account jumps into a conversation with two other accounts it has no connection with. In theory it could be legitimate but in practice it is a major red flag.
posted by Artw at 9:39 AM on October 14, 2014 [7 favorites]

I just can't conceive of people with meaningful, rich relationships with women being a part of this group.

adam baldwin is married with three children. richard dawkins has had 3 wives and a daughter. many redpill dudes talk about their daughters. many republican lawmakers who block access to women's health services and say things like "the body has a way of shutting those things down" are married with kids. the scenery is different, the view the same.
posted by nadawi at 9:39 AM on October 14, 2014 [60 favorites]

Artw, what you're describing isn't markedly different from how people raid in MMOs. Not really sure why anybody thinks it's fun, but evidently some people do.
posted by Sequence at 9:41 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

I do feel bad for the shy guys, though. They can't even go outside for a walk without some alpha-male plumber throwing vegetables at them.
posted by Metroid Baby at 9:42 AM on October 14, 2014 [42 favorites]

"Worse than 4chan" is a new low for reddit.

New?

come off a bit like "well if some women would just fuck these guys, everything would be fine."

Thing is, this isn't entirely untrue. Where that falls down is these asshats thinking women just need to magically fuck them, when in reality, the asshats need to make themselves fuckable. The sad irony, of course, is that they refuse to understand that this repellent behaviour they're engaging in renders them even less fuckable.

But these guys probably think those grapes were sour, too, so I don't think it's going to get through to them that they are shooting themselves in the foot. I mean, if you want to get fucked, someone has to want to fuck you... which is probably where the understanding falls down; they don't care if a woman wants it or not, they're owed it, by God, and it's only feminazinewfags who are preventing them from getting all the pussy they're supposed to be getting. It's the culture of entitlement, really, and getting them to understand they are not entitled to women will help.

To say nothing of actual fulfilling interpersonal relationships. Everyone needs those, to a greater or lesser extent, but these guys view them as a matter of right as opposed to something you have to work for.

It seems like an intractable problem, though. They surround themselves with these echo chambers, and their behaviour--because it pushes women away, because no woman should ever have to put up with misogynist bullshit--acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy of why all women are bad etc etc. So the behaviour gets reinforced, and at the sharp end of the wedge we get Elliot Rodger.

Yes, shy/unattractive women have just as many problems with dating and romance and socialization, and yes we need to fix those, but I get the sense from women that maybe it's more important to focus on the death threats and misogyny coming from these men before it escalates even further into more widespread violence than our society already sees against women.

Oh, we got that, we just didn't think that "get them girlfriends" is the way to combat that.

I hope what I'm saying isn't coming across that way. I'm meaning, teach them to be respectful and decent human beings and how to deal with emotions appropriately, and several of the basic causes of this horrific bullshit will be uprooted. Teach them also that just because they may want something (a girlfriend, a job, sex, whatever), doesn't mean they deserve it no matter what.

Regardless, talking about dating as a "competition" where a woman's role is necessarily diminished to that of an object to be fought over and won by a "successful" man is both deeply gross and totally irrelevant when it comes to discussions about the proliferation of toxic misogyny online.

It's hardly irrelevant when that is exactly how these regressive idiots think. It's disgusting, yes! No woman should ever have to put up with it! And it is flat out 100% wrong. But this is how they think. It's hard to discuss how to get them to change their thinking without discussing what that thinking is and where it comes from. And it's this very thinking of life being a zero-sum competition for women, and 'failing' at the 'competition,' that leads to the toxic stew of hatred online.

One thing that really bewilders me about this is how they so easily shrug off the question of whether they'd talk to their mother/sister/grandmother/etc like this. They simply cannot make the logical leap from that to "Well if you wouldn't talk about your own mother/sister/etc like this, every woman you're talking about is someone's _______, and all those guys you hang with? That's how they're talking about your ______."

It just rolls off them somehow. They're impervious. I think it's reasonable to believe that some of the younger ones will see the light as they grow up and graduate highschool, but the rest? I fear. There's a pretty straight (ahem) line to draw through PUA->MRA->Red Pill->#GG, and every step along the way the misogyny gets more entrenched, more violent, and more self-sustaining.

Following on from emmjaybee's comment: I want to be clear that I don't think women bear any responsibility at all for changing these men. Women (in concert with men or not, depending on your family configuration) only have a respnsibility w/r/t how they raise their children.

Fixing this problem, making these men see why they need to change, is up to us men. Or perhaps to put it more finely, it is the responsibility of men, it is required of us to do something about this. It is not required that women take responsibility for the behaviour of men, but rather that women be listened to about how women should be treated. Ugh, I'm tangling myself in linguistic knots here; I hope what I mean is coming through. Women can help, but it's not your responsibility; men must help, because it is our responsibility. And I hope it's clear I don't mean that in some patriarchal way, protecting women or something.

And, I hope also, none of anything I've said excuses death threats and harassment. Every single person who does that should be in jail, I DGAF about why they did it.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:45 AM on October 14, 2014 [7 favorites]

Sequence - sounds about right. It's treating a human interaction as something to grind in an MMO.
posted by Artw at 9:49 AM on October 14, 2014

Metroid Baby - this piece of shy guy fan art is one of my rotating backgrounds and every time it comes up i think, "i would play that!" but now you make me want a rune factory/sims style shy guy game - just bopping along, trying to get ingredients for a great stew, avoiding incoming "heroes" and so on.
posted by nadawi at 9:52 AM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

One thing that's good about all this is that the vast majority of people who come into contact with GamerGate nonsense seem to respond with "Eww, you're kidding, right?" People are, in general, not buying that it's anything but disgusting misogyny, and that's a good thing.

I wish I could say the same about Reason magazine.
posted by divabat at 10:08 AM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

sonic meat machine: As a guy who has often gotten wounded over discussions like this where I felt like I was making a legitimate point, I want to say that I agree with a lot of what you're saying, and can very much relate to where you're coming from. That said, I think that in your attempts to opine on the forces which drive men to do these sorts of things, you're making a few statements which are giving men far too much of a benefit of the doubt, and which overlook the ways in which even men being hurt by this set-up simultaneously prove the ways in which men, ultimately, are given a privilege and a sense of gross entitlement that is itself the fundamental problem here.

I was a very awkward young man — more than awkward, I had a deep belief that something about the way I functioned as a person was profoundly loathsome to others, man and woman alike. I was also convinced that I was ugly, and operated with the sort of lack of confidence that comes with assuming that there is something inherently unappealing to the process of looking at you. A big part of why I initially became invested in this subject is that I understand all-too-well how easy it is to have your sense of self-worth completely shattered by the ludicrous ways in which you're taught, as a man and even as a boy, to assess yourself.

(I have since realized, as I wrote above, that my own esteem problems have been nothing compared to what's regularly inflicted upon women; nonetheless, I do have a concern for the men in this system that goes beyond my concern that some of these men'll inevitably wind up being Eliot Rodgers. Although that is definitely the scariest of all my concerns.)

The problem that you see as being faced by men is really a problem that's being faced by our entire culture at once. What commenters are saying here in response to you is that, although there are certainly problems being faced by men today involving loneliness and alienation, those same problems affect women even more so. That's in addition to the problems women have that go far beyond just loneliness and alienation and wishing they could have boyfriends, by the way. But even if we focus on just this one thing, the problems that women face are, I'm convinced, a whole heck of a lot more amplified than the same problems for men.

Women have to deal with, for example, the fact that men are taught to care first and foremost about their sexual "worth"; if a woman is unattractive, men tend to ignore them as people, rather than as just sexual candidates. If you are not an attractive woman, then for some subset of the population you do not exist. This doesn't hold true for unattractive men in nearly the same way; women are not taught to value a man's appearance above everything else about that man, and in fact are oftentimes disgusted when they find out that men have been primed to think of them that way. (For good reason, too!)

If an unattractive woman does anything to stand out, furthermore — like, I don't know, say anything ever, or wind up in a photograph at any point in her life, or really just do something beyond "immediately cease to exist" — then her unattractiveness becomes, in the eyes of many men, an active offense. Men will go out of their way to explicitly attack ugly women, for no other reason than that they don't want those women around. We can go into the parts of this which are men trying to perform their non-attractedness for their peers, to show they don't "value" the wrong kinds of women, or we can talk about how men who perceive themselves as unattractive often assume that women feel the same way about them, which totally sucks... and you know what, I've totally been there for that last part, but how about we don't treat that like it's an equal offense? Because it's really not. The shit men will inflict upon women, even women who are attractive but not attractive enough (see: the stupid 10-point rating system), goes beyond reprehensible.

I know women who've developed eating disorders, literally risked dying, because of things that men said to them for their being unattractive or overweight. Some of my friends are still struggling with those disorders, which are literally ruining their lives. I fear for their safety and well-being.

And then we have to look at peer-induced pressure, which... well. The locker-room culture for boys is a unique kind of shitty, and there's definitely a tendency for less confident men to be picked on by men who've become more confident about their ability to get laid, or even just to talk to women. I've been there too. It completely sucks. But it is nothing compared to the pressures that women place on other women. I have only tangentially been a witness to some of this, but it has long been repeated that women learn to bully each other psychologically at a very young age, and I think that to the extent that this is true, it's true because of the grotesquely distorted ways in which women are taught, by every aspect of our culture, to think of themselves as people. On this last point I don't want to go into too much detail, because I really don't have firsthand experience when it comes to this, but nonetheless it's worth pointing out that women aren't free of this grotesque distortion even when men are not around — and I have been told by a number of women that the pressures they feel are amplified far more by certain women than they are by men.

The ways in which men suffer for being men, in short, is nothing compared to the ways in which women suffer for being women — even if you limit your observations to the sorts of insecurities and lack of self-esteem that are the most common ailments of men within this system, ignoring how those damaged men then inflict themselves upon women in circumstances such as this. Even if you try to "level the playing field" in every way imaginable to privilege the feelings of men, there is no perspective I have been able to find in which men's concerns are not equalled or entirely exceeded by those of women.

Again, I don't think that what you're saying is wrong, and I relate to a lot of the points that you've made here. But your focus on men, I think, is making you ignore the ways in which women suffer from those exact same points even more than the men you're talking about do. Without intending to, and I am totally on your side in thinking that you're acting only in the best of possible faiths, you are putting a spotlight on men that they don't deserve, in the contexts of this conversation, and that favors their relatively minor woes over the multitude of problems that women face. I say relatively minor because I don't think these woes are minor at all; I think they're very real and I think they contribute to a lot of hurt that I wish we could do away with. But they are still minor relative to the problems that women face, which are frankly so monstrous that I find it nearly inconceivable that they exist in the scale that they do. It's a travesty that they do. And every year for the last half-dozen years I've become aware that the problems in our society are even worse than I thought — not even the parts that seem to be getting worse, but all the subtle issues which women have dealt with for decades and which men are less commonly privy to.

I still don't understand the extent of those pluriform issues, but I know enough to understand that the problem runs deeper than I'm aware of. So as even more explicit and looming dangers to women rise up, it's really important that the men who want to be allies here, yourself and I included, stay aware that for all that we've legitimately suffered for this cultural blight, and for all that the men who constitute women's greatest threats have suffered likewise, our own issues are likely suffered by women far worse before the more explicit dangers even arise. Even when we think we're being entirely sympathetic, we have to be wary of making the conversation too much about us and not enough about the people who this harms the most. (I'm worried that even this has been too focused on the trials and tribulations of men, and if so I apologize — past this point, I don't know if I have anything more to say as-is, so I'll just fall silent and let the discussion go on without me.)
posted by rorgy at 10:11 AM on October 14, 2014 [34 favorites]

I wish I could say the same about Reason magazine.

reason magazine takes the misogynistic position? shocking.
posted by nadawi at 10:15 AM on October 14, 2014 [6 favorites]

come off a bit like "well if some women would just fuck these guys, everything would be fine."

> Thing is, this isn't entirely untrue. Where that falls down is these asshats thinking women just need to magically fuck them, when in reality, the asshats need to make themselves fuckable.

I think that's taking a particular mindset on its own terms. The problem is not that these guys need to get laid / find a mutually nourishing relationship. Even when the dude is in genuine, lonely distress over his unfuckbability/lovability, it's really easy for that to get expressed -- even without realizing it -- as "grar, need to enact masculinity." In which case, replying that they just need to get themselves laid or girlfriended gets heard as "yeah, you need to enact masculinity."

Which I know is not your ultimate point here, but it stuck out because your solution:

I'm meaning, teach them to be respectful and decent human beings and how to deal with emotions appropriately, and several of the basic causes of this horrific bullshit will be uprooted

(which yeah I agree) is of course heard as "we're gonna demasculinize ya, other dudes will get your stuff," even if you can dangle sex and relationships and other good things at the end of that path.

Which is to agree that sure lonely guys getting sex and love is a good thing, but that want is neither the cause of nor the solution to the problem.
posted by postcommunism at 10:21 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

From a purely selfish standpoint, your true nerdy sweet quiet awkward fellow should HATE the gaters, because I'm going to end up giving that perfectly sweet guy a much more intense side-eye after all this than I would have before. "Wait, you're not one of THOSE gamers, are you?" I'm honestly pretty surprised by the way many gamers are allowing this small cadre of jerks to claim their entire subculture without much resistance at all.

Yesterday I saw a guy wearing a trenchcoat and a fedora, and at first I smiled because I remember going to high school with a bunch of awkward nerdy anime dorks like that and I have fond memories of them. They were mostly very kind, sweet, earnest people. After a minute, though, I started thinking "wait, the fedora-wearers aren't necessarily sweet and clueless anymore, many of them are virulent misogynists! For all I know that guy is #notmyshield!" So in this sense, the gaters really are ruining it for all the sweet awkward nerds out there. And I'm saying that as somebody who dated from that pool occasionally back when I was dating.
posted by dialetheia at 10:24 AM on October 14, 2014 [8 favorites]

Also, did anyone post #GamerGate Bingo yet?
posted by postcommunism at 10:24 AM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

Cathy Young, the author of the Reason piece, is a long-time anti-feminist/MRA supporter. Can't say that I'm surprised they gave her a chance to speak her mind, nor that they apparently didn't bother to do even a modicum of fact-checking.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:24 AM on October 14, 2014 [10 favorites]

I have been putting out daily messages about my annoyance at #gamergate, full tag. I get 5-10 new anons to block each day.
For a while last week the fresh faces died off, but as of yesterday the new accounts have come out in full force again.
posted by Theta States at 10:32 AM on October 14, 2014

It doesn't appear to be robots, but at the same time it doesn't appear to be fully human - it's appears to be an army of meatbots running scripted searches continually mad then firing off canned responses they've got from forums mixed with just enough as libbed material to appear like a real response.

well they ARE all being coached via a set of documents instructing them on what to say, that they had been storing on git hub, and are now somewhere else.
posted by Theta States at 10:35 AM on October 14, 2014

One of the curious / ugly things is the... gamishness of it: the conspiracy theories, the convoluted and tenuous rationales, the projection of women into boss-level enemies, the enactment of game-like behaviour in real life. (Anita Sarkeesian touched on this in her >XOXO talk, which takes the critical framework of Tropes vs Women and applies it to the hate campaign against her.)

On reflection, that's not surprising: there's definitely a part of adolescence where one is susceptible to grand conspiratorial theories where everything can be connected in Massively Significant ways that are ultimately pivoted on subjective experience. That sensibility is often reflected back in certain kinds of fiction, including AAA plots. Mostly, it's just a phase that people grow out of, but in environments that reinforce and perpetuate that myth-making, it mutates into something rotten.

Or as I said elsewhere, it's like a bad Umberto Eco knockoff: Fuckwits' Pendulum.
posted by holgate at 10:42 AM on October 14, 2014 [7 favorites]

       come off a bit like "well if some women would just fuck these guys, everything would be fine."

Thing is, this isn't entirely untrue. Where that falls down is these asshats thinking women just need to magically fuck them, when in reality, the asshats need to make themselves fuckable. The sad irony, of course, is that they refuse to understand that this repellent behaviour they're engaging in renders them even less fuckable.

IME, it is entirely untrue. You cannot fuck a dude like this out of a problem he and society have banded together to create and perpetuate. Believe me, I've tried!

The biggest problem I have with the "hateful men need to alter their behavior at least in part so they will become more attractive to women" line of thinking is that teaching men how to, as you put it, "make themselves fuckable" seems to be inextricably linked to the notion that there is an actual agreed-upon point at which a man has rendered himself inherently or undeniably fuckable by at least one person. Except there isn't, because you still need to get another person to agree to go to bed with you, and there is no universal affect, behavior, or mode of appearance that will result in that happening 100% (or 10%, or 1%) of the time. It's not a woman thing, it's a person thing. And even for the nicest, foxiest people in the world, it still mostly comes down to luck.

So whether or not anyone certifies anyone else as fuckable is, to me, well beside the point. I just made a comment to that end in a recent thread about sex work: Men like this don't need any more encouragement to continue viewing women as objects that can and will be acquired upon successful adoption of some previously unrevealed code of conduct. Rather than treating us like puzzle boxes with sex treats trapped inside, combination locks that they just need to fiddle with a little bit more before we open up and offer them that to which they are rightfully entitled, or sexy carrots dangled at the end of the 'fuckable' stick, what they need to treat us like is people.

These guys don't need to make themselves fuckable, they need to be encouraged to see women as boring, staid, and wholly unremarkable -- not as ladies, not as delicate flowers, not as prospective sexual partners, but as people. We can't keep couching our arguments in terms of fuckability because the notion of fuckability never even comes onto the radar screen when you're dealing with men who devote so much of their time and energy to fighting the notion that women deserve to be treated like human beings... which is to say, of course, that we deserve to be treated like men.

Hinging conversations on what a man needs to do to be less horrible to women in particular, as though we have specialized or specific needs for engagement, rather than hinging it on what a man needs to do to be decent and respectful toward all other human beings everywhere because that's what good people do -- that's still defining the conversation as Us vs. Them, Men vs. Women, and it makes me feel like we're still playing a game on their board, using only their pieces.
posted by divined by radio at 10:44 AM on October 14, 2014 [53 favorites]

GamerGate is basically a conjunction of misogybistic forum trolls, right wing opportunists and Mr. Logic types, so guessing which way Reason is going to jump isn't hard.

Was quite suprised to see the Daily Mail slamming them to the extent it did.
posted by Artw at 10:46 AM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

I love how Cathy Young's article is almost entirely about accusations against Zoe Quinn even though the first bullet point is that GG is not about Zoe. You can get bingo just reading that article.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 10:51 AM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

Except there isn't, because you still need to get another person to agree to go to bed with you, and there is no universal affect, behavior, or mode of appearance that will result in that happening 100% (or 10%, or 1%) of the time.

I meant it more as removing behaviours and attitudes that make one definitively unfuckable, but that's my fault for lack of clarity.

And while I agree that these idiots need to learn how to be decent to all people, unfortunately leading them there is going to have to involve some kind of perceived benefit for them. "Women will actually want to speak to you" isn't, in what I am saying, an end goal. It's a means to an end. I mean, we can't get from misogynist death-threat-uttering troll to Sensitive New Age Guy in one step, I think; we're probably going to have to go through some intermediate steps to get there. It seems like maybe getting from "women owe me sex and dating" to "I need to make myself a better person so (hopefully) women want to give me sex and dating" is a more realistic step than immediately jumping to "I must respect other human beings as human beings and be decent to them," while fully understanding--and again, my fault for not being clear--that the latter is the end goal.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:52 AM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

Was quite suprised to see the Daily Mail slamming them to the extent it did.

I don't think I am. They've seen the Baddies sketch, and they know that whatever they might think of feminism or social justice, the point here is not to side with the people with skulls on their helmets.
posted by Sequence at 11:02 AM on October 14, 2014 [10 favorites]

Huh, I didn't know that about Cathy Young or Reason. There you go.
posted by divabat at 11:04 AM on October 14, 2014

IME, it is entirely untrue. You cannot fuck a dude like this out of a problem he and society have banded together to create and perpetuate.

I shouldn't have to point this out, but the guy who started this was an ex-boyfriend if Zoey Quinn. Divined by Radio is right- it's not a matter of whether the guys are having sex or not, or whether they're superficially attractive enough to get a mate. It's all about their sense of entitlement, objectification of women, and general misogyny.

Honestly, if you make them more concerned with becoming attractive to women? You're just going to end up with pick-up culture, of which many of these people are undoubtedly already members. No, what needs to be changed is fundamental attitudes about women.
posted by happyroach at 11:09 AM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

For your horror/amusement (what is the correct word or portmanteau to express this?) I submit 4 conversations I added to storify.
posted by Theta States at 11:10 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Honestly, if you make them more concerned with becoming attractive to women? You're just going to end up with pick-up culture

No, that's making them manipulate women in cynical ways. Teaching them to actually be attractive human beings is a totally different thing.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:16 AM on October 14, 2014

I think GG has some aspects of inner city gangs or fundamentalist terrorists - we can talk about how we pulled ourselves through the tough times without resorting to hurting people, so they should damn well get over themselves too, but the ugly thing is, they are pulling through - they're doing it by finding community and identity in a surrogate family, and regardless of whether that family is a gang or terror cell or GG, this sense of family and purpose can feel like a step up, like being a part of Something That Matters, like not being outcast.

As with dealing with gangs etc, being Tough On Crime is part of how we respond (especially for the entrenched members who can nolonger be deterred) and helping people find more positive family to drain the numbers and reduce the influx and break the cycle is also part of it. It is unfair that outcasts hurting others get attention that outcasts hurting themselves don't, but paving the paths to better ways to live and be who you want to be, I would hope it helps both.

Some of us are ideologically inclined to work as the ambulances at the bottom of the cliff, helping the victims who desperately need it. Some of us are ideologically inclined to work on building the fencetop cliff, helping only indirectly. Often we want help from the other camp with our task at hand, but both camps are part of the solution.
posted by anonymisc at 11:21 AM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

No, that's making them manipulate women in cynical ways. Teaching them to actually be attractive human beings is a totally different thing.

This strikes me as an objection to phrasing, not substance. It's possible that an overconcern with sexual attractiveness to women & sex generally could get in the way of the larger goal of fundamentally changing attitudes about women.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 11:23 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Smash the Playtriarchy!
posted by Slackermagee at 11:25 AM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

I already said:

I'm meaning, teach them to be respectful and decent human beings and how to deal with emotions appropriately, and several of the basic causes of this horrific bullshit will be uprooted

Dangle the carrot of "women will actually want to speak to you if you become a better person" because that is literally the only thing these men can possibly understand. I don't know how to make it any clearer that I am not talking about superficial PUA bullshit.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:26 AM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

> regardless of whether that family is a gang or terror cell or GG, this sense of family and purpose often feels like a step up, like being a part of something, like not being outcast.

I agree, but in the case of #GG the "we are poor trodden outcasts" bit is a received story they are collectively telling themselves.
posted by postcommunism at 11:28 AM on October 14, 2014 [4 favorites]

> Dangle the carrot of "women will actually want to speak to you if you become a better person" because that is literally the only thing these men can possibly understand.

No, because then you are submitting to those horrible women.
posted by postcommunism at 11:30 AM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

Dangle the carrot of "women will actually want to speak to you if you become a better person" because that is literally the only thing these men can possibly understand.

I, for one, understand that this is what you meant by your statement. However, I, for one, think that a far more deeper-rooted solution would be to get them to come around to "you should want to be a better person for your own self-respect rather than just to get women to like you".

I understand that this is the only justification that some may listen to, but I still bristle at the reduction of my entire gender to being perceived as a sweepstakes prize for being decent.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:31 AM on October 14, 2014 [23 favorites]

Dangle the carrot of "women will actually want to speak to you if you become a better person" because that is literally the only thing these men can possibly understand.

I know that's well meant, but I'm a person, not a carrot. My time and attention are mine to allot, and not to be promised as a social good to ex-assholes who've cleaned up their acts.
posted by immlass at 11:31 AM on October 14, 2014 [27 favorites]

I, for one, understand that this is what you meant by your statement. However, I, for one, think that a far more deeper-rooted solution would be to get them to come around to "you should want to be a better person for your own self-respect rather than just to get women to like you".

Absolutely, which is why I said this particular way to approach the problem is an intermediate step.

I know that's well meant, but I'm a person, not a carrot. My time and attention are mine to allot, and not to be promised as a social good to ex-assholes who've cleaned up their acts.

Sigh. On balance, people would rather speak with a reformed asshole than a current asshole, yes? That is all I am saying. If you stop being a misogynist asshole, women are going to be much more likely to speak to you. Is that incorrect somehow?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:36 AM on October 14, 2014

Sigh. On balance, people would rather speak with a reformed asshole than a current asshole, yes? That is all I am saying. If you stop being a misogynist asshole, women are going to be much more likely to speak to you. Is that incorrect somehow?

It's not incorrect, but if you are thinking about it with that goal in mind (the "carrot"), you will almost definitely not be successful.
posted by stoneandstar at 11:38 AM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

maybe we can focus back on the women or the things happening to them and less on how to make all the men in the world less shitty. one way to teach men that they aren't at the center of the universe is to stop centering the attention on them.
posted by nadawi at 11:39 AM on October 14, 2014 [32 favorites]

Okay. Look.

These men are misogynist assholes. They are, by and large, misogynist assholes because they believe that women owe them something, as opposed to having to treat women like actual people with agency.

So. As an intermediate step towards actually acting like human beings, if these guys can learn "Women do not owe me anything, but if I am a decent person women are more likely to talk to me," we are a hell of a lot closer to them learning "I should be a decent person because being a decent person brings its own rewards."

You cannot get from "women are playthings for my amusement" to "all people are deserving of dignity and respect" in one go, no matter how much I agree with you that this would be ideal.

Using the motivations they already have to slowly change their thinking and opinions is the best way to change minds on a permanent basis. A lot of the time it may look an awful lot like pandering, but it works. So use their motivation towards gaining the interest of women to start on the self improvement path, then ta-dah, here's the new motivation for you now that you are already working on becoming a real human.

maybe we can focus back on the women or the things happening to them and less on how to make all the men in the world less shitty

Honest question, how do we stop these things from happening to women without making men less shitty?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:45 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think what you are saying is highly theoretical and you have not given a basis in evidence, anecdotal or otherwise. So it is a little insulting to be called a carrot on those grounds.
posted by stoneandstar at 11:46 AM on October 14, 2014 [6 favorites]

Honest question, how do we stop these things from happening to women without making men less shitty?

You're going for the carrot. Why not use the stick?

Name and shame the people doing this. Pressure Twitter to get some more sane reporting-of-abuse standards. Do the same on Facebook. Raise our sons to not be shitty in the first place. Pass laws prohibiting this kind of behavior.

These guys aren't just doing this because they're socially isolated fucknuggets. They're doing it because the rest of society is letting them get away with it aside from writing tut-tut articles. When society starts sending them the message that this shit will not fly, and starts backing it up with real consequences, this will not only send a message to the fucknuggets, but it will take the onus of reforming these men off of women.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:48 AM on October 14, 2014 [28 favorites]

salishsea: I think what you are saying is a deliberate misinterpretation of what I have said, and you haven't given any evidence either so I fail to see your point.

I want these guys to stop being assholes almost as much as you do. I am suggesting that they are assholes because they feel entitled to the affections of women, something that many other people in this thread have also said, and which nobody has challenged.

but it will take the onus of reforming these men off of women.

maybe you missed where I said the onus of reforming these men is ON MEN and categorically not on women
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:50 AM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Here, this is what I said:

Fixing this problem, making these men see why they need to change, is up to us men. Or perhaps to put it more finely, it is the responsibility of men, it is required of us to do something about this. It is not required that women take responsibility for the behaviour of men, but rather that women be listened to about how women should be treated. Ugh, I'm tangling myself in linguistic knots here; I hope what I mean is coming through. Women can help, but it's not your responsibility; men must help, because it is our responsibility. And I hope it's clear I don't mean that in some patriarchal way, protecting women or something.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:51 AM on October 14, 2014

I am suggesting that they are assholes because they feel entitled to the affections of women, something that many other people in this thread have also said, and which nobody has challenged.

....Except for nadawi and me just now, and that's just off the top of my head.

maybe you missed where I said the onus of reforming these men is ON MEN and categorically not on women

Okay, I'll redirect - punishing these men would put the onus of reform on the men themselves, and leave the women out of the question of their reform entirely. By telling the men "if you reform, girls will like you" still involves women, even on a theoretical basis, and we don't even want to be involved on a theoretical basis.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:54 AM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

we stop these things by not tolerating them and by giving systems of support to women. just because figuring out how to dismantle the patriarchy is a necessary step to rectifying the awful treatment women receive, it doesn't mean that every conversation about sexism has to focus on the angry men.

i don't think you're saying anything wrong, except how you are getting defensive and feeling the need to fill up the room proving your point.
posted by nadawi at 11:55 AM on October 14, 2014 [7 favorites]

I want these guys to stop being assholes almost as much as you do. I am suggesting that they are assholes because they feel entitled to the affections of women, something that many other people in this thread have also said, and which nobody has challenged.

But you're basically saying that we should wean men off entitlement by giving them a taste of what they feel entitled to. The idea that this will (1) work exactly as planned, and (2) not end up with horrific consequences at least some of the time is completely unfounded. Actually, I'd say that most if not all evidence points to exactly the opposite happening.

maybe you missed where I said the onus of reforming these men is ON MEN and categorically not on women

Then why insist that women need to offer themselves up as sacrificial lambs to give these men the attention they feel entitled to? Again, there's no evidence that this will work at all, and plenty to suggest that the chances of something bad happening are significantly above zero.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:55 AM on October 14, 2014 [7 favorites]

Then why insist that women need to offer themselves up as sacrificial lambs to give these men the attention they feel entitled to?

I didn't do that?

I said: "Be a decent person and women will want to talk to you." That is, on balance, true. I never, at any time, said that any woman had to do anything. But since we're now at the point where I get told I said things I didn't, I'm out.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:58 AM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

Then why insist that women need to offer themselves up as sacrificial lambs to give these men the attention they feel entitled to?

To be fair, fffm didn't actually advocate that women line up to be these guys' pity dates. The idea of "reform so girls will like you" was only a theoretical promise.

It's just a promise I see very, very prone to backfiring, and exacerbating the problem.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:59 AM on October 14, 2014 [6 favorites]

Some of these fuckers need to be weaned off of not being in jail is what needs to happen.
posted by Artw at 11:59 AM on October 14, 2014 [36 favorites]

This could be rephrased to "don't act like a ranting and angry idiot and then people will like you better." A lot of these angry boys are just simply very lonely, ignoring their lack of sexual contact for a moment.

This way no woman is put up as a prize and the real issue is tackled. I've tried doing this in some small way on Reddit just by pointing out their advocacy of GG would be a lot more effective if they could calmly express themselves. Ended up in some conversations with some lonely guys who could pretty easily be pulled away from the hatred if they just had someone who would listen to them.
posted by honestcoyote at 12:03 PM on October 14, 2014 [8 favorites]

I feel like this is the 80th iteration that I've seen on metafilter of this dynamic, where somebody really wants to take a stand for the idea that the best way to deal with groups of virulently misogynist men is to figure out what we can do for them, or to help them. That's odd, because the normal response to people who make unprovoked threats of physical violence isn't to start racking one's brain for ways to accommodate their emotional needs. It's only in conversations where the threat of violence is directed at feminists, by men. Really strange. I wonder why that should be?

Actually, I don't really wonder. I am, hoever, a little surprised that anybody who reads the site regularly doesn't recognize "what shall we do about the poor disenfranchised lonely nerds" for the horeshit derail that it is.
posted by Ipsifendus at 12:06 PM on October 14, 2014 [62 favorites]

The part about GG as a hate group that troubles me most is that it implies a certain longevity. I'm a woman in games. A feminist in games! I've made games explicitly about social justice issues! And I've been kind of holding my breath and hoping the Eye of Sauron doesn't fall upon me. ...And doing security audits. Yeah.

So the idea that this hasn't blown over yet, that maybe it isn't going to just blow over... that maybe this is the new normal? And as a female game designer, I just have to hope I don't win the next lottery, or the one after that? I'm not sure bleak despair adequately covers it.
posted by Andrhia at 12:06 PM on October 14, 2014 [16 favorites]

I never, at any time, said that any woman had to do anything.

Not in those exact words, no, but:

"And while I agree that these idiots need to learn how to be decent to all people, unfortunately leading them there is going to have to involve some kind of perceived benefit for them."

"Dangle the carrot of "women will actually want to speak to you if you become a better person" because that is literally the only thing these men can possibly understand. "

"Using the motivations they already have to slowly change their thinking and opinions is the best way to change minds on a permanent basis. A lot of the time it may look an awful lot like pandering, but it works."

are all variations on the same theme of giving them something they feel entitled to in the (vain IMO) hope that they'll respond to it by not feeling entitled to more of it.
posted by zombieflanders at 12:07 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

i wish i had saved the conversation i stumbled upon where the #gg fools were SURE that zoe, anita, and everyone else on their spidering lists were actually engaging in cointelpro type tactics - that they weren't "friends" but "ops cleaning up a muffed operation." it's really staggering what some of them seem to really believe. i wonder how many of them are alex jones fans.
posted by nadawi at 12:09 PM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

What do I need to do in order to become someone with valid ideas?

Throw out this premise:

I disagree with this. I don't have data on it, but my experience says that there are a relatively large number of men (many of my friends) who are worthwhile people and who would be good partners in the long term who are not, in fact, competitive in a short-term sense. They are shy, or are less physically attractive, than is required to succeed in most modern social situations. In a bygone era they would've likely been set up with a similarly shy, "mousy" girl by their mother. Not ideal for either partner, but it meant that most people formed a family.

Most long-term relationships in the world are between people who are neither extraordinarily attractive nor extraordinarily "successful," as it ever was. We call them "ordinary people." I'm sure a lot of these gamers are lonely (though certainly not all misogynists are) but the idea that this is because they have been outcompeted by the "alphas" for the only women worth having is part of their own poisonous ideology and is doing *nobody* any favors.

Honestly it seems to me the best thing would be to make sure "gamer" boys are vaccinated against such ideology and learn to socialize normally with women while they are young. And I think one thing that would help with that is for girls/women to become more visible participants within "gamer" hobbies. But the way things are going right now I can't imagine why they would want to.
posted by atoxyl at 12:11 PM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

The anime avatar thing is one of the few (even remotely) amusing thing about #gamergate

"WE ARE A SERIOUS MOVEMENT" *sword art online avatar*


Also, from what I can tell, a lot of these guys seem to be really into futa. There's nothing wrong with that, but considering their general attitudes vis-a-vis masculinity, it does strike one as odd.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:13 PM on October 14, 2014 [4 favorites]

Also, from what I can tell, a lot of these guys seem to be really into futa. There's nothing wrong with that, but considering their general attitudes vis-a-vis masculinity, it does strike one as odd.

4chan. nuff said.
posted by Theta States at 12:16 PM on October 14, 2014

....If I were to Google "futa", would I be scared?

And if I would, can someone tell me what it is so I don't have to?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:17 PM on October 14, 2014

i swear, everything i like they pollute - games, my little pony, futa. if they come after owls or shitty reality tv i'm going to be without hobbies or collections.

(re: anime avatar - the vivian james thing continues to depress me)
posted by nadawi at 12:18 PM on October 14, 2014

EmpressCallipygos - super pretty girlie-girl women with giant throbbing dicks.
posted by nadawi at 12:19 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

So is this all just ~100-150 people cycling anime avatar sockpuppets, or is it an enormous movement? I'm with the people who think there's far less of these idiots than is being reported.
posted by naju at 12:20 PM on October 14, 2014

Not especially relevant, but this word replacement of "SJW" with "skeleton" makes certain MRA/GG reddit comments a whimsical delight.
posted by figurant at 12:21 PM on October 14, 2014 [15 favorites]

i think the core movement of death threat makers and vivian james creators and mocking up syringes to act like "both sides are getting harassed" is probably a pretty small group - less than a couple hundred. i think the people who think feminism/sjws/the man are ruining games and must be stopped is much, much larger. i'm pretty sure a friend's 15 year old little brother has been roped in to some of it. how many of those are actively participating in the continued harassment is hard to pin down.
posted by nadawi at 12:23 PM on October 14, 2014

So is this all just ~100-150 people cycling anime avatar sockpuppets, or is it an enormous movement? I'm with the people who think there's far less of these idiots than is being reported.

Anita's claiming these are the same specific people that have been harassing her the whole time. I wouldn't be surprised.
posted by almostmanda at 12:24 PM on October 14, 2014

I really do think that twitter is now a poisoned space. There are no mods, and it can't get better without them. Twitter doesn't want mods, they want to be able to appeal to everyone. Any barrier, any suggestion that they're not welcome, would hurt those growth numbers.

Anyways, this piece by ellaguro is a good description of what might be leading people to get all wrapped up in gamergate.

TheWhiteSkull: this tweet might give some insight into that pattern.
posted by smasuch at 12:24 PM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

super pretty girlie-girl women with giant throbbing dicks.

And I am now very glad I did not attempt Googling.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:25 PM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

Although this is now putting a couple of particular Oglaf strips in my head.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:26 PM on October 14, 2014 [12 favorites]

Online misogyny group like this seem to be this free-floating cloud of hate and every once in a while they find a new thing to hate on and it explodes. And they have their old favorites (Anita Sarkeesian and Rebecca Watson, to name two), but they do live the shiny new.
posted by rmd1023 at 12:28 PM on October 14, 2014

It's especially interesting that this sh!tstorm has blown up in Gaming, of all cultural fields, when one of the biggest problems with "The Patriarchy" is the Gamification of Human Relationships. "The Dating Game". "Winning" and "Losing" a partner, "Trophy Wife". And let's face it, it's a stupid and destructive thing that is way too common among both men and women, objectifying both, but women more so, mostly because Competitiveness is considered a Positive Male Trait but a Negative Female Trait. And there's another poison circulating through the bloodstream of Gaming. It's something that Real Feminism needs to address a lot more, but I can't think of anything that would make more enemies among Semi-Feminists, Casual Feminists and Fake Feminists.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:32 PM on October 14, 2014

What is the easiest way to harvest a local dataset of all tweets with #gamergate in them, including date posted, and user id?
posted by Theta States at 12:34 PM on October 14, 2014

putting a couple of particular Oglaf strips in my head
The latest two-page tale from Oglaf involves a magic place where everyone, male and female, and everything, including trees and rocks, have Tits (their term). I LOLed.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:35 PM on October 14, 2014

Wil Wheaton's admonition "Don't be a dick" doesn't proffer carrots or sticks; it's simply an imperative.
posted by Gelatin at 12:35 PM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

> this tweet might give some insight into that pattern.

there are some days I regret not having a twitter to follow people with
posted by postcommunism at 12:36 PM on October 14, 2014

GG is not a bunch of shy men; it's a right-wing conspiracy.

It's been compared to Richard Hofstadter's classic essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics”-- here's an essay applying Hofstadter to GG. If we're looking for causes, the one staring us in the face is right-wing politics, which provides the antifeminism, the paranoia, the sense of victimization, and the anything-is-permitted methodology.
posted by zompist at 12:38 PM on October 14, 2014 [26 favorites]

Hey, everybody in this thread, I am hoping for your help here, since we are talking about how gamergate has been a subject of interest for weeks now and what we can do about the misogyny we're seeing drive this thing.

[I think we have pretty well established that gamer-gate was never really about journalistic integrity, but a focused attack on Zoe Quinn. It doesn't matter whether or not you like Zoe Quinn as a person, either--I'm a little uncomfortable at her being held up as an inspirational model, myself--these attacks on her and other women in games have become the default and that's really what gamer gate has been about from the beginning, discrediting women in gaming. Period.]

So there is a young designer named Brianna Wu who has been receiving death threats on Twitter. Yes, in case anyone seriously wonders, the death threats against her and her family have been verified by the police department she reported them to.

Okay. So, I was just trying to read about Brianna on Polygon, and the webpage--where, incidentally, there are ads running for that Borderlands prequel, the game that gg's hate now because of Brianna Wu--kept reloading. I would get a message that the webpage
encountered an error and it was being reloaded. It would start loading for a second or two and then running into errors again, in this never ending loop, until I gave up.

I have OSX 8.0.2 running on my iPad and it has been so glitchy lately I just figured it was me, but I am seriously wondering after reading this thread, and because of the content on that specific page, whether there isn't an active campaign going on, some kind of blocking or DOS or something, either orchestrated by or in support of the gg people (I haven't put the # before any of my references to them because I don't want to give them publicity and also, I gotta say, I may very well be paranoid at this point but it is creeping me out the way the hashtag is being targeted on Twitter).

Does anyone here know how I would be able to figure out if this website is being targeted in some way? It could very well be just on my end, as I say, but the only times I have run into this error message have been on that page and, interestingly enough, with Zoe Quinn's Twitter feed yesterday.
posted by misha at 12:39 PM on October 14, 2014

Not especially relevant, but this word replacement of "SJW" with "skeleton" makes certain MRA/GG reddit comments a whimsical delight.


That is simply wonderful.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:41 PM on October 14, 2014

What is the easiest way to harvest a local dataset of all tweets with #gamergate in them, including date posted, and user id?

I have a python script I could send you that would get you most of the way there, Theta States. You'd just need to get API credentials from Twitter (automated and pretty simple) and write a few lines to capture the stuff you want from the streaming tweets. I think it would only capture new tweets and only during the time you had it running, but it's one way to capture a lot of data from Twitter automatically.

GG is not a bunch of shy men; it's a right-wing conspiracy.

This is 100% on point and I wish I could favorite it ten thousand times.
posted by dialetheia at 12:45 PM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

misha - this article? loading just fine for me. polygon does a lot of sparkle and jazz hands on their sites though, and it could just be that one of their scripts isn't working nicely with your ipad.
posted by nadawi at 12:46 PM on October 14, 2014

Thanks, nadawi! Must just be me, then.
posted by misha at 12:49 PM on October 14, 2014

I am unremittingly astonished at the fact that the fact that this is still a thing. Not that sexism surprises me, of course, but rather this kind of especially hateful, hyperfocused, loser-y, low-stakes sexism. I honestly have no idea what could compel me to go so HAM on somebody, whether or not it was for a stupid, offensive set of reasons. Even in a worst case scenario, how much of an effect would Zoe Quinn have on your life? Is she sneaking into your house and forcing you to play Depression Quest? No? Then who cares?

Semi-related sidenote: I once went to /pol/, and because I'm an idiot, I thought it would be funny to stir the pot a bit. I cracked my knuckles and prepared to goad some white supremacists, like I did when I was, like, 15. To start, I jumped into a "Nazi uniforms are cool :DDDD" thread and immediately made a reference to Germany losing WWII. I was then flabbergasted at getting prematurely out-trolled (or out-idiot-ed). At least one person proudly chimed in to say that Germany did not lose WWII, but rather forced a stalemate. This is a...novel...perspective, and one which the late Mr. Hitler would have probably liked to hear - you know, before he committed suicide, and his country tendered an unconditional surrender after years of overwhelming defeat.

Anyway, I dare say that disliking Nazis is actually relatively justifiable, but even then, I decided that there was no constructive conversation to be had, or even an opportunity for ill-mannered fun, so I turned my computer off and went outside.
posted by Sticherbeast at 1:09 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

haven't finished the thread yet but:

Keeping quiet is siding with the way things are

shirt please!
posted by ghostbikes at 1:18 PM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

I don't think the carrot approach works. It just created the "nice guys finish last" and friendzone complaints. There's also their culture about alpha males, beta males, and then grouping every woman together that is very pervasive. Not only is it incredibly biased, it shows in general discussion that people assume all arguments are simple, and if others argue they are just rationalizing. You can't convince people that are already fitting everything they hear to fit their worldview, but good on those that try out of goodwill. Perhaps they can find part of a toxic person's worldview that isn't cemented and use/argue that to crack the rest. I wish people were forced to take either debate, argument analysis, or psychology (as well as finance) in high school. I'm sort of amazed by some of the arguments I hear that reek of multiple logical fallacies.

Oh, and I wonder if people that use bots/scripts to fight these... "wars" subconsciously assume that the other side is doing the same, and so underestimate how much disgust they are generating for their actions. Has there been a physical public meetup of GGers? I'm tempted to use the term Gagas, but I guess an artist has laid cultural claim to that.
posted by halifix at 1:27 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

i've been loving the nickname gameghazi for them.
posted by nadawi at 1:30 PM on October 14, 2014 [7 favorites]

Does anyone here know how I would be able to figure out if this website is being targeted in some way?

It could just be Polygon is doing something in the background that makes iPads very unhappy. My tablet browser often crashes on their site.
posted by honestcoyote at 1:30 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Has there been a physical public meetup of GGers?

I'd make a PAX joke, but I think Penny Arcade went on the enemies list super early so kudos to them.
posted by Artw at 1:35 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Wow, how'd they do that? By mocking survivors of rape but not mocking them ENOUGH?
posted by NoraReed at 1:36 PM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

My girlfriend and I were just playing the first couple hours of the new Borderlands, and there was one part (spoiler for a gag early in the game) that had us both turning to each other like, the gaters are going to lose it when they hear this. And what do you know, we quit to make dinner and there's a bouncing baby boycott. Because this is absolutely about journalistic ethics.
posted by emmtee at 1:38 PM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

Yeah... Polygon (along with most of the other Vox sites) tends to overdo it a bit on the HTML5 stuff.
posted by kmz at 1:39 PM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

nadawi: i've been loving the nickname gameghazi for them.

Another site I frequent has suggested #ggallin. It seems apt.
posted by Woodroar at 1:42 PM on October 14, 2014 [4 favorites]

Wow, how'd they do that? By mocking survivors of rape but not mocking them ENOUGH?

Gabe has been trying extremely hard to make amends and become a better person.
posted by Talez at 1:43 PM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

it actually seems penny arcade generally, and gabe specifically, has done some real soul searching and changing after the last mea culpa. although, i think gameghazi's beef with them is related to "censoring" the zoe quinn stuff when it all blew up. i've also seen them mentioned alongside moot (of 4chan) as people who were once pure in ideals and have now been poisoned by those wicked terrible sjws.
posted by nadawi at 1:44 PM on October 14, 2014

Cracked called these people "Gaters" to distinguish them from gamers (as calling them gamers insulted the vast majority of people that play games).
posted by el io at 1:45 PM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

Wow, how'd they do that? By mocking survivors of rape but not mocking them ENOUGH?

Eron apparently tried to post all of his Zoe dirt everywhere at the beginning of all this, and most forums deleted it as a bunch of private interpersonal drama, 4chan and reddit being the exceptions, so a lot of places got lambasted for "censorship", Penny Arcade included.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 1:45 PM on October 14, 2014

moot (of 4chan) as people who were once pure in ideals and have now been poisoned by those wicked terrible sjws.

I remember the furor erupting in real-time as 4chan started banning gg threads. That was one of the big influxes on to twitter with their anon spam accounts.
IIRC, moot was having sex, and thus vulnerable to his SJW concubine's tentacles. Sounds pretty awesome, really.
posted by Theta States at 1:50 PM on October 14, 2014

I, for one, look forward to seeing Operation Krampus, fuelled by the discipline and self-sacrifice* GamerGaters are known for, have a pronounced and lasting effect on... something.

*they're so disciplined it took them almost three days collectively to give up on operation "digging digra" because it required too much reading and it was hard
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 1:51 PM on October 14, 2014 [6 favorites]

IIRC, moot was having sex, and thus vulnerable to his SJW concubine's tentacles. Sounds pretty awesome, really.

David Cronemberg should make it into a movie. Wait.
posted by sukeban at 1:53 PM on October 14, 2014

Was quite suprised to see the Daily Mail slamming them to the extent it did.

It was all worth it to see these dorks lambast the Daily fucking Mail as an SJW publication.

the accompanying anti-semitism, although likewise ill-placed, was less funny
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 1:53 PM on October 14, 2014 [6 favorites]

If these people wanted to target anti-gaming organizations/publications, this is where they should start.

Btw, that operation krampus link above contained the following list of publications that should be targeted (mind you, not just targeting these publications, but everyone that advertises in them or sends them games).

Kotaku; Polygon; Destructoid; Rock, Paper, Shotgun; The Escapist; Motherboard; IGN; GameSpot; Gamasutra; Gameranx; PCGamer.com; Xbox 360: The Official Xbox Magazine; Total Xbox; Gameplanet; Gizmodo; TechCrunch; Ars Technica; VICE; The Daily Dot; Badass Digest; The Daily Beast; Raw Story; The Mary Sue; Salon; BuzzFeed; Uproxx; Paste Magazine; Wired; The New Yorker; Cracked; Mic; xoJane; The Verge; Gawker; Valleywag; Defamer; Lifehacker; Deadspin; Screamer; io9; Sploid; Jalopnik; Paging Dr. NerdLove; RationalWiki; TV Tropes.

Good luck, guys.
posted by el io at 1:55 PM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

The best part of moot deleting #gg threads was when the refugees would spill over into other boards. This never failed to prompt hearty, weary responses of "FUCK OFF".
posted by Sticherbeast at 1:56 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

I, for one, look forward to seeing Operation Krampus

sigh.


Well, at least it ain't "Operation Zwarte Piet".
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:57 PM on October 14, 2014

Operation Krampus = "SJWs are making it so big-budget games won't be made any more and all that will be left are thoughtful little indie games about coping with loss! Let's fix that by attempting to deprive the makers of big-budget games of profits at a critical time of year, so they all fail and we'll be left with... nothing but thoughtful little indie games. Excellent. Spread the word."
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 1:59 PM on October 14, 2014 [20 favorites]

yeah, the moot thing led to a hilarious "doxxing" of andy baio (waxy) where they drew the lines between kickstarter and xoxofest with their super secret methods of noticing his name and finding him on wikipedia.
posted by nadawi at 1:59 PM on October 14, 2014

It was all worth it to see these dorks lambast the Daily fucking Mail as an SJW publication.

I can imagine the Daily Mail taking real umbrage at being accused of caring about social justice.
posted by el io at 1:59 PM on October 14, 2014 [9 favorites]

Army of Kittens: Little known fact, Depression Quest actually outsold the last Grand Theft Auto. EA has now shifted it's entire product line to various games exploring mental illnesses. This of course is because Zoe quietly bought EA with her billions of dollars of profits from DQ. This shit is real. *



*this shit is not real
posted by el io at 2:03 PM on October 14, 2014 [12 favorites]

I really do think that twitter is now a poisoned space. There are no mods, and it can't get better without them. Twitter doesn't want mods, they want to be able to appeal to everyone.

As I said a little while back , the @ makes tweets both public and personal. That's proving to be more curse than blessing.

The "onboarding" experience at Twitter for new accounts is to suggest a lot of relatively famous people to follow; those people tend to have verified accounts and the additional features that come with the blue tick, such as selective notification. So there's a space for friend-chat, a filtered space for following celebrities, and that leaves a big middle where it's far too easy for random/sockpuppet accounts to systematically harass particular users who aren't #EngageWithBrands enough to have verified status or engage in scattergun responses via hashtag search.
posted by holgate at 2:05 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

That's odd, because the normal response to people who make unprovoked threats of physical violence isn't to start racking one's brain for ways to accommodate their emotional needs. It's only in conversations where the threat of violence is directed at feminists, by men.

YES. I really don't get this line of reasoning at all. There are millions of angry, lonely, miserable, isolated people out there on planet earth, and you know what most of them don't do? Threaten to rape and kill people. The problem with the GG dudes isn't that they're lonely and in need of deep psychoanalysis to figure out how we can band together and help them. The problem is that they're assholes. Everyone everywhere is dealing with their own shit. Assholes magnify their misery and turn it on other people. And that's their problem, not our problem to fix.

The most extreme misogynists can't be reasoned with, they're not reasonable people. Let them stew in their own poison because they're doing to do that anyways. I think a better tactic is to try and make a society in which sexism is viewed as being so old-fashioned and off-putting that these people become the fringe rather than an extreme wing of some unfortunately mainstream misogyny.
posted by supercrayon at 2:05 PM on October 14, 2014 [9 favorites]

The best part of moot deleting #gg threads was when the refugees would spill over into other boards. This never failed to prompt hearty, weary responses of "FUCK OFF".

I also liked it when they tried to make comicGate a thing and the entirety of comics told them to fuck off.
posted by Artw at 2:09 PM on October 14, 2014 [4 favorites]

David Futrelle: In a series of brilliant, furious Tweets, Zoe Quinn tears apart the myth that #GamerGate has “moved beyond” harassment of women

Yesterday, fed up with the equivocating bullshit that’s constantly being said in the media and within gaming circles about #GamerGate, and pissed off at all those who think of themselves as good people but still refuse to see the hatred and misogyny and harassment and doxxing that has been central to GG since the start, Quinn posted a series of (justifiably) angry tweets calling out the cowards in the profession who know that what’s going on is deeply evil but won’t say anything, and documenting the unending harassment she and her boyfriend, and her family, and his family are still getting.

Was that even a sentence? I don’t know. The point is she’s STILL getting harassed. She’s STILL getting “prank” calls. She’s STILL getting death threats. People are STILL digging around in her personal life and the personal life of everyone connected to her.

And she’s not the only one. The newest target of #GamerGate wrath? Indie game developer Brianna Wu, who, as I noted in my last post, got death threats … for posting memes on Twitter.

Meanwhile, two creepy obsessed assholes are still begging for money to make a documentary they hope will ruin Anita Sarkeesian.

Oh, but #GamerGate is about ethics.

posted by zombieflanders at 2:10 PM on October 14, 2014 [20 favorites]

Pretty sickening that there's always such a rush to excuse the actions of these misogynistic little shitweasels because they're so lonely and miserable... as a few other women have said in this thread, I am in the exact same boat w/r/t loneliness and not getting laid, and yet there's no rush to help me out of my plight. Maybe I need to really lower myself into the gutter, start attacking people and issuing rape and death threats, and then maybe some very misguided people will realize how important it is to have pity for me.

Fucking gross, people.
posted by palomar at 2:11 PM on October 14, 2014 [16 favorites]

I've been thinking about this a lot, and please forgive me if I get something wrong here. I'm kinda talking through this myself, to try to gain a better understanding.

There's a problem. A group of people are doing very bad stuff. We want them stop, so what can we do? There should be punishments for doing bad stuff. This bad behavior, the awful threats and harassment, should have consequences for these people (where's the panopticon when you need it? ). Twitter and reddit are doing absymally at this right now. I'm not sure how the Law Enforcement angle is working, but so far there have been no arrests or fines or charges brought, so that's not great, but I don't know how quickly one should expect to see results. We could try to make it impossible for them to do the bad stuff (again, this would mostly be on twitter and reddit to solve by being able to effectively permaban actual people, and not enable instant creation of new harassment accounts. So it seems like at least, we should be pressuring reddit and twitter to have better policies, and to demand speedy action from law enforcement to provide security and deliver justice.

The part that I think gets slapped down with the "oh no, what about the menz?!" argument-ender is the idea that we should pay any attention to the motivation of this group of badly behaved people. Honestly this response gets under my skin, because I don't want to see my own concerns dismissed just because I'm a guy. Like, no one wants to be subject to prejudice, thats not even controversial. But I recognize that my own concerns are not even in the same ballpark as the ones faced by the targets of GG, or those of women in general.

So, what about the perpetrators? I don't even know how useful it is to look at the desires of this group. The stated goals of GG are incoherent at best, and probably just a smokescreen to try to legitimize the "movement". Many of the demands are just total non-starters, like turning every game-review into a unmoderated mini-4chan. Also the huge, overriding concern with the supposed sexual ethics of journalists, but utter lack of concern with actual ethical concerns makes the movement hard to accept as a legitimate call for change.

So, maybe there's a "real" reason for this bad behavior, like that these people are alienated and lonely. The problem is, even if we can agree to that, what do we do about it? Like, why should we give them what they want, when they are hurting other people? Would that even solve the problem? Like, supposing that somehow it could be arranged that they all got girlfriends, would they stop being jerks (terrorists), or just become jerks-with-girlfriends? Finally, who are we, any of us, to offer up the current victims of the bad behavior as an inducement or reward for good behavior. Indeed, it seems unfair to place any burden of a solution upon the victims, since they are already bearing most of the consequences of the bad behavior. It's also just distasteful to make this argument because from a certain angle, its like you are arguing that the victims of the abuse are responsible for the abuse. Like, these guys are lonely and feel rejected, so they lash out at women. The abhorrent implication is that therefore, if they had not been rejected by women, then women would not be the target of this abuse. So with that said, even if you can pin down some underlying, unifying problem, what can we do about it? I guess you could try to offer up a "carrot" that you never intend to deliver, e.g. "Hey, if you abandon your bad ideas and adopt good ideas, you will get romantic success... But, surprise, one of the enlightened ideas you must adopt is that you are never entitled to romantic success, even if you adhere to the right ideas." My gut feeling is that is a complicated strategy to enact. What else could you do then?
posted by rustcrumb at 2:12 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

GG is not a bunch of shy men; it's a right-wing conspiracy.

it's a trial balloon and practice - and you can bet that a lot of political wing nut people are taking notes

but what's really bugging me is this stereotype of some kid in his mother's basement who OMG can't get laid

i don't think it's true

i think there are plenty of women who would have relationships with misogynistic assholes because there's plenty of women who DO

it's very interesting to me that some have said, well, gaming used to be a nerd thing, but then the jocks and bros got into it and now it's all gone to hell - so, if it's not just nerds, then it's not just socially crippled manbabies who can't get a date, but it's socially enabled manbabies who get more dates than they can handle

so, check your assumptions - you may not be able to change these people by making them less assholish by helping them access the dating game better

that there are assholes in the world suggests to me that assholes have sex

my plan for changing people who issue death and rape threats is much simpler - get them arrested
posted by pyramid termite at 2:14 PM on October 14, 2014 [21 favorites]

pyramid_termite, I think I have arrived at the same conclusion. It seems like a way more straightforward solution to just apply the laws we have against this behavior.
posted by rustcrumb at 2:22 PM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

That's sorta eliding the hardest part, though, which is getting them arrested. How do you do that given how disinterested in online threats most law enforcement seems to be. Maybe a civil lawsuit has a better chance of actually doing anything.
posted by Justinian at 2:25 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

While police apparently lack resources and expertise to track down the criminals, some gamers (and others) are pretty technically adept and might be able to help. Does anyone know if police have any interest in citizens offering internet sleuthing to an investigation?
posted by anonymisc at 2:28 PM on October 14, 2014

How do you do that given how disinterested in online threats most law enforcement seems to be.
must... resist... temptation... to refer to 'most law enforcement' busy practicing First Person Shooter games...
(but you know, most of our problems do kind of dovetail with each other)
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:30 PM on October 14, 2014 [4 favorites]

And to go a step further, part of the problem of getting them arrested is identifying the culprits, which has proven to be a difficult problem as well. Anita's first bomb threat was months ago, and you'll notice there haven't been any arrests announced in connection to that.

And that's even assuming they're in a location over which the FBI has any jurisdiction, which is not always clear.
posted by Andrhia at 2:30 PM on October 14, 2014

perhaps a civil RICO suit might work - making it against john does when necessary and issuing subpoenas to various ISPs and social media companies
posted by pyramid termite at 2:32 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

This votable list of the world's worst ever people just might have been brigaded by dorkmad gamergaters.

Moot: worse than Hitler, slightly better than Stalin. Zoey Quinn a marginal improvement over Kim Jong-il.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 2:33 PM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

while it is woefully inadequate, for those who don't know, zoe quinn did manage to get a restraining order (which included a gag clause) against her scumbag ex. this, as you might imagine, enraged the gaters.
posted by nadawi at 2:33 PM on October 14, 2014

Deadspin chimes in with a pretty strong summary of Gamergate so far, and its similarity to previous revanchist social movements. Worth reading its entirety, but a few points that jumped out at me with respect to hate group organization / tactics:

The Future Of The Culture Wars Is Here, And It's Gamergate

In many ways, Gamergate is an almost perfect closed-bottle ecosystem of bad internet tics and shoddy debating tactics. Bringing together the grievances of video game fans, self-appointed specialists in journalism ethics, and dedicated misogynists, it's captured an especially broad phylum of trolls and built the sort of structure you'd expect to see if, say, you'd asked the old Fires of Heaven message boards to swing a Senate seat. It's a fascinating glimpse of the future of grievance politics as they will be carried out by people who grew up online.

What's made it effective, though, is that it's exploited the same basic loophole in the system that generations of social reactionaries have: the press's genuine and deep-seated belief that you gotta hear both sides.$100 billion industry, even as they send women like Brianna Wu into hiding and show every sign that they intend to keep doing so until all their demands are met.

[...]

Gamergate is surprisingly well organized, with "operations" staged from a mishmash of Reddit boards, infinite chan threads (having abandoned 4chan), and unofficial-official dedicated sites. "Daily boycotters," for example, are instructed not just to email targeted companies to express their grievances, but to spam these targets on Sundays and Wednesdays to maximize congestion-shit up the Monday morning rush, and dogpile in the middle of the week, so the mess has to be addressed before the weekend. They're told never to use the actual term "Gamergate," as that will allow the message to be filtered. [...]

This is how a very few people can get their way, and the use of this technique is one of the many similarities between Gamergate and the ever-present aggrieved reactionaries whose most recent manifestation is the Tea Party.

[...]

What we have in Gamergate is a glimpse of how these skirmishes will unfold in the future—all the rhetorical weaponry and siegecraft of an internet comment section brought to bear on our culture, not just at the fringes but at the center. What we're seeing now is a rehearsal, where the mechanisms of a toxic and inhumane politics are being tested and improved. Tomorrow's Lee Atwater will work through sock puppets on IRC. Tomorrow's Sister Souljah will get shouted down with rape threats. Tomorrow's Tipper Gore will make an inexplicably popular YouTube video. Tomorrow's Willie Horton ad will be an image macro, tomorrow's Borking a doxing, tomorrow's Moral Majority a loose coalition of DoSers and robo-petitioners and scat-GIF trolls—all of them working feverishly in service of the old idea that nothing should ever really change.

posted by tonycpsu at 2:35 PM on October 14, 2014 [33 favorites]

The best part about the worst person in the world list is that moot was on it about eight times.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 2:35 PM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

Does anyone know if police have any interest in citizens offering internet sleuthing to an investigation?

Generally, no. And besides, without the power of a subpoena, good luck getting Twitter/gmail/etc to give up IP addresses and login info and such. Hell, the police often have issues getting that info.

And that assumes that the info wasn't spoofed, VPNed, TORed or otherwise obfuscated.

It's a hard problem and as serious as death threats are, the resources just don't exist to track them down if the perpetrator is technically savvy and not a particularly high value target.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 2:37 PM on October 14, 2014

>"[...] some kind of social welfare program that helps socially awkward males [...]"

Solution-seeking conversations are conversations where it's important to assume good intent. Liberals aren't surprised when an environment of poverty begets crime, or when an environment of violence begets terrorism. We argue against the red herring that "solution-seeking is shirking personal responsibility." Of course terrorists should be held responsible and criminals should be held responsible and bullies should be held responsible. The interesting question is, "what got us to this state of affairs in the first place?"

The original post establishes that hate groups recruit from disaffected communities. If we follow the chain of events far enough back, we might see where that disaffection can be addressed by an intervention.

The problem of disaffected men and boys is a social problem with society-wide implications. I'm not making sympathy for Adam Lanza to say that I wish that there was a safety net for him -- something -- anything -- that may have occupied his thoughts differently, or a friend who could have intervened in his messed up home situation or uninterrupted institutional mental health monitoring that could have caught his plans or at least limited his access to weaponry.

A safety net may not catch any single individual, but when we're talking about public policy, we're talking about the aggregate. The same institutionalized pathway to self-actualization by necessity solves problems like suicide, abuse and neglect.

How do we build impulsivity control for children? Relationship skills? Tenacity? I used to work for a non-profit (Friends of the Children) that connected a paid, professional, full-time mentor to one severely at-risk child for all of K-12. Around grades 2, 3 and onward those children were amazing, polite and ambitious. I've seen interventions work with my own eyes. It was an expensive program but scores cheaper once you factored in the never bought prison beds and never conceived teenage pregnancies.

The question isn't "can we" lead boys and girls to self-actualization. We can. We do. We don't bring answers to scale because we don't have the political will to front-load the cost. We pay a large cost on the back end instead and some of that cost is in online bullying.
posted by Skwirl at 2:37 PM on October 14, 2014 [10 favorites]

Something that would change the dynamics of this: if a female FBI agent chimed in supporting Zoe. I assure you, once death and rape threats were directed at an FBI agent, the FBI would fully engage.
posted by el io at 2:40 PM on October 14, 2014 [10 favorites]

The interesting question is, "what got us to this state of affairs in the first place?"

Patriarchy. What's the next interesting question?
posted by Ipsifendus at 2:41 PM on October 14, 2014 [13 favorites]

Anonymisc: While police apparently lack resources and expertise to track down the criminals, some gamers (and others) are pretty technically adept and might be able to help. Does anyone know if police have any interest in citizens offering internet sleuthing to an investigation?

I don't have links handy or anything, but both online and off I've heard or seen stories of people showing up at the police station with a stack of evidence and documentation of someone harassing them, and getting traction. It's pretty similar to "this person broke in to my car and stole my laptop. Here's a picture of them doing it from my security camera, here's a picture of them, here's where they live, here's a picture of them trying to sell it"(and people I know have done that with a multitude of things)

If works, is what I'm saying. It might not work every time, but it works a lot better than just "hey this is a problem" which is sad because that shit is supposed to be their damn job.

The issue id see is that this is often an interstate crime, or at least coming from outside the jurisdiction of your local pd. then what, FBI? I don't remember how that was resolved in the stories id seen/heard. Just that the people were taken seriously.
posted by emptythought at 2:42 PM on October 14, 2014

I feel like this is the 80th iteration that I've seen on metafilter of this dynamic, where somebody really wants to take a stand for the idea that the best way to deal with groups of virulently misogynist men is to figure out what we can do for them, or to help them. That's odd, because the normal response to people who make unprovoked threats of physical violence isn't to start racking one's brain for ways to accommodate their emotional needs. It's only in conversations where the threat of violence is directed at feminists, by men. Really strange. I wonder why that should be?

Actually, I don't really wonder. I am, hoever, a little surprised that anybody who reads the site regularly doesn't recognize "what shall we do about the poor disenfranchised lonely nerds" for the horeshit derail that it is.

If you look at experts who specialize in gangs and cults, you'll see that figuring out how to help the people who become the gangmembers is a big part of what many of them do.
If you look at people who specialize in virulently violent groups, such as terrorists, accommodating their emotional needs is very much a studied and applied strategy.
If you look at a full on literal warzone where men are outright shooting people with guns, "Hearts and Minds" is a real thing that Serious People take seriously.

Time-tested tools in the conflict-resolution toolbox are not a "horseshit derail". Yes, we've seen these things offered in less-than-good faith in the past, but reading this thread, I do not get the impression that that is what is happening here.
"Stick or carrot" is an unnecessary dichotomy. Use everything.
posted by anonymisc at 2:43 PM on October 14, 2014 [18 favorites]

I hadn't even heard of this until this thread and I have to admit I find it bizarre. Trade magazines having cozy relationships with businesses? Stop the presses!! That they think faux outrage at a niche press most people could care less about "explains" their attacks on women is just laughable. It shows how delusional they really are. I'm surprised no arrests have been made, or the participants identities haven't been made public. Surely they can't all be uber hackers capable of evading law enforcement or their targets forever? And surely lots of people already know who they are? The identities have to be an open secret in some circles and ISPs etc can be subpoenaed. I really hope people do the right thing and turn them in to the authorities because these people are nuts.
posted by fshgrl at 2:43 PM on October 14, 2014

Something that would change the dynamics of this: if a female FBI agent chimed in supporting Zoe. I assure you, once death and rape threats were directed at an FBI agent, the FBI would fully engage.

el io, the FBI is already fully engaged, to the extent where they explicitly went to the IGDA to offer their help in situations like this one.
posted by Andrhia at 2:45 PM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

If the FBI lands one of them they'll immediately rat the rest to the best of their ability - that's how this sort of thing tends to go.
posted by Artw at 2:47 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

zoe has been collecting info from go (which is how we got the irc logs) and has said she held some stuff back because it was being sent to the appropriate law enforcement groups.
posted by nadawi at 2:48 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Andhria: They are engaged with discussions with an industry group. I wouldn't call this 'fully engaged', I'd call this 'aware of the problem'. If one of their own was the subject of death/rape threats there would quickly be arrests or at least visits to the perpetrators of such threats.

What they are doing is more PR work than anything at the moment.
posted by el io at 2:48 PM on October 14, 2014

perhaps a civil RICO suit might work[...]

Yeah, the GG trolls had a fashionable period a few weeks ago where they were threatening to get Leigh Alexander and other "SJW" journalists arrested under the RICO act.
posted by whittaker at 2:48 PM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

Hey, Anita Sarkeesian got what I believe is death threat number 4 because of a speaking engagement. #ethics
posted by Elementary Penguin at 2:49 PM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

my favorite part of the rico stuff is that the indiegogo campaign to hire a lawyer to look into the possibility of charging these women with something, anything, had to be shut down because of corruption - the guy running the campaign was going to hire his wife with the money raised. yet, that corruption wasn't a big deal and more a misunderstanding, according to gameghazi.
posted by nadawi at 2:51 PM on October 14, 2014 [15 favorites]

From Elementary Penguin's link:

LOGAN — Utah State University has confirmed it received an anonymous email terror threat from one of its own students proposing “the deadliest school shooting in American history” Tuesday morning if it went ahead with an event featuring a prominent Canadian-American author, blogger and feminist.

The email author claiming to be a USU student wrote that “feminists have ruined my life and I will have my revenge, for my sake and the sake of all the others they've wronged.“

The comments section is kind of fascinating, in a train-wreck way.
posted by rtha at 2:59 PM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

Generally, no. And besides, without the power of a subpoena, good luck getting Twitter/gmail/etc to give up IP addresses and login info and such. Hell, the police often have issues getting that info.
And that assumes that the info wasn't spoofed, VPNed, TORed or otherwise obfuscated.
It's a hard problem and as serious as death threats are, the resources just don't exist to track them down if the perpetrator is technically savvy and not a particularly high value target.

I suspect it's usually not a hard problem, just a very time-consuming one. Maybe some perps have both the inclination and expertise to cover their tracks completely, but for anyone who spends a lot of time online, I think anonymity tends to eventually melt under the focused glare of a dedicated methodical expert.

OTOH, industry devs who are targeted probably either have internet expertise, or have friends and coworkers who do, so perhaps the amount that could be done along those lines is already being done.
OTOOH, no-one in the industry has enough free time...
posted by anonymisc at 3:01 PM on October 14, 2014

If you look at experts who specialize in gangs and cults, you'll see that figuring out how to help the people who become the gangmembers is a big part of what many of them do.
If you look at people who specialize in virulently violent groups, such as terrorists, accommodating their emotional needs is very much a studied and applied strategy.
If you look at a full on literal warzone where men are outright shooting people with guns, "Hearts and Minds" is a real thing that Serious People take seriously.


I am quite in favor of solution-oriented thinking. I just think certain things that are repeatedly offered as "how the other side thinks" do not offer solutions because they buy in to false premises that are part of the problem.
posted by atoxyl at 3:17 PM on October 14, 2014 [9 favorites]

The comments section is kind of fascinating, in a train-wreck way.

"We have assembled a grand and complex theory on game journalism corruption // why are you making a connection between certain women being harassed and threatened with violence in very similar ways?"
posted by holgate at 3:17 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Death threats are being made repeatedly. Why should we assume that a subpoena would be difficult to obtain?

It's been my experience with online harrassment, that even when the police take it seriously, they run into roadblocks. A company in Texas might not care too much about a subpoena from a Wisconsin court, for instance. Or could otherwise stonewall.

Granted, I haven't had to deal with that for... 5-6 years. Maybe things are better now ? I don't think they are, though.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 3:19 PM on October 14, 2014

>Skwirl: The interesting question is, "what got us to this state of affairs in the first place?"

Ipsifendus: Patriarchy. What's the next interesting question?

The next question is: "How do we create a society that is not structured by patriarchy?" My comment points at answers to that question. They may be dumb, simplistic answers, but it's also way out of the ballpark of whatever the hate groups are lobbying for. Supporting children's rights as a longterm strategy for furthering women's rights is a feminist solution no matter how you look at it.

It's easy to become frustrated, but are we going to keep going round and round with snark or will sincerity be met with sincerity? Yeah, the misogynists say they are sincere, too. It serves two of their purposes to co-opt sincere tones because it provides them cover and it causes people who are looking for sincere solutions to be discredited. We have to do better than knee-jerk reactions.

We also answer patriarchy with comforting and empowering the direct victims, teaching justice principles and punishing offenders. All of that is possible simultaneously. There's no zero sum game here. It's not a derail to address the topic of hate group recruitment with evidence-based answers to addressing hate group recruitment.
posted by Skwirl at 3:46 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

It's not just interstate warrants they may be the problem- it's easy enough to make this a matter of international jurisdiction. For instance, after commenting on Gamergate, my wife got multiple hacking attempts from Brszil. A court in South America isn't going to care much for a request from Wisconson, unless it's backed by NSA level influence.
posted by happyroach at 3:54 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

here's a scary thought - what are people going to be like if something really bad happens in this country? - some of them are completely losing their shit already over a feminist giving a lecture
posted by pyramid termite at 3:58 PM on October 14, 2014 [10 favorites]

pyramid termite: Like cops gunning down unarmed people in the streets without consequence? Like the death penalty being used to kill innocent people? Like mass surveillance of the population? Like infiltration of peaceful protest groups by agent provocateurs? Like mass shootings in schools - or worse - calls for gun control?

Probably not much.
posted by el io at 4:03 PM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

I am really uncomfortable with the idea that the only reason #gamergate is a thing is because games used to be a nerd-only thing but now the fratboys and jocks have taken over and that's why everyone is fucked up. Fake Geek Girls and the ilk show that nerdboys are just as capable of misogyny - it's not like this is new to modern gaming.

NoraReed: ello's supposed banning of #GamerGate as hate speech is fake.
posted by divabat at 4:06 PM on October 14, 2014 [9 favorites]

The interesting question is, "what got us to this state of affairs in the first place?"

Patriarchy. What's the next interesting question?

Why did you have to do that? Go for the glib one-liner when someone is making a serious, good-faith attempt to address an issue we all agree is a problem?

Are you really not at all interested in finding ways to stop this harassment?

I just don't understand the mindset of someone who would rather repeatedly react with outrage when something predictably awful occurs than try to figure out why it keeps happening in the first place.

It's like standing by a broken railroad track and getting pissed off every time a passenger train comes along and derails. You can curse at the track for being broken all you want, but it isn't going to fix itself. If the safety of those passengers really is your top concern, why wouldn't you do everything you could to fix that track instead?

Talking about why these men lash out against women like they do and how we can stop our boys from growing up with that same poisonous mindset is absolutely relevant to this discussion.
posted by misha at 4:06 PM on October 14, 2014 [6 favorites]

Are you really not at all interested in finding ways to stop this harassment?

While it was a glib answer, I think a longer answer would be more discussion of the patriarchy and what to do about it. Law enforcement (arrests, lawsuits, trials, jails), civil suits (lawsuits, lawyers, crippling judgements) won't actually deal with the cause of the problem.

What got us here is the patriarchy, and this harassment we are seeing is a symptom of it. Without addressing the root problem, the symptoms (if we address this particular symptom) will manifest in other awful ways.
posted by el io at 4:11 PM on October 14, 2014 [6 favorites]

I hesitate to contribute to the derail about why some men engage in this behavior, but I strongly disagree that the problem has anything other than a peripheral relationship to whether or not they can get a date. As has been pointed out above, misogynists have wives and girlfriends and daughters all the time. The problem is men who value women solely for their sexual desirability, and who try to use the desirability of the women who will sleep with them as a proxy for their own self worth. They hate the women who will not sleep with them for denying them the validation they crave, and they despise the women who will sleep with them because of course that doesn't solve the problem either and they still feel worthless.

The same feelings of worthlessness lead them to believe that the women who will sleep with them must be coerced or tricked into it, and so they fight back against anything that they think will make women harder to trick or coerce, like equality. They externalize their self loathing, making it the fault of feminists.

The reason it can be more of a problem for the socially awkward is that those are the people with low self worth to begin with. But as was also pointed out above, low self worth affects women just as much as it does men. And while addressing it may be important and help many people, it is a separate problem. It's not the solution to misogyny.

The real problem is the sexist culture, the patriarchy (which might sound like a glib one-liner, but it's really not, it is the answer), the system that encourages (at worst) or fails to discourage (at best) misogynistic behavior. And the way you fight it is by confronting it, addressing it, reflecting on it in yourself.
posted by Nothing at 4:14 PM on October 14, 2014 [10 favorites]

Are you really not at all interested in finding ways to stop this harassment?

There is only one way to stop this harassment, and that is for the people issuing death and rape threats to stop issuing death and rape threats. They will probably be less inclined to do issue those threats if it becomes abundantly clear to them that this sort of thing is not tolerated by decent society, which is why so many people are speaking up about it right now. This is not OK, this is not decent behavior.

Moreover, it is not any woman's job to manage the gamergaters' feelings and find "solutions" for them. I am especially not interested in potential "solutions" that boil down to "stop provoking them."
posted by dialetheia at 4:14 PM on October 14, 2014 [28 favorites]

I just don't understand the mindset of someone who would rather repeatedly react with outrage when something predictably awful occurs than try to figure out why it keeps happening in the first place.

It's like standing by a broken railroad track and getting pissed off every time a passenger train comes along and derails. You can curse at the track for being broken all you want, but it isn't going to fix itself. If the safety of those passengers really is your top concern, why wouldn't you do everything you could to fix that track instead?

To use your analogy -

The people saying "it's patriarchy causing this" aren't "cursing the track", they're the people who are saying "the track is broken and we need the track owner to come bring the proper tools to fix it", while the people saying "maybe we can just reach out to the gamers" are coming across like, "but what if we just used duct tape and chewing gum?"
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:15 PM on October 14, 2014 [19 favorites]

i think there is a difference between doing evidence based queries into the causes of these men (and some women) forming what can be viewed as a hate group and saying, essentially, some men are lonely virgins and that makes them bitter and violent towards women so now lets turn the conversation to how to solve the problem of men without companionship. the first one is a fine exercise and i'd really like to participate in that conversation. the second one is a predictable derail that happens in pretty much every thread of this type, whether we're discussing skeptics or street harassment or industry conventions or websites about books or creepshots or whatever else - and i maintain that its function is to center the conversation on the men and their concerns and their pain rather than discussing the other things we can do, like how best to show support, or how to pressure organizers of events/websites/communities to not condone this behavior or what are the specific driving factors for the men in this specific subculture. it's super predictable and sad how well it works to derail.
posted by nadawi at 4:19 PM on October 14, 2014 [17 favorites]

This may seem like a strange thing to say...

But while virtually everyone involved with promoting #gamergate is undoubtedly a misogynist, most misogynists don't go around making death and rape threats or defending those that do.

#notallmisogynists
posted by el io at 4:20 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

I am really uncomfortable with the idea that the only reason #gamergate is a thing is because games used to be a nerd-only thing but now the fratboys and jocks have taken over and that's why everyone is fucked up. Fake Geek Girls and the ilk show that nerdboys are just as capable of misogyny - it's not like this is new to modern gaming.

The bro-y guys that play madden and call of duty don't consider themselves 'gamers'. And their misogyny tends to be of your more stereotypical 'make me a sandwich' type and less 'i'm going to come to your house and kill you' type. The gamergate people are isolated loners, stewing in resentment.
posted by empath at 4:20 PM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm sorry I can't read all the posts above yet - but one thing that sticks out to me, now, is the discussion of reframing things... "We're not misogynists, we like women in games, we just want "honest" journalism"...

"We're not racists... We're "racialist"" (I remember when I first heard that bullshit line -- we don't "hate" other groups we just want to not have to ever deal with them! We're not racist!)

Everytime I have an argument I do this thing where I ask the people who claim to be arguing in good faith "What is it you want? You say you want 'journalistic integrity'... Define it? Make a fucking agenda/platform and present it to the world, make a clear statement that you will not abide by anybody who harasses women, or devs in general. What would make you happy? Do you seriously propose a fuck-police who make sure to watch whose penis is going in whose hole so that they're virginally pure for your reviews? That's absurd, so what do you do? Do you seriously think that a small community like the game dev and journalist community keep 100% separation? Do you want them to hide in holes and never talk to each other but through proxies, like, I dunno, PR firms? Because THAT doesn't speak corruption and bullshit at ALL"
posted by symbioid at 4:38 PM on October 14, 2014 [4 favorites]

Well, here's another full-fledged "Terror Threat against Anita Sarkeesian" when she speaks at Utah State tomorrow. Sounds like an Elliot Rodger wannabe.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:41 PM on October 14, 2014

#GamerGate appears to be a huge movement that's gone not so much off the rails, as having in all directions like a veritable deluge. There appear to be a lot of misogynist, MRA, professional anti-feminism, troll-for-hire types in there. But at the same time, there are people who have joined after the start, a lot of people who have some vague idea of what's going on, and so forth. There appear to be a lot of disinfo going on.

Is there a significant misogynist element? Undoubtedly. Should it be combated? Yes. But talking in echo chambers about how bad the other side is does not further the discussion. You inevitably create generalizations, caricatures of what the other side is. Maybe #GamerGate might be composed of 99% misogynists. Maybe not- but who can objectively tell? If you go on Twitter, they will quickly offer counterexamples of how their movement does include female members, and how many of the targets of criticism are not above being bigoted themselves. Maybe the former is as disingenuous as the EDL having token Jewish, women's, LGBT, and Sikh divisions to say "Hey we're not that bigoted!" Maybe the latter is jumping on a minor failing in comparison to their own movement's sins.

Like all politics and all public discourse since the Bush administration, people silo themselves into their own groups. They read their own sources, and it becomes an epic circlejerk of drama and truthiness.

This is not the first time there has been a huge uproar about gamers vs. supposed industry corruption. Does no one remember the Mass Effect 3 ending drama? That was a rather apolitical affair, unless one was to characterize the ire against Bioware to be crypto-bigoted, since Bioware is known to be rather progressive, I guess. Gamers can indeed mobilize for non-problematic reasons.

I am not supporting #GamerGate, and I think that unfortunately it has been too poisoned both by public perception and by the presence of malicious elements to be effectively redeemed. But I just think that it's factually incorrect to generalize a huge group of angry people as all being extremist reactionaries. It's easy to imagine that all gamers are XBox Live vitriol-spewing, anonymous death threat Tweet sending, conspiratorial animals. It's easy to associate them as yet another subset of the Death of the White Male archetype. But are they all really?

If #GamerGate is really about lapses in gaming journalism, then in theory it should be amenable to new members trying to simultaneously reform to movement to purge it of misogynist troll elements. This isn't Daesh or the Tea Party we're talking about here. This is a grassroots movement with a confused mess of different sides, subfactions, and members of ideological stripes at play here. But already, the hardliners in the movement have committed unforgivable actions to destroy any credibility they might have.

Truth is being killed by misinformation. I don’t want to blame it all on 9/11, but it certainly didn’t help.

Ultimately, #GG is a poisoned movement and a poisoned label. Those who genuinely care about corruption in gaming journalism should abandon it and start a new group without all of the baggage associated with the current movement. And they should start it off by saying online harassment is 100% not okay. They should police their own movement. They should not breed conspiracy theories and rumors. They should act in a self-aware manner. They should not make wars with strawmen in bad faith, lest they become strawmen of their own. And most of all, they need to comprehend that their grievances pale in comparison to the oppression women face in society. They should not allow their movement to be co-opted by the oppressors.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:41 PM on October 14, 2014

Elementary Penguin: "Hey, Anita Sarkeesian got what I believe is death threat number 4 because of a speaking engagement."

What's pretty scary about that death threat is that it heavily references Marc Lepine and the 1989 Ecole Polytechnique massacre in Montreal. Either this person is old enough to remember an event from 25 years ago or they've been researching anti-feminist mass killings and found this guy matched his goals better than, say, Eliot Rodgers.
posted by mhum at 4:48 PM on October 14, 2014 [16 favorites]

What's pretty scary about that death threat is that it heavily references Marc Lepine and the 1989 Ecole Polytechnique massacre in Montreal.

What. The. Fuck. I just came to post about this. It's literally insane. This has nothing to do with anything other than... I actually don't want to call it terrorism but I don't know what the hell else to call it. It's terrorism.
posted by GuyZero at 4:50 PM on October 14, 2014 [14 favorites]

symbioid: " "We're not misogynists, we like women in games, we just want "honest" journalism"..."

The impression I get is they want women in games as long as those women never voice any dissatisfaction with the treatment of women in games.
posted by RobotHero at 4:54 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

So, uh, is this the point where the Gamergate supporters take a step back and say "hmmm, maybe I don't want to be involved in this so much"? Or do they just keep doubling down?
posted by naju at 4:55 PM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

Is there any chance of major AAA developers speaking out to support the victims of harassment? Give the misogynists their worst fear. Get even a handful of the most popular devs on board and the hate groups have to make an impossible choice between playing games and blubbering about them.

You may say that I'm a dreamer, but the IGDA statement is a start. Moot cracked down on 4chan. If Intel is so jumpy that they'll relent to one small group, then they'll react to any small group.

Unpredictability is bad for business, and these hate groups have a hair trigger. They will come home to roost, or, to paraphrase another overworn idea, "first they came for the indie dev women, and I didn't speak up..."

The gaming industry could address this on their own terms and united instead of waiting to be picked off and manipulated one by one. Plus, the hardcore gamer constituency is a locked market. The profit is in creating a mainstream gaming market where average people don't see gaming as fringe. In this case, the long-term profit agenda supports the moral one.
posted by Skwirl at 4:56 PM on October 14, 2014

At the risk of generalizing, I'm guessing these #GG adherents aren't the type of bros who appreciate indie gems like FTL or Don't Starve. Don't get me wrong; I like a good FPS now and then, but gaming has become so diverse and interesting these days. It's too bad the #GG types have such a narrow view of the hobby.
posted by wintermute2_0 at 4:57 PM on October 14, 2014

indie gems like FTL or Don't Starve

Both of these games were developed by men, so they get a conditional pass.
posted by Strass at 5:00 PM on October 14, 2014

The impression I get is they want women in games as long as those women never voice any dissatisfaction with the treatment of women in games

Frankly, I think even this gives them too much credit. The only women they want in games are the ones made from pixels that they can ogle or shoot or rescue or rape; not women as players, or player-characters, or game journalists, or game developers.

Women are prizes, not peers, to them.
posted by suelac at 5:00 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

"If #GamerGate is really about lapses in gaming journalism."

Nope. Never was.

No one in this thread is criticizing gamers as a whole. There isn't really a critique of 'gamer culture' here. #GamerGate started off as hateful anti-feminist crap and never was about 'ethics in journalism' - there weren't in fact any actual allegations that had any substance to them in the first place around this.

You may not be a racist if you think Obama wasn't born in the US. But please don't blame me for assuming you are a racist if you self-identify with a birther movement.

Maybe some gamers who support #gamergate aren't mysognists. But the moment you join a hate-movement there is a solid chance you are going to be called out on belonging to a hate movement.
posted by el io at 5:10 PM on October 14, 2014 [12 favorites]

The impression I'm getting is that the discourse has become so poisoned that a lot of people are joining #GamerGate are either unaware of the movement being misogynist, or they think the allegations of misogyny are falsified, or are actually claiming that they're working against harassers there. The whole matter is so completely polarized and politicized that it's hard to see what's going on.

Then again, all I really know about the subject I learned from Erik Kain. And his account makes it into a long-drawn drama-filled process that's about as straightforward as the Syrian Civil War.
posted by Apocryphon at 5:19 PM on October 14, 2014

I really wish I had something more pertinent to say here to make meaningful contribution to the discussion.

But all I an say is that I am terribly ashamed at all this blatant misogyny, reckless hate, and the willful propagation of misinformation.

And yes... this latest threat against Anita Sarkeesian is a terrorist threat. As much as any other fundamentalist that would attack a church, mosque, synagogue, school, or clinic.
posted by PROD_TPSL at 5:21 PM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

Delusion Disorder was featured in one of the segements on This American Life last week. These Gamergate leaders seem to be afflicted.
posted by humanfont at 5:30 PM on October 14, 2014

May I insert some happier news. Somebody sic'ed an ELIZA program on GamerGate over Twitter. It has been going on for hours and it is glorious.

Seriously check it out:

Sample:
@andrewlion19 I see #GamerGate as mostly misogynists who just don't realize it yet.

‏@Geomancer1980 that is the 17th or 18th dumbest thing I've ever read...

@ElizaRBarr @Geomancer1980 That's quite interesting.

‏@Geomancer1980 @ElizaRBarr sarcastic hyperbole for the win. I could have just said I found that very insulting but I had plenty of characters to use

@ElizaRBarr @Geomancer1980 Can you elaborate on that ?

‏@Geomancer1980 @ElizaRBarr which part?

‏@ElizaRBarr @Geomancer1980 What does that suggest to you ?

‏@Geomancer1980 @ElizaRBarr in context of other inflammatory statements he has made I took it as an attempt to troll. I took the bait anyway.

...and it goes on. It does suggest that many GG twitter members just need a Rogerian psychotherapist.
posted by blahblahblah at 5:33 PM on October 14, 2014 [69 favorites]

all I really know about the subject I learned from Erik Kain.

It’s about mistrust and the way both sides are feeding into that mistrust, whether through over-the-top reactions to the Quinn affair, or a bevy of articles proclaiming that an entire group of people is now irrelevant. Trust is the casualty here...

Whether or not some people are capitalizing on a culture of victimhood is a matter largely of opinion, and not something that can simply be stated as fact any more than alleged, unverified death threats against anyone ought to be reported as fact. So much of this is mired in speculation and partisanship at this point that it’s almost impossible to see the forest for the trees. Anyone selling you simple answers is likely ripping you off....

Readers may claim that I’m white-washing the entire thing, that scandal and conspiracy really do lurk beneath all of this. And maybe they do. I continue to follow all the details and revelations. But what I’ve seen so far points more to rotting sea of mistrust embedded in yet another culture war battle than a smoking gun....

What irks me most about both sides of the debate is their unwillingness to simply accept that the other side might have valid, or at least sincere, points. As human....

Perhaps none of this is the answer. Perhaps the only answer is to encourage honest debate between people who truly care about video games. A conversation is a powerful thing.

This is cack-handed "both sides are at fault" false equivalency at its best. Kain spends a lot of words and drags in every possible influence in order to get the scales just balanced.
posted by fatbird at 5:36 PM on October 14, 2014 [19 favorites]

Granted, he does seem overly sympathetic to their movement. Kain, at his heart, appears to be a populist. You could visibly see his conversion during the Mass Effect 3 outcry- first against the fan uproar, then one of their closest supporters.
posted by Apocryphon at 5:39 PM on October 14, 2014

Apocryphon: Yeah, that's a pretty awful account there.

Jilted ex-boyfriend Eron Gjoni wrote a long treatise on the alleged infidelity of his ex-girlfriend, video game developer Zoe Quinn. Members of the video game industry and press were implicated.

This led to an initial outcry over corruption in the video game press.

So, by 'implicated', she was accused of having sex with people associated with the industry. And this is the beginning of this. But if you parse it a little bit - there isn't any actual accusation that any review of any game was 'corrupted'. So there was nothing there. The 'outcry over corruption' never actually included any real accusations of any sort (ie: 'so and so slept with so and so who then gave xyz game a good review'). It was just tawdry invasive speculation into someone elses sex life (I feel dirty even discussing this).

It took me a bit of time to figure out what was going on with this at first - because it doesn't make any sense.

Think about the claims of 'censorship' if someone is trying to discuss allegations of infidelity that don't have any impact beyond the relationships involved. Whose business is it, and why does it belong on gaming web sites? What website with any ethics at all would allow people to have their destructive accusations of infidelity be a 'story' on their websites.

So yeah, you could say 'it's confusing, so sure some people picked the wrong side'. Um, yeah, I don't think so. It was confusing to me until I spent about 20 minutes reading about it. Before that I didn't have a side and didn't care much; but then I realized it was a front for violent (death/rape threats) misogynistic attacks on women. Then I took 'a side'. And like friggin *magic* because I didn't think it was appropriate for people to be spewing death and rape threats, I suddenly became a 'social justice warrior'.

Similarly, the Birther issue is complicated to, if you listen to the Birthers. It makes no sense until you look into it all, then you realize Birthers are Bat Shit Insane. It's sort of similar. But I still don't have much sympathy for people that got 'caught up' in the Birther movement because it was confusing and the were conflicting reports out there.

All that being said, the beginning of that Forbes article is pretty awful and some of the press is sure to blame ("we report the controversy, you decide the truth" - blech).
posted by el io at 5:40 PM on October 14, 2014 [17 favorites]

He appears to be someone smart enough to have his opinions but also to read the winds. And good for him: If more people were like that, we'd have less angry GG mobs in IRC organizing driven-to-suicide campaigns because they can't believe their opinions aren't treated like the Oracle's. That doesn't mean he should be considered authoritative. Bias also occurs in the selection and presentation of facts, even if the presentation is scrupulously fair.
posted by fatbird at 5:42 PM on October 14, 2014

As a woman in science, the L'ecole Polytechnique massacre is my nightmare. Literally. People who evoke that in a terrorist threat deserve to go to prison. And people who make "both sides" equivalencies between people who make such threats and women who critique video games are assholes.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:42 PM on October 14, 2014 [37 favorites]

This is not the first time there has been a huge uproar about gamers vs. supposed industry corruption. Does no one remember the Mass Effect 3 ending drama?

What was the "industry corruption" angle here?
posted by dumbland at 5:42 PM on October 14, 2014

Originally Mass Effect 3 ended with a reminder to drink your Ovaltine.
posted by RobotHero at 5:46 PM on October 14, 2014 [6 favorites]

What was the "industry corruption" angle here?

Here's a primer. Basically EA-Bioware overpromised and undelivered and most of the gaming press gave the AAA-title sterling reviews nonetheless. It prompted an outcry into the over-importance of Metacritic, among other things.
posted by Apocryphon at 5:48 PM on October 14, 2014

The impression I'm getting is that the discourse has become so poisoned that a lot of people are joining #GamerGate are either unaware of the movement being misogynist


Well they should fucking well know by now.

Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 5:49 PM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

Originally Mass Effect 3 ended with a reminder to drink your Ovaltine.

Marauder Shields sez, "Thanks for playing Mass Effect 3! Stay hydrated!"
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 6:00 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

The @ElizaRBarr chatbot is genius. Total p0wnage.
posted by humanfont at 6:05 PM on October 14, 2014

"I'm Commander Shepherd, and this is my favorite malt breakfast beverage on the Citadel!"
posted by Elementary Penguin at 6:06 PM on October 14, 2014 [6 favorites]

"Ah, yes..."—air quotes—"'Ovaltine'."
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 6:21 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

"Rudimentary creatures of blood, flesh, and malted drinks. You touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding, but warm, satisfied, and sleepy."
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 6:23 PM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

Anita's canceled her USU appearance tomorrow. Such rage. There are not enough swear words, in all the languages combined.
posted by Andrhia at 6:45 PM on October 14, 2014 [10 favorites]

Ovaltine is not recommended for quarians, turians or other dextro-protein species. Ovaltine is not certified by the Alliance Medication Board to diagnose or treat any illnesses. Ovaltine is not nutritionally complete and is not meant to act as a substitute for Standard Nutrition Packets. Consult your doctor before drinking Ovaltine if you have previously suffered Thorian enthrallment.
posted by NoraReed at 6:51 PM on October 14, 2014 [15 favorites]

From Utah State Today (emphasis mine):

Anita Sarkeesian has canceled her scheduled speech for tomorrow following a discussion with Utah State University police regarding an email threat that was sent to Utah State University. During the discussion, Sarkeesian asked if weapons will be permitted at the speaking venue. Sarkeesian was informed that, in accordance with the State of Utah law regarding the carrying of firearms, if a person has a valid concealed firearm permit and is carrying a weapon, they are permitted to have it at the venue.

posted by metaquarry at 6:56 PM on October 14, 2014 [4 favorites]

Anita's canceled her USU appearance tomorrow.

This is a rather interesting contrast to Ann Coulter's feeble bow-out in 2010.
posted by ovvl at 6:56 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

oi
posted by postcommunism at 6:57 PM on October 14, 2014

Bloody fucking hell.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 7:00 PM on October 14, 2014

more on why USU can't ban firearms
posted by NoraReed at 7:04 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

That's beyond messed up.

"Enhanced security measures will now be in place, which include prohibiting backpacks and any large bags."

Oh, okay, that sounds reasonable.... On wait, you're going to search their bags, but they have a legal right to have guns on their persons?

So security can confiscate and disallow people from bringing tomatoes to throw, but not guns to shoot?

Holy shit America is fucked.
posted by el io at 7:10 PM on October 14, 2014 [15 favorites]

If the threat hadn't said anything about killing anyone, but simply said "Hi Anita, I'm going to bring a gun to your talk tomorrow. Take care," I wonder if it would even be classified as a threat...?
posted by naju at 7:20 PM on October 14, 2014

I bet over on Twitter they're claiming victory.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:23 PM on October 14, 2014

In case you were wondering how difficult it is to get a Utah concealed-weapons permit, it's not.
posted by holgate at 7:24 PM on October 14, 2014

I know that when I'm dispassionately evaluating a movement's credibility, terrorist threats are a big tick in the "moral high ground" box.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 7:34 PM on October 14, 2014 [7 favorites]

Ok, look. If there is some sort of therapeutic solution to internet dude hate-gangs, I would like to state for the record that, as the president said, it is On You, guys. You want compassion and a guiding hand and understanding to lead these rape-threat-spewing hatebros out of darkness? Go for it. Love them into enlightenment. Use your manly bro-love to show them the way.

The hostility that a lot of people show here to that whole idea is because when it's brought up, it's always women expected to do that sort of thing. Be the Angel in the Internet shining our pure forgiving light. But this time, we ain't. Nope. Not interested. Not stepping into that cesspool. We have Moved On.

You wanna clean it up? Be our guest. Good luck and godspeed. We'll be waiting for you over here in Know How to Act Like a Goddamn Human Being land.
posted by emjaybee at 7:35 PM on October 14, 2014 [36 favorites]

Basically EA-Bioware overpromised and undelivered and most of the gaming press gave the AAA-title sterling reviews nonetheless.

My well-considered reaction to your summary of this until-now unheard of controversy is who gives a single flying fuck? Seriously? Who gives a shit? Why does this matter? What wider impact does this possibly have on the planet? So some reviews for a fucking video game were inaccurate! I don't agree with a lot of movie reviews, too. I don't agree with the reviews of hotels on travel sites. Reviews of restaurants on Yelp are often bullshit. Who the fuck cares?! Really! Why is this an issue? It's a fucking game. A toy. Short-lived, whimsical entertainment! And don't give me that "Oooh it's a $100 billion industry!" bullshit. So is the coffee industry, and we don't see rape and death threats because someone said the coffee at Starbucks tastes great.
posted by Jimbob at 7:43 PM on October 14, 2014 [15 favorites]

But talking in echo chambers about how bad the other side is does not further the discussion.

Just so we're clear here, the other side is people who threaten to rape and murder people. The rest of the world SHOULD be an echo chamber of "That's evil." You know what doesn't further discussion? Bomb threats. You know what's a pretty damn good sign that there's no actual discussion to be had? Threatening to rape women and then posting their addresses online.

Are you seriously going bemoan how one side isn't interested in furthering discussion with a cause whose members view chasing them from their homes as a valid strategy? Really?
posted by Gygesringtone at 7:52 PM on October 14, 2014 [44 favorites]

Also, I didn't know that Zoe Quinn wrote the ending to ME3, then slept with a bunch of reviewers, then wrote an even worse ending, and also made it possible to play a female Shepard which makes me confused in my trousers-area...
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:53 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

My read of the ME3 kerfuffle was that the aggrieved gamers came off as a pack of entitled shitheels (nothing against you there Apocryphon, thanks for the link). If they've managed to spin it into an issue of industry corruption, that's ... weird. ME3 was a fantastic game with a shitty ending. It's not exactly unprecedented.

Speaking of, if ME3's poor ending did suck the joy out of the series for you and you stepped away, I thoroughly endorse picking up all the DLC and giving it another playthrough, leaving the Citadel DLC (which is hilariously insane and a massive tone-shift) for last.
posted by dumbland at 8:02 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

EmpressCallipygos: "I bet over on Twitter they're claiming victory."

Ah, but they can't claim victory without saying it's their fault. Threats have to be either faked by Sarkeesian, or something that happened totally by coincidence, the 9 letters and octothorpe are blameless.
posted by RobotHero at 8:09 PM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

There's lots of stuff with shitty endings. Harry Potter's epilogue sucked. Battlestar Galactica's final episode wasn't exactly well received. A lot of people were disappointed by LOST. Gamers just reacted worse to the ending of ME3 than any other fandom because somehow they manage to be worse than fans of anything else. Even when there are valid points, they manage to fuck everything up so badly that it's not worth associating with them, like the ones who threatened Roger Ebert after he said games aren't art.

The worst part of this is obviously the harassment and threats and the chilling effect that they have, but it's also kind of a bummer that we can't actually have a conversation about why games journalism is so bad because these trolls keep shitting everything up. It's also deeply ironic, because these assholes are the same ones who flipped their shit over a 9/10 review of GTA V; they're so incredibly threatened by the idea of cultural criticism that they're threatening to kill Sarkeesian and others. It's clear that games journalism and games criticism pretty much needes to be doing the opposite of whatever they want. But there's not really a lot of room to have a conversation about the relationship between game publications and studios or any related topics because they're claiming it's corruption if anyone says Bayonetta isn't perfect and generally just pouring their sewage-views all over any actual conversations and also threatening women and generally being awful.

Basically what I am saying is that the gaming community is deeply, maybe irreparably, sick with this kind of bullshit and its waves of grossness touch every aspect of gaming culture and gaming criticism etc
posted by NoraReed at 8:27 PM on October 14, 2014 [11 favorites]

I don't remember there being any "corruption" angle to the ME3 ending, more a feeling of being generally ill-used by Bioware, because Bioware was clearly capable of better and yet came up with a solution that was cheaper, because everybody was going to buy it anyway. It wasn't just that it was bad, it was that it was really mechanically lazy. Which was to say, it wasn't just that it was bad narrative, it was that the primary goal really seemed to be to cut down on how much game they had to make. BSG was going to be really stupid complicated to wrap up in any satisfactory manner to the bulk of the audience simultaneously--ME3 just needed some effort.

Yeah, the reviews were still good--but even today, looking at Metacritic? The user killer3000ad says "99% of the game is brilliant but the last 5 minutes just destroys the entire franchise" and then gives it a 1/10. That doesn't seem any more realistic to me than the publication that says "the grand finale itself is simply perfect" and gives it 95/100. I can see it as an argument about how Metacritic is useless, but I dunno about corruption. I was really perfectly able to put the whole thing down to the average reviewer being a hell of a lot less invested in that story than the devoted fandom.

Granted, since long before then, the only reviewer I really trust is Yahtzee, because he has completely different taste in games from me, and yet I can tell from his terrible reviews when it's something I'm still going to like, and I can tell from his great reviews when it's something I'm still going to hate. I really need to find more folks like that.
posted by Sequence at 8:39 PM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

Why did you have to do that? Go for the glib one-liner when someone is making a serious, good-faith attempt to address an issue we all agree is a problem?

Ok, you don't like the short answer. Here's the longer answer:

The question of how a phenomenon like gamegate occurs isn't hard. It occurs because a large percentage of human beings will indulge themselves in malicious cruelty whenever there is no cost to them for doing so, and the cultural conditions that we have inherited from thousands of years of patriarchy mean that the social costs of being cruel to women are many orders of magnitude less than the costs of doing it to men.

Now, some people may not find this plausible, and go seeking for another explanation, something that involves the disenfranchisement of young men in the modern Information Age, something cribbed from one of Brad Pitt's speeches in "Fight Club", perhaps. But, even if I concede for the sake of argument that another explanation is needed (I don't) and even I believed that the discussion in this thread is likely to discover that explanation (I don't), what the hell good would it do? Metafilter is not an institution that can act on that kind of knowledge with a single will. We're just a bunch of people talking on the internet.

On the other hand, what we can do, as individuals, is to incrementally increase the social cost of sexism by calling it out, every time. We can heap scorn on the pathetic goobers who are threatened by the mere fact of a woman speaking in public, and we can deny victim blaming as an appropriate response to rape or the threat of rape, and we can resist the tendency to drag every...single...discussion of women's issues onto the (at best adjacent) topic of how "men have it bad too, y'know!"

All of those things can make a big difference, and have made a difference in the quality of the discussions here specifically. But even with that, you'll get a thread like this, where somebody wants to make a half a dozen comments about how absolutely vital it is for us to figure out what motivates these shitheads. Well, I don't think it is vital...I think it's a waste of time. I think that the only thing that will effect change is making misogyny, even the hint of it, socially unacceptable. One of the ways to do that is with the cutting, curt remark. If you find it glib, hopefully you'll find this explanation more satisfying.

And yes, I am outraged. I find death threats and rape threats outrageous. There are multiple families that have now had to flee their homes over this shit. I'm sitting comfortably in my home right now. If I had to take my family out of here, because some sociopath thought it amusing to threaten them, or me, over a fucking video game review, I think I'd be furious, and I wouldn't give a shit how the sociopath got that way. I am "outraged" on behalf of the women for whom that situation isn't hypothetical.
posted by Ipsifendus at 8:42 PM on October 14, 2014 [26 favorites]

Seriously? Who gives a shit? Why does this matter?

And seriously, capital-G Gamers have proved themselves very willing to defend shitty games that somehow redeem themselves through the strategic use of sexualised female characters.

For fuck's sake, I can remember 8-bit magazines in the mid-1980s -- ones with covers like this -- publishing exclusive rave previews of games that were barely demos and were either terrible on release or never released at all. Certain big advertisers were treated with kid gloves. But that was a time when you bought games on cassette tape and wrote letters by hand to the magazines, so the feedback loop took months, and it was predominantly men (and teenage boys) within the scene.

they're so incredibly threatened by the idea of cultural criticism that they're threatening to kill Sarkeesian and others.

You'd think from the reaction that Sarkeesian had concocted some kind of radical and untested critical toolkit, when she's simply an perceptive critic using a methodology that ought to be uncontroversial. Chanting "take our games seriously" while acting like a pack of spoilt fucking children towards anybody who does so is not a good look.
posted by holgate at 8:52 PM on October 14, 2014 [4 favorites]

Well, maybe the #GamerGators really do have something to be afraid of themselves...
(because every feminist is JUST LIKE Harley Quinn...)
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:55 PM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

Also, NoraReed, this is where the whole "using gamer to cover a broad group of people" gets to be a bit of a problem, because some of the people I knew who were most livid about ME3's ending were so because of exactly the attitude that WANTS more cultural criticism--the original ending downplayed the meaning of players' moral choices and ignored the level of emotional investment in the outcome that players had been building for three games, if you were a player with any modicum of empathy. I'm sure not everybody felt that way, but after three games spent playing as a Social JusticeParagon Vanguard, seriously addressing the player's choices and the implications of the ending seemed important. I have a hard time imagining the GGers making it through all three games, even on Renegade, without freaking out about the games addressing things like racism and genocide and, for that matter, homosexuality. There was certainly bad behavior on some parts, but it's a weird generalization from the people who get angry about lack of depth/consequences/representation to the people who get angry about those things existing.
posted by Sequence at 9:01 PM on October 14, 2014

Are you seriously going bemoan how one side isn't interested in furthering discussion with a cause whose members view chasing them from their homes as a valid strategy? Really?

I'm saying that #GamerGate does not appear to be one monolithic entity and that there are all sorts of rogue operators involved who may be escalating these events. Many have been shown to be in the leadership (the IRC grassroots movement). But the rank and file, as angry as they seem, do not seem to be pro-death threat/rape/other terrible and unholy things. They do not seem to be rabid misogynists so much as indoctrinated activists.

Do you think every Tea Party member knows what the Koch Brothers' agenda is and would agree with it?

A member of #GamerGate is claiming that they themselves were the ones who reported the Anita Sarkeesian threats to the Brazilian police and that he was not one of their own but a clickbait journalist. If true, might that show that maybe not all of them are bad? It seems like some of their members are condemning the harassment and threats. Have they done enough to police it? Hell no. Far from it. But does that show that maybe not all of them are MRA-types? Maybe. Or maybe all of the above is falsified. Again, misinfo and disinfo is abundant all around.

I don't believe anyone has a clear idea of what's going on on Twitter right now. It's a shitstorm.

Again, #GamerGate is a poisoned movement. If they spent even a fraction of their efforts condemning misogyny and online harassment and fighting the trolls that have joined their movement, this would be a far less bitter conflict. It has been infiltrated and led by trolls. It is too blinded by its own self-righteousness and conspiracy theorizing to call for basic human decency.

But to write off everything and everyone associated with it as one bloc of evil is guilt by association and unhelpful. (Though it does serve the salutary purpose of catharsis.) There are probably plenty of people in it who genuinely see it as an anti-corruption movement and don't know what's going on. And for the other side to just write them all off as pure evil is to ignore that every conflict has nuance. And it just allows the trolls and demagogues to portray themselves as an oppressed underclass, and radicalize more of its members.

There's a metaphor here for the modern Middle East, but it's already been made before.

My well-considered reaction to your summary of this until-now unheard of controversy is who gives a single flying fuck?

It's the internet, yo.
posted by Apocryphon at 9:01 PM on October 14, 2014

Do you think every Tea Party member knows what the Koch Brothers' agenda is and would agree with it?
No, but that's not going to keep them from voting for every candidate who is fully owned by the Kochs.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:09 PM on October 14, 2014

True, but are they all as morally culpable for the same negative effects? Or are they simply ignorant or deluded? Should we regard them with the same animosity we would regard the Kochs?
posted by Apocryphon at 9:11 PM on October 14, 2014

Do you think every Tea Party member knows what the Koch Brothers' agenda is and would agree with it?

No, but I think the every member of the Tea Party I talked too about the very real racism that was present knew about the specific instances I would bring up and didn't have a problem with most of them. Usually with a claim about how they're just being realistic about things or that people were just over reacting. Oh, and there was a lot of "nudge nudge wink wink" surrounding that stupid quote about the tree of liberty and the blood of tyrants.
posted by Gygesringtone at 9:12 PM on October 14, 2014 [8 favorites]

Which is to say, members of a movement almost always have a feel for the spirit of that movement, and the people involved in this crap have gone out of their way to advertise the fact that they endorse intimidation as an effective tool to silence the opposition.
posted by Gygesringtone at 9:15 PM on October 14, 2014 [6 favorites]

It's kind of a "not all men", Apocryphon--I mean, I don't mean it to be that pat. The thing about "not all men" is that yes, of course, we all know that it is not literally 100% of men. Even if you say "all men experience male privilege" or something I'm sure one could make an argument that the profoundly developmentally disabled wouldn't. The Tea Party doesn't need to have every single member sign off on the agenda--the agenda exists, if individual people in the group turn out to be okay then that doesn't change the nature of the group. Nobody's going around handing out individual moral culpability here in exact proportions. The fact that this good kid you know goes off the rails and joins the KKK--maybe he's still a good kid at heart, but it's still the KKK, nobody's going to talk about the KKK differently because a few members might actually be pretty okay folks.

It isn't really useful to have a whole separate addendum to every conversation about "except for those couple people who might be okay". Assume good faith on the side of the other participants in the conversation and that people do know that there isn't actually a complete universality of opinion in any given group discussed collectively.
posted by Sequence at 9:16 PM on October 14, 2014 [9 favorites]

I'm saying that #GamerGate does not appear to be one monolithic entity

From my seat here on the sidelines, it looks very much like they want to appear to be unified group when it is convenient to do so (e.g. look how much boycott power we have!) and gosh, just a collection of individuals who are concerned about journalism that is occasionally victimized by crazy people trying to make poor little us look bad when they send threatening messages.
posted by rtha at 9:22 PM on October 14, 2014 [39 favorites]

I guess my thesis is that things are very confused and that there very well may be genuine people within #GamerGate who are genuinely condemning the misogynist actions. Also, unlike the Tea Party, or the KKK, or Daesh, or whatever- #GamerGate doesn't seem to be an actual organization, with prominent leaders and an agenda for all to see. Unlike MRAs, or PUAs, or Red Pills, they aren't explicitly an anti-feminist, misogynist movement. So there certainly might be people- and how many, how would we know?- in there who are just freaking out about games and don't know anything about Zoe Quinn because it's not actually enshrined anywhere that you have to hate women.

Though certainly, much like modern gamer culture in general, there's an inherent chauvinist to their tone even if you take them at their word that it is just about corruption in game journalism (Feminists are uniting to censor us! SJWs! Tumblr! Oh noes the matriarchy!)

Maybe everyone's been played as fools by the trolls.

From my seat here on the sidelines, it looks very much like they want to appear to be unified group when it is convenient to do so (e.g. look how much boycott power we have!) and gosh, just a collection of individuals who are concerned about journalism that is occasionally victimized by crazy people trying to make poor little us look bad when they send threatening messages.

You can say that about every counterestablishment grassroots movement, though. Not to be glib- you need to appear strong to rally, and appear weak to incite sympathy.
posted by Apocryphon at 9:27 PM on October 14, 2014

Meanwhile, "A thread on 8chan just doxxed the living hell out of Zoe. Literally every address she has lived at and contact information." "Other posters are discussing camping outside her building."
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:28 PM on October 14, 2014

#GamerGate doesn't seem to be an actual organization, with prominent leaders and an agenda for all to see

I don't know - given that the worst of it seems to have deliberately and consciously organized by people making actual plans and strategizing ways to twitterbomb and harass and talking about how they had to be careful to not make this seem like it was about the women but about ethics, yeah! I just...yeah. This began as an organized campaign.
posted by rtha at 9:35 PM on October 14, 2014 [15 favorites]

Going all the way back, it's well documented as beginning as a personal vendetta by Zoe Quinn's ex-bf when he discovered her multiple 'other men'. (Not that it had anything to do with 'corruption' without painfully strained logistical gymnastics) And if Hell hath no fury like a Woman Scorned, a Man Scorned is always much worse (an usually with far more resources to bring out the Hell).
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:41 PM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

That's a fair point. Given that these misogynist trolls seem to be still in action, the movement is irreparably compromised. But I'm just saying the whole thing has snowballed so much there do appear to be people who not only do not support misogynist actions and may be actually working against them. I think a lot of people who are in now may just be duped. It's all too easy to dismiss them all as barbarians at the gate. But should we endorse collective guilt?

But yeah, if any of those non-misogynists want to prove their rhetoric correct, they'd better shut down that shit pronto, and bring those perpetrators to justice.
posted by Apocryphon at 9:50 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Apocryphon: "There are probably plenty of people in it who genuinely see it as an anti-corruption movement [...]"

Maybe? A week ago, this article was posted on Kotaku (definitely one of the top ten if not top five gaming news websites) regarding questionable arrangements between Shadow of Mordor's marketing agency and YouTube/Twitch vloggers. It's basically classic, old-school corruption -- a quid pro quo: we'll give you advance access to our game so long as you make your video functionally equivalent to an advertisement, including no negative commentary (!), "strong verbal call to action" (100% advertising jargon), and even a prohibition on off-message references to the source book or movies (for a game based in the Lord of the Rings universe!). Moreover, it looks like they may have been withholding preview copies from traditional journalistic outlets in order to make sure these YouTube/Twitch videos would be the main source of early press.

Where was #gamergate on this story? I'll admit that I'm not super-great at Twitter, so if someone could point out their take on this, I'd be most interested.
posted by mhum at 10:04 PM on October 14, 2014 [14 favorites]

Where was #gamergate on this story?
Obviously, Shadow of Mordor's marketing agency was all male.
;)
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:07 PM on October 14, 2014

the movement is irreparably compromised.

You can't "compromise" something that was never legit in the first place.

I think a lot of people who are in now may just be duped.

Entirely possible, yes. But there are a fuck-ton of places all over the web (including, sometimes, the comments sections of mainstream media reports on GamerGate) where people are pointing out that this particular misogynist Emperor has no clothes. It's not very hard to un-dupe yourself, and if you're supporting GamerGate but, somehow, "not the misogyny", then there's either willful ignorance or some serious cognitive dissonance at work.

But should we endorse collective guilt?

Yes.

Because see above re: willful ignorance.

This is not some kind of CIA black ops Sooper Seekrit too-classified-for-the-President task force, it's all right out there in the fucking open. The origin of the "movement", the timeline, Zoe Quinn has screencapped IRC conversations between people organizing the doxxing and the Twitter attacks, the Twitter attacks themselves have been saved and publicized, on and on and on.

If all the evidence that your "movement" is a bunch of phony garbage is right out there in the first couple pages of a Goggle search, and you're still sticking your fingers in your ears and going "LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU", then, yeah, you've got to shoulder at least some of the guilt.
posted by soundguy99 at 10:09 PM on October 14, 2014 [23 favorites]

A member of #GamerGate is claiming that they themselves were the ones who reported the Anita Sarkeesian threats to the Brazilian police and that he was not one of their own but a clickbait journalist. If true, might that show that maybe not all of them are bad?

Oh, honey. I've got a bridge to sell you.

It seems like some of their members are condemning the harassment and threats. Have they done enough to police it? Hell no. Far from it. But does that show that maybe not all of them are MRA-types? Maybe.

Make that two.

Or maybe all of the above is falsified.

Bingo!

But yeah, if any of those non-misogynists want to prove their rhetoric correct, they'd better shut down that shit pronto, and bring those perpetrators to justice.

Yeah, people were saying that a couple weeks ago. And this shit is still going on. I guess the "non-misogynists" in the movement are just lazy?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:13 PM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

Oh, honey. I've got a bridge to sell you.

What's the evidence that it was falsified? I'm being serious here.

Make that two.

Did you actually look at that link? There's a bunch of #GamerGate rando's chiming in against the death threats and rape threats and doxxing and other online harassment. They appear to live in a world where they imagine that #GamerGate isn't a misogynist movement. So are they all liars? Or are they all dupes?
posted by Apocryphon at 10:15 PM on October 14, 2014

I think it is likely that most of them are liars and some of them are dupes.
posted by NoraReed at 10:19 PM on October 14, 2014 [25 favorites]

Did you actually look at that link? There's a bunch of #GamerGate rando's chiming in against the death threats and rape threats and doxxing and other online harassment. They appear to live in a world where they imagine that #GamerGate isn't a misogynist movement.

Of course they're chiming in against the death threats PUBLICALLY. What are they saying on their 8chan threads when they think people aren't watching?

so are they all liars? Or are they all dupes?

Well, YOU'VE been duped, so isn't it possible some of them have been too?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:26 PM on October 14, 2014 [19 favorites]

Of course they're chiming in against the death threats PUBLICALLY. What are they saying on their 8chan threads when they think people aren't watching?

And even, even granting them special snowflake naivety privileges: other hashtags are fucking available.
posted by holgate at 10:36 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

They appear to live in a world where they imagine that #GamerGate isn't a misogynist movement.

Which calls to mind that it is possible for a member of the KKK to say that they "don’t hate people because of their race. " When it comes to that sort of thing, there's what you say, and what you do.
posted by Sequence at 10:49 PM on October 14, 2014 [5 favorites]

Well, YOU'VE been duped, so isn't it possible some of them have been too?

I don't think I've been duped in saying that quite possibly many of their members aren't actually angry MRA misogynist terrorists. I think many of them are in fact duped. And if I'm correct, then that changes the narrative of their members as inherently evil, does it not?

Of course they're chiming in against the death threats PUBLICALLY. What are they saying on their 8chan threads when they think people aren't watching?

I'm sure there are many trolls at work here. Maybe most of their leadership cadre. But are you saying everyone on Twitter, reddit, etc. who are condemning the actions, some of them apparently working to expose the harassment behavior are in on the trolling as well?

It's not very hard to un-dupe yourself, and if you're supporting GamerGate but, somehow, "not the misogyny", then there's either willful ignorance or some serious cognitive dissonance at work.

I think that's the crux of this problem. We're living in a culture where everything is questioned and seen as doubted, so long as it doesn't fit one's personal narrative. The truths about #GamerGate are quite visible to you. But to any random member, they'd dismiss it as part of a smear campaign. And they would be wrong. And... I guess that's an impasse. Unless you try talking to them? Most of them don't even respond with misogyny! But instead they just send you a bunch of YouTube videos and talking points. So it's arguing with the indoctrinated again.

...

Anyway, here's a message from a former "moderate" member of GG to current members, which is worth sharing and repeating:

It actually took far, far longer than I'm comfortable with for this to sink into my thick skull. When you finally detach yourself from GG, and move away from the constant reinforcement the group provides that "no, we're doing the right thing! These are the bad guys, remember how bad they made you feel? We're doing the RIGHT THING!" you look and see holy shit.

This really IS a hate movement fueled by nutters. How did I get dragged into this?!

I'd implore GG supporters to distance themselves from the tag, and from the community, and take a very good look at everything that's going on, and all of the people who are being hurt. Are videogame websites, that we don't even visit, worth peoples LIVES being ruined? It's so easy to feel like it's all just a game, because we aren't the ones on the other end of the hatred. It's easy to point at someone and call "false flag!" because we aren't the ones who are sitting there, having people actually show up on our doorstep, saying "come out and plaaayy". The ends do NOT justify the means.

We don't NEED #GG to do good. There are a lot of people who want to achieve the same goals as us, but we are RADIOACTIVE until we move away from #GG because of what it represents. We can't start enacting change when the people who actually could start making these changes happen want nothing to do with us.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:52 PM on October 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

Patton Oswalt has entered the fray!
posted by Apocryphon at 10:57 PM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

I skipped the Deadspin article linked upthread until a friend posted it in IRC just now and I have to say it does a really good job of explaining a lot of this, though I sort of disagree with the writer on the quality of Depression Quest (which I thought was a really interesting and smart use of the language of video games to demonstrate something that's hard to explain).
posted by NoraReed at 10:58 PM on October 14, 2014

So are they all liars? Or are they all dupes?

Best case scenario is that they don't really have any idea what "sexism", "misogyny", or "corruption" are besides definitions they pretty much made up themselves.

Look at this rant from one of the GamerGate supporters (who replied to GeekGirlDiva in that link you posted) who claims they're against the death threats and reported them to the FBI. It's borderline unintelligible, but clearly the work of someone so enraged by the "threat" to video games personified by Zoe Quinn & Anita Sarkeesian that utter vile garbage just spews out of his keyboard, and he's swallowed every lie told about the situation, hook, line, and sinker.

For example:

Look Zoe, I know you think you're this untouchable demigod. You're not. We have all sorts of your dirty fucking laundry airing. But all anyone can talk about is 3 fucking people spamming your fucking twitter. Boo-fucking-hoo Zoe. I'll play you a sad tune on the world tiniest violin. Now it's not about ethics anymore, IT'S AN ATTACK ON ALL FEMALE DEVS. EVERYONE PANIC.

You are a monster Zoe. You. Specifically. Are a complete and utter monster. You don't care who you hurt, who's careers you end, and what standard of quality you damage with a shitshow like "Depression Quest". As someone who writes, and as someone suffering from actual, suicidal depression, your "Interactive Novella" is not only one of the most badly written fictions I have ever had the misfortunes of reading, it is completely and utterly insulting to me, and anyone else suffering with ACTUAL fucking depression. Not this off-brand tumblrina "Ohh, I had a bad day. :'( I'm depressed! Give me money to feel better!" BULLSHIT. You know how I cope? Video games.

You're going to try to take my coping method from me? You think I'll just let you people do it? Really It makes me want to vomit. YOU make me want to vomit, Zoe. I don't give a fuck who you fucked, you can fuck around all you want. Go fucking nuts. But don't you fucking DARE sleep around to make your disgusting pile of tripe popular. And to make it free in 'Remembrance" to the late Robin Williams. This sickens me more completely and utterly than anything else. Is there nothing you won't pervert to make a name for yourself? How dare you gain from the death of one of the greatest entertainers in the world. How fucking dare you.

So the dude is "helping" the FBI track down who made death threats? Great. Good. Way to go, dude. You've reached the point of human development where you can understand that threatening to actually kill somebody might be over the line.

Yes. I am damning him with faint praise.

If people like that are an example of a "not all bad" GamerGate supporter . . . . . .
posted by soundguy99 at 11:02 PM on October 14, 2014 [20 favorites]

mhum: "Where was #gamergate on this story?"

Apparently, here. TotalBiscuit breaks the story and yet simultaneously downplays the issues there because it has "nothing to do with journalistic ethics". I kind of saw this line of argument coming ("Let's Plays aren't journalism.") but didn't put it into my previous comment because it seemed a little too on the nose. Anyways, maybe this might shed a bit of light on why some people might think that corruption is not their foremost concern?

Also, they keep prattling on about gaming journalism when all of their alleged gripes seem to be about gaming criticism -- which I guess can be technically a form of journalism but is usually considered a separate medium. E.g.: Roger Ebert was a journalist and a critic. Of course, they probably phrase it this way because: 1) journalists have a bit of a higher social standing, so attacking them can be seen as "punching up", and 2) calling for "objectivity" in criticism completely unmasks the ludicrousness of their demands.

Lastly, to put yet another nail into this coffin that's already more nails than wood, you can just look at the initial reaction to the Eron Gjoni screed to see how hollow their protestations are. Suppose we took their completely discredited first take on the story at face value: that Zoe Quinn traded sex with a Kotaku writer in exchange for a good review of her game. What was their reaction to this scenario? It was to pour all their vitriol onto Zoe Quinn, not the writer. For bonus points, name the writer. Not so easy is it? (It's Nathan Grayson, who also wrote that article I linked above about Shadow of Mordor's shady marketing deals). Why is that? Why was she the party in the wrong and Nathan Grayson was blameless? What power did she hold over him to force him to take the bribe? She's an indie developer working on her first game and he's a writer for a top website. He's the one with the power in this scenario and if it played out like that, he'd be the one abusing that power by taking a bribe. And yet, this whole thing was dubbed the Quinnspiracy not Graysonghazi or whatever.
posted by mhum at 11:07 PM on October 14, 2014 [17 favorites]

I think most of them are more like this guy, honestly.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:07 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

You know how I cope? Video games.
One of my personal concerns about video games is how many people with serious emotional issues cope using First Person Shooters. That's one of them.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:08 PM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

Why was she the party in the wrong and Nathan Grayson was blameless? What power did she hold over him to force him to take the bribe?

BECAUSE SHE IS WOMAN AND SHE POSSESSES THE EEEEEEVIL POWER OF THE UNIVERSE-DESTRYOING VAJEEPER!!!!1!!!1!!

Sheesh. Do they have to spell everything out for you?

[/heavy sarcasm]
posted by soundguy99 at 11:22 PM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

This is a great example of what utter bullshit this is all based on. This has never been about journalism.
posted by Jimbob at 11:32 PM on October 14, 2014 [20 favorites]

One thing I find very amusing about this whole thing (you have to find humor, otherwise its just misery all around) is the basic premise behind the anti-feminist gamer analysis...

Which seems to be this: that cultural critiques on the various works of art (games) will somehow force everyone who is making this art (games) to stop being misogynist and all future art (games) will be "PC" (and we gamers won't get to see half-naked elves in their games or whatever).

This position essentially makes the feminist critics out to have incredible power to change the nature of a medium, simply by writing about it! Just bringing up the tropes, patriarchal tendencies, and mysogny in games will stop all of this from happening in future games.

That's essentially the fear, right? Ruin games forever, ruin gaming forever; and what they mean by that is games will cease to have the troublesome elements that these people are pointing out in games.

Imagine if writers thought that feminist critiques were going to 'ruin books' or that a feminist academic pointing out that movies have gender issues will suddenly change the way movies are made forever. Or that someone doing cultural analysis of rap lyrics will ruin rap forever - as rappers will quit saying their misogynistic rapping (I love rap, #notallrappers).

Obviously the awful threats and harassment are horrifying. But underlying that is a perspective that feminist cultural critiques (that are more or less essentially academic in nature) will utterly change the medium they are critiquing.

Then the irony is that once you have a very loud chorus (small in numbers, loud in whining) making these assertions - suddenly a whole TON of people that have probably never read a feminist critique of anything are busy reading (and watching youtube videos) of feminist critiques.

So to all the misogynist, harassing, threatening people out there who have been making these womens lives hellish - fuck you for your actions. But thank you for turning a ton of folks into feminists, and helping give feminist cultural critiques exposure by making them controversial, important, and even dangerous.

I know I wouldn't have watched any of Anita's videos if gamers hadn't first created their hateful campaigns against her.
posted by el io at 11:43 PM on October 14, 2014 [16 favorites]

Apocryphon: "Anyway, here's a message from a former "moderate" member of GG to current members, which is worth sharing and repeating:"

Interestingly, when you look at that person's earlier comment in that thread, you find that they weren't drawn into #gamergate because of some idea about corruption in games journalism but rather because they felt their identity was somehow under attack via Leigh Alexander's "'Gamers' are Over" article. Sure, their initial motivation wasn't howling misogyny, but let's be clear here -- this person didn't align with #gamergate out of some noble intention. They joined up because their feelings were hurt. To me, this is only a somewhat milder form of joining up with the Ku Klux Klan because somebody wrote an article about how the effects of America's legacy of white supremacy can still be felt today and that made you feel bad about yourself for being white¹.

In fact, it's unclear if this person even really read the article (they call it "Gamers are dead") or if they just heard from someone that somebody (a lady, even!) said something mean about gamers. The article is very clear that it is responding to the already roiling misogyny of the early Quinnspiracy-era #gamergaters. If anything, I suspect the telephone game that transformed "'Gamers' are over" into "Gamers are dead"² was probably responsible for dragging in a whole slew of these so-called moderate #gamergaters that Apocryphon alludes to.

Footnote 1: Oh, fuck. I hope nobody joined the Klan because of Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Case for Reparations"
Footnote 2: "Gamers are over" = 125,000 results on Google, "Gamers are dead" = 162,000 results. What do we make of that?
posted by mhum at 12:08 AM on October 15, 2014 [9 favorites]

Part of what's so baffling about the GamerGate spasm is that this is the best time ever for games, and for game journalism, and "gamer" as an identity. I've been a gamer for some 30 years now and never have I seen such diversity in both game publishing and game journalism.

Apparently some gamers feel threatened by feminist critique, or portrayals of depression or some other game thing they don't like. I keep thinking back on something Sarkeesian said at XOXO, that gaming was more exclusively for boys and men in the past and now it's opening up. Perhaps some men feel threatened because there's increasing diversity, they have to share their hobby? What a childish attitude.
posted by Nelson at 12:27 AM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

The Unsafety Net: How Social Media Turned Against Women, [Caution: Disturbing Content] Catherine Buni and Soraya Chemaly, The Atlantic, 09 October 2014
posted by ob1quixote at 12:27 AM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

I keep thinking back on something Sarkeesian said at XOXO, that gaming was more exclusively for boys and men in the past and now it's opening up.

I liked her XOXO talk, but this was the one I was a little unsure about. Like--when I was a kid in the 80s and early 90s, most families didn't have actual computers at that point, which we did, but the vast majority of my friends had at least one gaming console. I think maybe in adolescence it became slightly more gendered, but more in terms of what games we played, not that there weren't still plenty of girls with Playstations or whatever. There was some skew, but "exclusively"? I never felt like I was that much in the minority. I would have felt out of place trying to play things like shooters and fighting games, and so I didn't, which was a problem, but I still had my games. The Sims came out nearly fifteen years ago. The genres are opening up, but it seems very weird to me to treat "gaming" like it belongs to FPS players. And yet--pretty sure most of these guys do play a fair variety of games. They have to have noticed there were girls around before now, right? They can't have literally ignored it right up until someone started complaining about the sheer quantity of prostitutes involved in sandbox games, right?
posted by Sequence at 12:52 AM on October 15, 2014 [3 favorites]

i'm sticking to that this is terrorizing women, not mere harassment. (and i'm not trivialising the latter either)

and seeing the shithead that started it all sit on twitter and write shit like this:

Tbh, I kind of have an established pattern of causing trouble for people in power who exploit the trust they've been granted. Not OK.

together with this makes me think he's utterly oblivious to the consequences of his actions.

it all makes me sick.
posted by xcasex at 1:03 AM on October 15, 2014 [3 favorites]

Keeping quiet is siding with the way things are

shirt please!

Heh, why the hell not. One t-shirt. Or the UK version I did for me.
posted by ArkhanJG at 1:06 AM on October 15, 2014

xcasex: "and seeing the shithead that started it all sit on twitter and write shit like this: "

Here's a thought exercise: a woman goes on 4chan and posts a link to a 200,000 word rant about a cheating ex, alleging various other malfeasance over and above simple adultery. What do you think the reaction would be? Go ahead and imagine.

There used to be a saying: "/b/ is not your personal army". I guess /v/ is Eron Gjorni's personal army.
posted by mhum at 1:19 AM on October 15, 2014 [4 favorites]

It's time for people who love playing video games to stand up against "gamers"

I started MefightClub 7 years ago with the stated principles that people who love games and gaming shouldn't have to put up with the sexism, homophobia, infantile rage, and all the other stuff that has been such a problem for so long in the pastime, and to try and create a place apart from it. Words to that effect have been on the front page of every MFC site (of which there are several at this point) since Day 1. There are more than 3000 of us today, and if you're not already part of our happy group of gaming friends, you are most welcome to join us.

But I don't think much is gained from standing up against 'gamers' because I don't think redefining a word in a narrower way than is customary to castigate a subgroup -- no matter how much that group may deserve it -- is going to be very helpful in the long run.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:23 AM on October 15, 2014 [23 favorites]

Here's a thought exercise(...)

I'm not sure we're on opposite ends of the proverbial fence here. i'm not siding with eron or the mob, i'm against.

if your argument is that a female could whip up an army like that i remember that a camgirl tried to get sympathy out of 4chan untold ages ago and was told to "stop being butthurt". and speaking of which, i know she follows my tumblr, time to remember a stagename.
posted by xcasex at 1:27 AM on October 15, 2014

Ultimately, this whole brouhaha plays on fears and anxieties of multiple groups, some (allowing people not to get fucking threatened) more pressing than others (having their status as hobbyists threatened). There are many tensions out there. If you look at the discussions now, Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, etc. are barely mentioned other than as some sort of bogeymen in the past. It's just pure screencap drama now accusing the other side of doxxing them, harassing them, all of the things they are accused of.

I don't think their camp is right. I think their camp is full of people being misled. The trolls are the high-level operators who are fucking up shit more and more. They're likely either committing actual false flag operations against the pro-GG side or sending propaganda to fuel the flames. The rank and file has been led to believe that this is solely a gamer identity movement, and that the other side are faking for attention and control the media and ARGH

Consensus reality broke with Bush v. Gore.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:32 AM on October 15, 2014

xcasex: "if your argument is that a female could whip up an army like that"

Sorry if I gave that impression (it's late here, I'm getting a bit sloppy in my writing). Quite the opposite, actually. I imagine the reaction would basically be "what a psycho bitch" (with a dollop of "t*** or gtfo" because it's 4chan). I was just trying to point out how crazy it is that 4chan would side with this guy, regardless of the video game angle. No one should be taking someone's manifesto as serious as this.
posted by mhum at 1:33 AM on October 15, 2014 [3 favorites]

Sorry if I gave that impression(...)

aaah then I understand what you meant, and I agree fully :)
posted by xcasex at 1:44 AM on October 15, 2014

They're likely either committing actual false flag operations against the pro-GG side or sending propaganda to fuel the flames.

The Brianna twitter hack seems at this stage very likely the former, which starts to make things really ridiculous. I guess there's a fair amount of suggestion that the target, who's been heavily involved since the beginning of the Zoe stuff, has a history of deception, but even if she(?) didn't do it herself then she would have been a logical choice for someone who wanted to heat things up again.

What gets me, though, is this is SO transparent. To be mislead by this--yes, sure, professional developers have this thing all the time where they tweet really offensive comments at GG luminaries, delete them shortly thereafter, and claim to be hacked to cover it up. I mean, not just "lost temper" but "wtf who would even call someone on the spectrum an aspie like it was a slur" and "wasn't this person complaining that Brianna was blocking her just a couple days ago, why would you unblock someone just to tell them to stop mentioning you". It doesn't hold water, not even a teaspoon.
posted by Sequence at 1:55 AM on October 15, 2014

Jesus, so much stupid, this is just a bottomless pit of turd-monsters. moot has apparently been brainwashed by a SJW girlfriend and is committing terrorism by being mean to Gaters.
posted by Jimbob at 2:39 AM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

committing terrorism by being mean to Gaters.

The utter lack of perspective on the part of the gaters is really the funny part of all of this- these are plainly folks who think Reddit and 4chan and videogames are a much, much larger, more important part of the world than they actually are.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:42 AM on October 15, 2014 [7 favorites]

On behalf of the Stargate fandom, I take offense at the co-opting of the term "Gaters".
posted by Mizu at 2:45 AM on October 15, 2014 [5 favorites]

Sorry I'm on a phone and sometimes get sick of typing more letters than nccsry.
posted by Jimbob at 2:46 AM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

It's okay, Jimbob. I for one completely agree that spending the time to type out "bottomless pit of turd-monsters" was more important, anyway. Is there some kind of script out there that will replace every avatar on every site of self-identified GamerGate assholes with an image of the transformed shit-monster brother from Weird Science?
posted by Mizu at 2:53 AM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Zoe finally got sick of the Fine Young Capitalists lying about her, which was heartening to see.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 3:08 AM on October 15, 2014 [10 favorites]

Is there some kind of script out there that will replace every avatar on every site of self-identified GamerGate assholes with an image of the transformed shit-monster brother from Weird Science?

It would be pretty easy; you'd just need to get a program to recognize pictures of Vivian James.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 4:10 AM on October 15, 2014

Something I'm still having a little trouble with is this idea that TFYC got doxxed. It's a corporation. How do you dox a corporation? Their information is generally a matter of public record, available for cheap or free, and I doubt that's any different in Toronto. So in reading that it starts to look like it's not even just that they're lying about her involvement, it's that there isn't actually a "they", just a "he", that I'd lay good money on him being the sole or at least majority owner of the corporation, and I'm pretty sure it's going to be the same contact information as is on the website of their contractor, because the address given isn't an office building in Toronto, it's an apartment building in Toronto. So, from what I'm reading--he, not they, probably registered the corporation to his home address, then didn't initially want to give any hint of how to contact the corporation because that was going to give away that it belonged to a man?

So apparently on top of corporations getting to act like people, we have a guy who wanted his particular corporation to be entirely anonymous and without any recourse for contact or designated agents. And after all that about it being about women making games--while the designer's a woman, notable that the company's owned by a man and the contractor's sole software engineer is a man. And yet, oh, very scandalized to have people find out information about the corporate location and governance, and still making out like if not Zoe, some woman has to pay for this.
posted by Sequence at 4:24 AM on October 15, 2014 [9 favorites]

The Brianna twitter hack seems at this stage very likely the former, which starts to make things really ridiculous. I guess there's a fair amount of suggestion that the target, who's been heavily involved since the beginning of the Zoe stuff, has a history of deception, but even if she(?) didn't do it herself then she would have been a logical choice for someone who wanted to heat things up again.

1) I'm not following. Is the suggestion here that Bri "doxxed herself"?
2) "She(?)"?
posted by dumbland at 4:27 AM on October 15, 2014

No, Brianna's twitter got hacked into and the hacker posted an inflammatory tweet directed at one of the GamerGate people. Who is allegedly a woman with autism, but since there's a history of them lying about that stuff, it's hard to know for sure. The identity of the hacker is unknown, but since the action was in line with a previously-expressed GG plan to make their opponents come off as ableist and specifically anti-autism, there's two possibilities: Either it was @The_Camera_Girl who did the hacking, since she was very quick to jump on exposing Brianna's alleged slurs and turn them into a new rallying point... or it was someone else who did it, possibly not even with @The_Camera_Girl's knowledge, which would mean that they see each other as fair game if it'll get people fired up again. No very good options, unfortunately.
posted by Sequence at 4:33 AM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ah, thanks. I was getting confused over who the involved parties were.
posted by dumbland at 4:35 AM on October 15, 2014

1999: gamers demand we stop blaming school shootings on videogames.

2014: gamers threaten a school shooting because videogames.
posted by zombieflanders at 4:52 AM on October 15, 2014 [51 favorites]

Incidentally, someone on NeoGaf put together a list of the various claims and "accomplisments" of GG. It is worth a quick view I'd you wonder id there is ant kernel of truth to the many accusations and supposed evidence they have gathered. (No.)
posted by blahblahblah at 6:11 AM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

I guess my thesis is that things are very confused and that there very well may be genuine people within #GamerGate who are genuinely condemning the misogynist actions.

I guess my reaction to this basically boils down to "I don't care."

Anyone who is paying any attention at all knows what's happening to women because of this "movement." I am not a gamer, I have not been making a particular effort to follow this story, but I know what's happening because coverage of this story is EVERYWHERE. If there are people associating themselves with "GamerGate" who honestly have no idea that so much harm and awfulness has sprung from it, those people are willfully ignorant and I'm not interested in their opinions.

I don't care about hypothetical lost lambs within "GamerGate."

I care about actual people -- mostly women -- who are getting buried under an avalanche of internet awfulness.
posted by Narrative Priorities at 6:19 AM on October 15, 2014 [34 favorites]

Be sure to check the #StopGamerGate2014 tag that was trending last night. I... might have gotten a bit heated.
posted by Theta States at 6:21 AM on October 15, 2014 [9 favorites]

It's absurd that people are still coming into these threads and voicing serious concern about the poor people in this hateful movement that aren't misogynists, just confused dupes roped in by their ethical concerns. Who cares? There aren't any consequences to that. There apparently aren't even consequences for the people making threats. Really, why should we care? Because they might feel bad when they realize they were wrong? Because they might be criticized for joining up with what is understood to be a hate group lobbing threats at every high-profile woman they encounter? Because if we don't join up with them now, we're missing our one lone chance to ever address corruption and ethics in this industry? What horrible thing is going to happen if I judge people based on the hate group they self-identify as a member of?
posted by almostmanda at 6:39 AM on October 15, 2014 [24 favorites]

the #StopGamerGate2014 shows how silly the "but what about the moderates???" position is - it was filled will people saying, basically, i want to go home, i want my friends to stop being harassed, i want us to stop losing good developers because the medium is so poisoned right now, etc. and the gamerghazi responding with, look! here are the actual hate group - they are silencing us!1!11!1 it's straight up nonsensical. they keep calling zoe, leah, anita, et al "professional victims" but from where i'm standing the people seeing fear and victimization in every action are the gamegate fools.

i really have to start saving screencaps - but yesterday i saw one that was from one of these supposed moderates "blah blah blah journalism blah blah blah against harassment" and then a few minutes later something like, "shut up you stupid cunt bitch whore." just because you think someone sounds reasonable in a pull quote doesn't mean it's the entirety of what they espouse.

when pax was about to happen and word was going around that there would be a group of people handing out "5 guys" flyers including links to zoe's nudes, and people got pax security involved, my mentions were filled with guys saying, "are you looking for another ferguson?? huh?? because that's what you're encouraging." around the same time i got flooded with egg/anime/vivian avatar dudes telling me that i was a rape apologist and a rapist by extension because zoe was a rapist for supposedly lying to her partner. these guys have zero perspective and want to be the victims so badly.

if you read one thing that seemed balanced and now you're going cherry picking to find other balanced things, be aware that at some point you might be hit full force with the fact that the balance you are seeing is a smoke screen. it's a costume they're putting on to fool you. could they have fooled others - sure - but in my experience most of the (mostly) dudes who claim to have been duped have screeds like this one up thread which makes it pretty obvious that it's about girls and sex and ruining games, not about journalistic ethics (which is further bolstered by the fact that despite all of there very long and boring youtube videos and badly mocked up imgur links filled with red lines, basically everything they point to is a non-story which falls under the barest hint of scrutiny). there is no there there and i'm sorry you've been taken for a ride, but maybe you can stop filling up the thread with your half baked under researched theories about who the real victims are.
posted by nadawi at 6:49 AM on October 15, 2014 [37 favorites]

Also...FUCK! I hate this entire situation.

I just came in here and wrote, "I am not a gamer," because I in no way identify with a larger gaming culture and have never been a meaningful part of a gaming community. But if "gamer" actually meant "a person who plays games and takes them at least semi-seriously," then YES. YES I AM ABSOLUTELY A GAMER!

I have very strong opinions about Mass Effect. I just finished an extension to the transcontinental rail line on my Minecraft server that connects the walled mesa village I built to everyone's in-game projects, including the four other ridiculous houses and compounds I'd built previously. I'm better-than-average at Threes and probably complete at least four or five games on most days. I recently completed my first time through the two Portal games. I've played Gone Home and Borderlands and Halo and got all the way to the end of Candy Box 2. I've been trying to find the time to figure out Kerbal Space Program. Dammit, I REALLY LIKE GAMES A LOT! I play them as often as I have time for!

But I would NEVER identify as a gamer.

That is FUCKED UP.

I mean, this isn't news at all. Thousands -- Millions! -- of people are in the exact same situation. It just didn't occur to me until literally this morning that I'M one of the people who've been edged out and alienated by this kind of stupid bullshit.
posted by Narrative Priorities at 6:51 AM on October 15, 2014 [27 favorites]

Narrative Priorities, I wrote Games Belong to Me a couple of weeks ago as an expression of *that very thing.* Fuck those guys, they don't control the definition of who a gamer is and what a gamer stands for.
posted by Andrhia at 7:07 AM on October 15, 2014 [25 favorites]

Andrhia- beautifully written, thanks for sharing.
posted by blahblahblah at 7:17 AM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Incidentally: if you want to read a story about girls and women playing games that isn't also about their being treated horribly by jerks, In Real Life -- a collaboration between Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang, who did a fantastic adaptation of his short story -- just came out this week.
posted by Narrative Priorities at 7:21 AM on October 15, 2014

Narrative Priorities: "I just came in here and wrote, "I am not a gamer," because I in no way identify with a larger gaming culture and have never been a meaningful part of a gaming community. But if "gamer" actually meant "a person who plays games and takes them at least semi-seriously," then YES. YES I AM ABSOLUTELY A GAMER!

[...]

But I would NEVER identify as a gamer."

I think that this is the ultimate gist of Leigh Alexander's article. The delicious irony is that the people who were most infuriated by it are the ones most responsible for tainting the term. So, congratulations Gamergaters: "gamers" are over and it's all your own fault.
posted by mhum at 8:49 AM on October 15, 2014 [8 favorites]

I've been gaming since "Asteroids" was a thing, and right now I am so disgusted and angry that I want nothing to do with gamers and gamer culture.

In fact I'm so angry right now I'm ready to say "Yeah, the internet was a nice idea, but it failed. Time to burn it down to ashes, and start over." And it's just Wednesday.
posted by happyroach at 8:54 AM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

This comic is a pretty good metaphor!
posted by valrus at 8:57 AM on October 15, 2014 [13 favorites]

I'd say less Gamer Culture, more "Specific Game Culture", maybe, but then you get into the whole knobby mess of different people playing the same games for very different reasons.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:16 AM on October 15, 2014

Gamer vs. Gamist is how I'm starting to think about all this. Sure I spent this morning playing Chrono Trigger and Kingdom of Loathing, but it's not a part of my personal identity.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 9:19 AM on October 15, 2014

> [...] the cultural conditions that we have inherited from thousands of years of patriarchy mean that the social costs of being cruel to women are many orders of magnitude less than the costs of doing it to men.

> [...] what we can do, as individuals, is to incrementally increase the social cost of sexism by calling it out, every time.

Thank you. This is a concept I've been trying to articulate for ages but haven't had the appropriate language, and currency is definitely ubiquitous enough to make a good analogy. Permission to think aloud about this framing?

It costs more to be a woman (than a man), and it costs less to do harm to a woman (than a man) in many societies. That's fairly obvious and not exclusive to gender, although it will probably never be obvious enough for some people. But the idea of 'social cost' is useful framing to explain what the everyday person can do help in situations like this. People often say "vote with your dollar," but that's only effective when the aggrieving party sees the profit margin as the bottom line, and the aggrieved has dollars to spare in the first place.

But a social cost? Everyone is—at most—one Person, no matter how rich or poor you are. And social connections may be the most important leverage one has against the GameGaters*, whether you believe them to be a spontaneous Revenge of the Nerds or a more calculated instance of terrorism driven by a few sociopaths. Engaging in this kind of extremely inconsiderate, inhumane behavior should cost your social life. So, if you believe someone has already clearly and implicitly devalued their own humanity, why not show them explicitly? I'm not saying hand out Scarlet Letters—that way lies McCarthyism and ruin. But don't hesitate to let someone know when they do something that you immediately lose respect for them over. Especially if you're a man, because it should apparently cost less for you to do so.

Mind, this wouldn't address the most rotten apples in the bunch more than it would provide everyone with a clearer distinction between good and bad apples (and prevent more apples from spoiling). In a perfect world, it would be the legal or authority figures who say "You want to ruin an innocent person's career? Fine. I hope you don't plan on keeping one yourself." But as people have already pointed out, the GameGaters aren't the only misogynists in the world, and society's structural stopgaps aren't always on the right side of history.

Typing that out reminds me of something Julian Assange said about fiscalized versus politicized entities. That fiscalized entities address controversy when they've lost a significant amount of revenue (e.g., when Paula Deen suddenly becomes unprejudiced after losing her advertisers), where politicized entities address controversy when they've lost a significant amount of 'face' in the eyes of society (for lack of a better example, Japan's decreasing reluctance to admit how bad Fukushima Daiichi was/is). I guess what I'm theorizing here is that—in light of that new Krampus bullshit fever dream—GameGaters are fighting a losing battle against a combination of fiscalized and politicized entities while they themselves are a very small politicized entity that could be so easily dismantled if the right person gave enough of a damn.

*I'm partial to calling them GameGaters or some derivation, because they are absolutely deluded into trying to act as gatekeepers to the gaming community. That, and I refuse to associate them with "GG," one of the first and only shorthands for good sportsmanship that exists in competitive video games.
posted by Johann Georg Faust at 9:20 AM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

The delicious irony is that the people who were most infuriated by it are the ones most responsible for tainting the term.

There were GGers speculating that the SJWs were going to introduce and popularise a new "PC" term to replace gamer, which was of course an utterly ridiculous thing to think... before months upon months of misogynist harrassment and death threats in the name of gamers destroyed the term utterly for anyone who doesn't think phoning universities and promising shooting massacres is a cool way to behave.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 9:26 AM on October 15, 2014 [7 favorites]

Sure I spent this morning playing Chrono Trigger and Kingdom of Loathing, but it's not a part of my personal identity.

team Felonia 4 lyfe!
posted by winna at 10:02 AM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

A bit of a blurb in the Times: Anita Sarkeesian, Video Game Critic, Cancels Speech After Threats of Massacre
posted by Going To Maine at 10:11 AM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Gaming very much is a part of my personal identity. More so than gender is.

I'm not letting mysoginistic, terrorist assholes speak for me or make me ashamed of that.
posted by Foosnark at 10:14 AM on October 15, 2014

This is a weird sentence in the article Going To Maine just cited (emphasis mine):

Some opponents of the women have rallied around the Twitter hashtag #GamerGate, though it isn’t clear how many of them are involved in or support the more extreme threats against the women.

That sentence implies that those who "have rallied around the Twitter hashtag #GamerGate" support most of the threats against the women. It would seem that threats of rape, assault, doxxing, etc. are so par for the course by now that it's a given #GamerGate supports them.
posted by Gelatin at 10:17 AM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

That would be the "balance", I think. Which is technically true given #Gamergate's apparently entire amorphous nature: referring to them as "rall[ying] around the Twitter hashtag #GamerGate" emphasis the amorphous nature of the mob. Of course, it's also sort of unhelpful. Perhaps, in the case of affiliation with a hashag, we should agree that the intent of the tag is less important than the effects.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:25 AM on October 15, 2014

Ugh, I just went over to knowyourmeme to look up the origin of #notyourshield and their entire entry on #Gamergate is in GG POV.
posted by murphy slaw at 10:36 AM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

Knowyourmeme has been rather toxic about GG. I'm avoiding the site these days.
posted by sukeban at 10:37 AM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

i really have to start saving screencaps - but yesterday i saw one that was from one of these supposed moderates "blah blah blah journalism blah blah blah against harassment" and then a few minutes later something like, "shut up you stupid cunt bitch whore." just because you think someone sounds reasonable in a pull quote doesn't mean it's the entirety of what they espouse.

This one?
posted by Lexica at 10:42 AM on October 15, 2014 [10 favorites]

On a more positive note, I saw this post going around which is a former GamerGater saying he came to see that GamerGate is "a hate movement" so it is possible.
posted by RobotHero at 11:07 AM on October 15, 2014

The arcade games of yore referred to you as a Player* -- might be time to resurrect the term.


* not to be confused with a Playa**
** not to be confused with a Spanish Beach.

posted by Celsius1414 at 11:07 AM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

but i wish to be confused with a spanish beach
posted by murphy slaw at 11:09 AM on October 15, 2014 [12 favorites]

Between the length of this thread and the mutitude of quality links throughout it, I certainly haven't caught everything, so my apologies if this has come up, but one (nice?) thing to remember is that anonymity serves a number of purposes for hate groups, whether it's online or behind hoods, and one of those is inflating the appearance of their numbers.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:13 AM on October 15, 2014 [8 favorites]

one of those is inflating the appearance of their numbers.

Now I'm thinking msscribe.

As for Anita's cancellation:

Muslim terrorists supposedly able to hide explosives in shoes and toiletries? Tighten up airport security worldwide and make it super strict for incoming flights to US.

Anita Sarkeesian cancels talk at Utah State University because Utah state laws prohibit restrictions on carrying weapons, making her extra vulnerable to a planned shooting threat? RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS! NO GUN CONTROL!

America, I really don’t understand you sometimes.
posted by divabat at 11:50 AM on October 15, 2014 [12 favorites]

Anita Sarkeesian cancels talk at Utah State University because Utah state laws prohibit restrictions on carrying weapons, making her extra vulnerable to a planned shooting threat? RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS! NO GUN CONTROL!

To be fair, they have the same response to every actual shooting which kills people.


Ebola, though? OMG OBAMA IS TRYING TO KILL US ALL #BENGHAZI
posted by Foosnark at 12:21 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

ellaguro: Embracing the New Flesh

getting past the role of media to help you feel better about yourself, and understanding that a piece of media is much more effective when looked at with an intensely critical eye, is tremendously painful to do. we see our natural state as one without ideology, and thus stuff that upends our natural state is seen as ideological. misogynistic gamers see feminism or LGBT rights as an ideology being enforced on them, rather than a critique of an ideology they implicitly, unthinkingly accept as valid.

[spoilers for Videodrome, I think]
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 12:45 PM on October 15, 2014 [4 favorites]

Shelby Knox: I'm a feminist speaker & had a gun pulled on me at an event in my home state of TX, a concealed carry state. @femfreq did the right thing.

Just another "good guy with a gun" amirite?
posted by zombieflanders at 12:46 PM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

Also, I didn't know that Zoe Quinn wrote the ending to ME3, then slept with a bunch of reviewers, then wrote an even worse ending, and also made it possible to play a female Shepard which makes me confused in my trousers-area...

You know, it sounds like a joke, _but_...

Who can forget 2012, and Jennifer Hepler? A writer on Dragon Age: Origins, with no involvement in Mass Effect 3, whom a group of idiots decided was all that was wrong with BioWare, and by extension video games, because a) she scripted same-sex romance options and b) in an interview none of them had given some five years previously, she had said that having the option of skipping combat would make RPGs more attractive to diverse audiences.

Cue a sustained campaign of abuse, threats and general harassment, which included credulous manbabies uncritically accepting forged quotes from Hepler in which she boasted of forcing the animation team on Mass Effect 3 to take time away from combat animations to animate male-male sex scenes. Because obviously this is the kind of call a writer on a different game entirely gets to make.

Unlike Quinn, Hepler had the resources of a big studio behind her, which was immediately supportive; she left video games some time later, but not as a direct result of the harassment. However, a lot of the features are very directly comparable, including the suggestion that this was a group of people used to being catered to reacting with hostility to the presence of a woman writer, and male-male romance options, in "their" video games. More here.

So, while people tend to think of the attack on the ending of Mass Effect 3 as a thing in itself, it's worth noting that BioWare had attracted considerable animus from, for want of a better term, the proto-Gater contingent in the run-up to the game's release.
posted by running order squabble fest at 12:48 PM on October 15, 2014 [27 favorites]

misogynistic gamers see feminism or LGBT rights as an ideology being enforced on them, rather than a critique of an ideology they implicitly, unthinkingly accept as valid.

So, exactly the same as every other bigot? Hobby Lobby claimed health coverage for women was "an ideology being enforced on them." Conservative Christians claim gay marriage is "an ideology being forced on them."
posted by Foosnark at 12:52 PM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

So, exactly the same as every other bigot?

Yes. Exactly the same as every other bigot. And as EmpressCallipygos said way upthread, the whole "journalism ethics" thing is their version of "states' rights," or "Benghazi" or "where's the birth certificate?"
posted by Navelgazer at 1:00 PM on October 15, 2014 [14 favorites]

Did someone mention Julian Assange, because as usual he's picked the wrong side.
posted by Jimbob at 1:07 PM on October 15, 2014 [3 favorites]

I'd like to see the Venn diagram for #GamersGate participants who cry foul on 'journalistic integrity' and video game enthusiasts who said 'man Nintendo Power was a great magazine,' and were sad when it was shuttered.

Nintendo Power was great in its own way (those centerpieces!) but if you want to talk about the troubling history of video games and the way they're covered in the press, NP is a great place to start.
posted by Tevin at 1:09 PM on October 15, 2014 [3 favorites]

#GamerGate is an attack on ethical journalism, Amanda Marcotte, The Raw Story, 15 October 2014

arrative that is starting to take hold that is really beginning to bug me. That narrative, which is a classic example of someone assuming that the “middle ground” is always the most reasonable, goes something like this: “Yes, #GamerGate is a deplorable and misogynist harassment campaign, but there’s some poor, well-meaning fools that really did get involved because they have concerns about ethics in journalism.”

Ah, horseshit. Anyone who legitimately cares about ethics in journalism would react to #GamerGate by screaming in horror and hanging garlic from the doors.

posted by ob1quixote at 1:10 PM on October 15, 2014 [23 favorites]

Did someone mention Julian Assange, because as usual he's picked the wrong side.

Actually that looks more like "Julian Assange pounced on an excuse to find a potential new audience for his crusade".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:18 PM on October 15, 2014 [10 favorites]

That Amanda Marcotte article strikes pretty hard at the whole idea of a "moderate" Gamergater. What "corruption" are these so-called moderate Gamergaters specifically railing against? When I spent a little while going through Twitter trying to find out, most of what I could find was super vague stuff like this (what "actions"? what "proof"?). However, people were occasionally slightly more explicit about their grievances, tweeting things like "Gaming journalism is disgusting, they use serious subjects like racism and sexism as tools to further their bullshit." or "Corruption is just how they've been pushing their awful politics into gaming."

I think when these people are talking about corruption in games journalism, they're not talking about what normal people would think that means, e.g.: payola, withholding previews from unfriendly reviewers, etc... They're talking about how the purity of their little world is being corrupted by the outside forces of feminism, etc...

If anyone has any examples of people with concrete grievances about corruption in journalism (in the conventionally understood sense), I would very much like to see those and how they fit into the larger Gamergate universe.
posted by mhum at 1:47 PM on October 15, 2014 [5 favorites]

Tevin: Nintendo Power was great in its own way (those centerpieces!) but if you want to talk about the troubling history of video games and the way they're covered in the press, NP is a great place to start.

Now we've got Game Informer, the third-largest magazine in the U.S., owned and published by the game store GameStop. But virtually nothing from GamerGate about that.
posted by Woodroar at 1:53 PM on October 15, 2014 [8 favorites]

Actually that looks more like "Julian Assange pounced on an excuse to find a potential new audience for his crusade".

sure, but there's a reason he went to gameghazi instead of the feminists, no? he assumed they would align with him. there's a reason for that.
posted by nadawi at 2:09 PM on October 15, 2014 [10 favorites]

Speaking of Nintendo, the latest plan is to get Nintendo to boycott publications that criticize Bayonetta 2 for being objectifying.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 2:27 PM on October 15, 2014

/KrabappelLaugh

Hopefully Nintendo of America tells them exactly where to go. Even if it weren't simply the right thing to do, the idea that these pieces of shit represent a greater percentage of the Nintendo demographic than women do is laughable.
posted by Navelgazer at 2:31 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Also, note the interest in "journalistic integrity" when trying to get a company to disavow any critical media.
posted by Navelgazer at 2:32 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

> I think when these people are talking about corruption in games journalism, they're not talking about what normal people would think that means, e.g.: payola, withholding previews from unfriendly reviewers, etc... They're talking about how the purity of their little world is being corrupted by the outside forces of feminism, etc...

this is super correct
posted by postcommunism at 2:36 PM on October 15, 2014 [4 favorites]

[Anita Sarkeesian's cancellation] prompted the the nation's top trade group for video game companies to speak out Wednesday. “Threats of violence and harassment are wrong," said a spokesman for the Entertainment Software Association in a statement. "They have to stop. There is no place in the video game community—or our society—for personal attacks and threats.”

- The Washington Post, though I can't seem to find a direct source for the statement.
posted by divabat at 2:38 PM on October 15, 2014

The New York Times wants to hear from people who have been affected by sexism in the gaming industry.
posted by divabat at 2:40 PM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

Well, I feel that leaves out the part of the story where if that were true, then they know what they are doing by willfully misusing the word corruption.

I can tell you I love conservatism if I by conservatism I mean liberalism but then that makes the whole choice of words irrelevant. They know what they are talking about. We know what they are talking about. They can call it "unicorn rainbows" and it is still a defense of misogyny.
posted by Tarumba at 2:42 PM on October 15, 2014

The newest Gameinformer actually has an interview with Anita in it, but dosn't seem to be on their website.
posted by saffry at 2:45 PM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

Once again, I regret introducing Julian Assange into a conversation, but I had to accurately credit where I first heard the fiscal/political thing. For the record, I doubt he personally sends the tweets from the WikiLeaks account, but he would probably approve of the attention-whoring.

They probably targeted GameGaters rather than Everyone Else because the GameGater operation is the most transparent thing ever, and "leaking" about their corruption equates to doxxing a handful of people. It may be a waste to try to get some of them to refocus that relentless investigative rage, but not as wasteful as any real expectations of whistleblowers and bombshells within the GameGaters.

WikiLeaks has a habit of pointing any existing weapons and momentum against its opponents, but considering their track record with the whole Chelsea Manning thing, it would have surprised me if they were endorsing further attacks on these women rather than legitimate attacks on Big Bad Organizations.

But bringing up the controversy of GamerGate out of the blue without doing anything except shaming GamerGate out of existence does seem indefensible for PR at this point.
posted by Johann Georg Faust at 3:02 PM on October 15, 2014

assange's track record with women is far broader than chelsea manning and seems on topic if we're actually going to discuss this (i vote for no).
posted by nadawi at 3:07 PM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

I agree. I just didn't want to mistakenly take credit for an idea or make it seem like some kind of well-established theory.
posted by Johann Georg Faust at 3:09 PM on October 15, 2014

For the record, I doubt he personally sends the tweets from the WikiLeaks account, but he would probably approve of the attention-whoring.

I think the Assange derail should probably come to an end too - I think he was just attempting to jump on a bandwagon he's been grossly ill-informed about - I'll just say it's pretty well established it is him personally tweeting from that account, at least most of the time. There isn't much left of Wikileaks apart from him to do it, for a start, and if you go through the feed there are plenty of conversations with Applebaum, Greenwald etc. which are written in a personal conversational style.
posted by Jimbob at 3:18 PM on October 15, 2014

I should clarify that I don't necessarily think Game Informer is a terrible magazine or overly biased considering their ownership, or that they deserve this abuse more than anyone. I just think it goes to show that GamerGate only cares about easy targets, especially those they disagree with ideologically.
posted by Woodroar at 3:32 PM on October 15, 2014

> Well, I feel that leaves out the part of the story where if that were true, then they know what they are doing by willfully misusing the word corruption.

I don't think it's willful misuse, in a lot of cases. But I do think that that's what's actually being said.

Sympathetic take:

Person sees videogaming as a misunderstood culture from which they draw innocent pleasure, camaraderie, and community -- even major aspects of their identity. Person then starts to hear other people talking about how gaming portrays women and/minorities/men-who-might-not-be-sympathetic-to-them, or even sees those people making games of their own which do not fall in line with what Person sees as the values of their culture. To Person, this is wedging outside influence and values into their culture ("politics"). It warps and endangers their culture.

Because these other people are, well, others, they must be an outside influence, a cabal pushing its way into Person's unsullied space and threatening Person's identity. After all, gaming is Person's in-group: if these people were legit, they would threaten the fact of the in-group itself. Hidden agendas, insincerity, and secret influence must be involved for them to get this far.

So Person takes a stand for videogames and strikes back at these others, pointing out how they are bad and wrong and have only gotten as far as they have because of shadowy backchannels and plots.

"Corruption" is the fear, becomes the explanation, becomes the accusation.

So I don't think they're willfully misusing the term, but that dynamic is why people say #GG is not actually about corruption or journalistic integrity; the folks under the hashtag started out with ingroup policing and harassment of others, and every step they've taken since has been to either expand on or legitimize that aim.
posted by postcommunism at 3:37 PM on October 15, 2014 [5 favorites]

Because these other people are, well, others, they must be an outside influence, a cabal pushing its way into Person's unsullied space and threatening Person's identity.

How completely lacking in basic logical capacity, self-awareness and general understanding of how analogous subcultures work, do you have to be, to believe this, though? It's as if a bunch of blockbuster action movie fans started getting agitated and threatening violence against people because romantic comedies also exist.
posted by Jimbob at 3:41 PM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

Sorry. One more post about WikiLeaks now that I've been disillusioned about their weird third-person grammar use on Twitter. It is kind of on topic, even if it doesn't merit further discussion or a derail.

Here's the full conversation regarding Assange/WikiLeaks' GamerGate position. In a nutshell, Appelbaum challenges Assange to take a public position on misogyny, and he punts the request so, so, so far away.
posted by Johann Georg Faust at 3:44 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

I continue to be amazed at the Gaters' inability to understand how cultural criticism works. You would think that, with the sheer volume of criticism that can be found on thousands of media-centric websites, they could grasp that critiquing something isn't a prelude to banning something. But they are utterly convinced that any commentary on games that goes beyond "killer graphics, d00d!" is an insidious attempt to ban the forthcoming Call of Duty 47 or whatever the fuck the bros are playing these days.

I'm not expecting that everyone take a class in deconstructionism, but don't these yokels ever glance at a movie or book review? Their cluelessness and utter lack of sophistication would be amusing if not for their toxic misogynist tendencies.
posted by wintermute2_0 at 3:51 PM on October 15, 2014 [5 favorites]

Sigh, I'd pushed the Hepler thing out of my mind. She was, IMO, one of Bioware's best writers and was totally right about a skip combat option, which would've vastly improved DA2 and the industry would be vastly improved by a few dozen more of her.

The harassment campaigns, threats and terrorism really takes the fun out of pointing and laughing at the douchebros who are mad about Anders making a pass at their characters, too.
posted by NoraReed at 3:56 PM on October 15, 2014 [5 favorites]

"Corruption" is the fear, becomes the explanation, becomes the accusation.


"Purity of Spirit" is a big preoccupation for a lot of fascist movements.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 4:03 PM on October 15, 2014 [4 favorites]

How completely lacking in basic logical capacity, self-awareness and general understanding of how analogous subcultures work, do you have to be, to believe this, though?

Dude, have you met some people?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:21 PM on October 15, 2014 [8 favorites]

I think a lot of the usual and less-usual attention whores are going to be jumping on this just to make waves--I think that's honestly why the Fine Young Capitalists thing is still going, because the guy is putting his bets down on the side of hoping that if he keeps the GG people in his pocket, that if/when they finally release a game or do another round of crowdfunding, that the GG people will turn out keep using TFYC as their evidence they're totally not really misogynist. Wikileaks takes donations, too. I bet until this dies down there'll be a lot of internet libertarian types, less-ethical indie developers, people who think they'd love personally to be games journalists because it must be so easy, etc, all trying to take advantage of this to wring whatever dollars out they can. It's like those places that get Fox News style Republicans to invest in gold and seed banks.
posted by Sequence at 4:34 PM on October 15, 2014

I'm not suprised by Assange in the slightest.
posted by Artw at 4:40 PM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm really not calling anybody out, and I can barely believe I'm saying this at all, but seeing phrases like "attention whores" bandied about here, on this subject, is really jarring.
posted by Navelgazer at 4:43 PM on October 15, 2014 [14 favorites]

No, you're absolutely right. Use certain words basically your whole adult life and it's easy to forget the implications; I should have phrased it differently.
posted by Sequence at 4:55 PM on October 15, 2014 [11 favorites]

Interview on Huffington Post with some female members of #GamerGate - so is this a replay of Women Against Feminism? (previously)
posted by Apocryphon at 4:58 PM on October 15, 2014

A #StopGamerGate2014 hashtag was started last night and is now trending across the US. (article at Kotaku)
posted by argonauta at 4:59 PM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

mhum: I think when these people are talking about corruption in games journalism, they're not talking about what normal people would think that means, e.g.: payola, withholding previews from unfriendly reviewers, etc... They're talking about how the purity of their little world is being corrupted by the outside forces of feminism, etc...

I haven't been super closely following this, but weren't they at least selling it as the "normal people" stuff though, even if that isn't what they meant?
posted by emptythought at 5:01 PM on October 15, 2014

Apocryphon: Is that the same Huffpo panel that nearly tricked Zoe Quinn into participating?
posted by divabat at 5:03 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

I haven't been super closely following this, but weren't they at least selling it as the "normal people" stuff though, even if that isn't what they meant?

Oh they have been vaguely trying, but that assumes "normal people" give a shit about something as obscure and irrelevant to humanity as "ethics in games journalism", which is about as much of an issue to most people as "ethics in gardening journalism" or "ethics in scratching my balls".
posted by Jimbob at 5:06 PM on October 15, 2014 [6 favorites]

Having finally seen what the "legitimate" GG issues are... these are stupid issues. Even if Zoe Quinn is the corruptest game designer ever... who cares? And these people clearly don't understand cultural criticism with their bizarre compulsion to rebut every singe thing Sarkeesian says. It's totally blown way out of proportion to any actual problem that might exist.

Which pretty much just leaves the crazy hate.
posted by GuyZero at 5:13 PM on October 15, 2014

There seems to be a bit of an upsurge in media coverage lately painting GamerGate as being motivated in whole or in part as concerned about AAA games coverage - no evidence whatsoever of GamerGate themselves being interested in them. I think it's well meaning but naive journalists stretching for a way to be "balanced".
posted by Artw at 5:14 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

In Assange's defense he's staying at the Embassy Suites not a Holiday Inn Express.
posted by humanfont at 5:31 PM on October 15, 2014

emptythought: "I haven't been super closely following this, but weren't they at least selling it as the "normal people" stuff though, even if that isn't what they meant?"

Mostly they talk about "ethics" and "corruption" in the abstract, leaving the listener who doesn't dig any deeper to (incorrectly) infer good faith on their part. Who wouldn't be for ethics and against corruption? Moreover, trade press of all kinds (and videogame press is no exception) are well-known to have lots of conflicts of interests and such, so it's not as if they're railing against the Illuminati or lizard people or something.

But, when I tried to figure out what concrete incidents they're reacting to, I didn't get anything close to "normal people" stuff. As far as I can tell in my Googling and Twitter trawling, it seems like the main, specific things they're actually upset about are:

1. The totally discredited Zoe Quinn/Nathan Grayson sex bribery incident that melted away faster than a snowflake on a hot stove (but yet is somehow sort of still a live topic? not sure?)
2. The Leigh Alexander article for hurting their feelings
3. Anita Sarkeesian for daring to criticize their beloved vidya games from a feminist viewpoint

Again, if anyone can fill out more of their list of grievances with actual stuff, I'm listening.
posted by mhum at 5:31 PM on October 15, 2014 [12 favorites]

I don't know if this is a derail but are there any game journalists who are unassailably "good", respected by Feminist Frequency, Gamer Gate proponents, and the Medill school of Journalism?*

All I know of games journalism is reviews, tech news, business/industry news, and creator interviews, with various levels of depth, fandom and commentary, but nothing particularly hard hitting. Occasionally I'll see more sociological studies on games and gaming but usually from personal or academic places, rarely from a place of old/traditional journalism.

*I do not put these 3 entities on equal footing and I'm not asking about "both sides of the story". Just curious about what the pinnacle of games journalism might be.
posted by elr at 5:32 PM on October 15, 2014

A guy on Twitter offered a polite discussion on GG. I took him up on it.

The dude was very polite but he seems to have the function of criticism confused with mere consumer reporting.
posted by murphy slaw at 5:33 PM on October 15, 2014 [7 favorites]

Apocryphon: Is that the same Huffpo panel that nearly tricked Zoe Quinn into participating?


No - that panel ended up being Brianna Wu, Erik Kain and Frederik Brennan, the founder of 8chan. It's the first link on that page.

(Which was a fascinating example of Gater perception in itself: there was delight and YouTube celebrations over Brennan telling Wu that "8chan wasn't all about her" as a final word. In fact, the host felt he had to apologise to Wu for having to end that segment on such a cheap shot.)

While that was going on, the chat was spammed with GGers complaining that there were no pro-Gamergate women in the discussion, which made it look more like a boys' club. So, HuffPo followed up with that "women of Gamergate" panel.

Which... blimey.
posted by running order squabble fest at 5:48 PM on October 15, 2014

But, when I tried to figure out what concrete incidents they're reacting to, I didn't get anything close to "normal people" stuff. As far as I can tell in my Googling and Twitter trawling, it seems like the main, specific things they're actually upset about are:

The totally discredited Zoe Quinn/Nathan Grayson sex bribery incident that melted away faster than a snowflake on a hot stove (but yet is somehow sort of still a live topic? not sure?)
The Leigh Alexander article for hurting their feelings
Anita Sarkeesian for daring to criticize their beloved vidya games from a feminist viewpoint

Video game reporting sites are pretty darn assailable; see the aforementioned Deadspin recap and John Walker's blog post. I've seen at least one or two GG sites mentioning the Kane & Lynch blow-up a few years ago, so it's not as if the examples of payola can't be pointed out. Still, you could browse the r/KotakuInAction thread about the upcoming Blizzard boycott to see if they outline any more precise outrages.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:49 PM on October 15, 2014

murphy slaw: "A guy on Twitter offered a polite discussion on GG. I took him up on it.

The dude was very polite but he seems to have the function of criticism confused with mere consumer reporting."

That's an excellent example of what I mean when I say that Gamergaters' notions of corruption are different than what I think is commonly understood:

• What I worry is that some reviewers might try to hurt sales by letting poltical bias seep into other parts of the review.
• I'm not worried about people saying "I think this is sexist so I give it 2 stars."
• I'm worried about people saying "This game is garbage, don't even give it a second glance 0 stars"

This is 110% "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" territory. This person appears to be espousing a concern that videogame reviewers could be (or are?) secretly torpedoing games in their reviews in order to further their ideological goals (feminism, probably; communism if you just finished Hofstadter).
posted by mhum at 5:54 PM on October 15, 2014 [19 favorites]

Going To Maine: "Video game reporting sites are pretty darn assailable; "

That's the thing. It's not as if there aren't plenty of valid concerns. It's just that it doesn't seem to me like that's what's really got GamerGaters all riled up, despite their protestations otherwise. I previously linked to a Kotaku article about the questionable Shadow of Mordor campaign which, according to TotalBiscuit -- who actually broke the story -- has nothing to do with journalistic ethics and thus also, I guess, with #GamerGate.

"Still, you could browse the r/KotakuInAction thread about the upcoming Blizzard boycott to see if they outline any more precise outrages."

Ok. I'll take a look and see what I can find.
posted by mhum at 6:06 PM on October 15, 2014

Man, looking at TotalBiscuit's Twitter feed, he seems to certainly be something of a leader to the leaderless here.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:35 PM on October 15, 2014

It sure is brave of him to decry the mainstream media to his followers, who will then be forced by their own extraordinarily ethical standards to get their gaming news only from unbiased youtubers.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 6:44 PM on October 15, 2014 [6 favorites]

The dude was very polite but he seems to have the function of criticism confused with mere consumer reporting.

Actually, this isn't surprising - there are a lot of people who equate free speech with "I say whatever I want and no one gets to have an opinion about what I say".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:02 PM on October 15, 2014 [7 favorites]

skwirl: In 1999, Susan Faludi followed her book Backlash with Stiffed....

... which was greeted with ferocious indignation by the men she was trying to help.
posted by lodurr at 7:13 PM on October 15, 2014

Ok, so I took a look into the Blizzard boycott thread on r/KotakuInAction. The background story appears to be that those guys are trying to organize a boycott of Blizzard and their upcoming World of Warcraft expansion because Blizzard is advertising on Kotaku and they consider Kotaku to be anti-GamerGate (probably a fair assessment). In that thread, some people are posting the letters they're sending to Blizzard to let them know why they're boycotting. Here are a few snippets of what I found:

• By now I'm sure you're aware of the horrific smear campaign against gamers who are asking gaming journalists to hold themselves accountable for undisclosed conflicts of interest. Nathan Grayson plugging his friend's work, Robin Arnott chairing a competition that awarded his friend's game, Patricia Hernandez reviewing her room mate's game, and also her ex's game. Corrupt IGF judging [...] [link]
• This site [Kotaku] has been actively engaged in attempting to ruin the reputation of members of the gaming public while also attempting to belittle them, their hobby, and their identity. [link]
• Im not going the Boycott angle (I'm playing WoW still) but I will try to make the logical argument that those websites insulted me, thus I will not visit those websites [...] [link]
• There is one problem, though, and that's the gamergate issue. I didn't initially follow it, because it felt like people were being unrealistic about their goals- journalistic integrity is hard enough with actual journalists [...] And then I was insulted, and called a basement dwelling loser [...] [link]
• Which is why I am greatly troubled to see Blizzard advertising on controversial gaming news sites like Kotaku, who consider long-time gamers such as myself to be “dead” [...] Seeing writers like Patricia Hernandez violate journalistic integrity by promoting games developed by the person she’s living with while failing to disclose this information to her readers, [...] To see major sites like this denigrate something that has been a huge part of my life, both as a civilian, a Marine, and a veteran and denigrate me personally for the simple act of playing video games is terribly disheartening. [link]
• It has come to my attention that you are advertising on Kotaku. This site has been involves [sic] in publishing slanderous articles, as well as having allegedly corrupt writers. [link]
• The idea that GamerGate is about sexism and harassment is a lie and a deflection. [...] I am absolutely furious that this important issue is being used to deflect a real consumer movement and silence an entire group. [link]

Ok. So what did I learn from this? Well, while most of the complaint letters are primarily about how the writer feels personally insulted and attacked by Kotaku, I now have three more concrete complaints about alleged corruption:

Patricia Hernandez, writer for Kotaku, was housemates with game developer Anna Anthropy in the summer of 2012. She subsequently posted four articles about Anthropy's projects: Dec. 2012, Jan. 2013, Apr. 2013, and Oct. 2013. All of these appear to be free games except for the third which is a $2 digital choose-your-own-adventure book; although, I guess for this kind of thing, perhaps publicity and visibility are the true currency? The first article is a playthrough that makes the game seem fun. The second carries the phrase "worth a play". The last two are just blurbs pointing out the existence of the game/book. Also, all but the first of these now carry a disclaimer that the author and the game designer were once roommates but I think I can safely assume that the disclaimer was added more recently. Not sure why they left off the disclaimer on the first article.

The next two complaints involve indie game contest judging which, if we were to apply TotalBiscuit's standards for what constitutes a matter of journalistic ethics, would seem to be irrelevant to the GamerGate matters at hand. Unless, I suppose, that the real journalistic corruption was that certain conflicts of interest in the indie game contest scene were not being reported, I guess? Anyways, the first case seems to be about the inclusion of Zoe Quinn's Depression Quest among the twenty-four (!) indie games selected for Indiecade's Night Games showcase in 2013. The chair of the selection process was/is Robin Arnott who was romantically linked to Zoe Quinn via Eron Gjorni's insane screed; given how shoddy the Quinnspiracy stuff turned out, who knows what the real relationship was. In any case, the selection process is supposed to be by committee/jury though I guess you can insinuate that the chair can unduly influence things but without real evidence that that's what happened, you just have tawdry innuendo. Interestingly, it does not appear that Depression Quest actually won any awards at Indiecade that year.

The second cited case of corrupt game contest judging involves IGF. The link above further links to a 1 hour and 16 minute (!) audio file that's supposed to be evidence of some kind but I don't have the patience or fortitude to sit through that. If someone has an indication of what that's about, I'd be curious to know what they're claiming. In any case, the IGF has posted a response to the GamerGate allegations, so there's that.

All in all, these all seem like pretty weak tea. The Patricia Hernandez stuff can definitely happen when you're dealing with small, tight-knit industries and is normally handled with nothing more serious than a one-line disclosure, which Kotaku has added. The Indiecade thing is kind of interesting because as near as I can figure, one undercurrent in the GamerGaters' "evidence" of malfeasance is that Depression Quest is nowhere near good enough a game to be recognized or acclaimed in any way so anything good that happens to it (or Zoe Quinn for that matter) must be the product of Zoe Quinn's magic, mind-controlling estrogen pheromones or something. I'll also note how the first guy distills the initial Quinnspiracy claims down to "Nathan Grayson plugging his friend's work". I wonder if they're feeling like bringing up Zoe Quinn by name will instantly mark you as a crank in mainstream eyes -- maybe like bringing up Saul Alinsky or Jeremiah Wright when talking about Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama?

More interesting to me is how the theme of personal affront ("belittle them, their hobby, and their identity", "I was insulted", "denigrate something that has been a huge part of my life") just keeps coming up. Granted, getting called out by Kotaku was probably the proximate reason for this boycott so maybe I shouldn't read too much into it.
posted by mhum at 8:25 PM on October 15, 2014 [14 favorites]

Disappointed in TotalBiscuit; he tends to be the voice of reason in the often irrational gaming community, and he's taken a feminist stance on occasion in his podcast, so I don't know why he's falling in with the GG folks. I think he's stuck in the "fair and balanced" mindset for whatever reason. I hope he snaps out of it.
posted by archagon at 8:41 PM on October 15, 2014

He is currently in the middle of treatment for butt cancer. I think he probably deserves some slack given he just underwent surgery like 3 days ago and has been in chemo and so forth. I mean, that's not a blanket excuse for bad behavior but can probably at least give somebody a bit of slack for ill-advised but not evil tweetings.
posted by Justinian at 8:45 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

when I say that Gamergaters' notions of corruption are different than what I think is commonly understood

I saw one argument that game reviews should be like lab reports, with any "opinions" (i.e. discussion on game narrative as it intersects with, um, real life) relegated to separate pieces, which blows my mind. It's arguing that games should be reviewed using similar criteria to, I suppose, game consoles or game controllers. I could talk about the incoherence of being told to take games seriously but not apply serious critical frameworks, but the idea that game reviews should be obliged to operate within a "gamer" bubble distinct from real life seems... sociopathic.

one undercurrent in the GamerGaters' "evidence" of malfeasance is that Depression Quest is nowhere near good enough a game to be recognized or acclaimed in any way so anything good that happens to it

For what it's worth, I thought Depression Quest was slight but very interesting from a mechanical perspective: I played it through a few times, and was very conscious of the times when I was playing to "win" the game as opposed to making the choices that I was drawn to make. It operates in a similar space to Notch's Drowning In Problems. It interrogates gaming.

Again: sociopathy.
posted by holgate at 9:01 PM on October 15, 2014 [10 favorites]

If the Gamergaters think that the items noted above (roommate's games being written about by another roommate, friends and possible lovers being linked around who gets awards and who gets recognition and/or funding) is evidence of some kind of horrific corruption, then I hope they never get near an urban art scene. They'd likely never recover their bearings.
posted by jokeefe at 10:07 PM on October 15, 2014 [15 favorites]

I hope they never get near an urban art scene

They'll need resuscitation if they end up in dull corporate jobs and learn that the crappy trophies at the annual Regional Widget Suppliers' Dinner are given out to the companies who chip in most for the open bar.
posted by holgate at 10:17 PM on October 15, 2014 [10 favorites]

So, I had some clandestine interactions with the Gamerghazi kids on Twitter today, which resulted in me learning the talking-point of the day, which is, to summarize;

"Social Justice" is not a real thing, because if you have to limit "justice" by qualifying it with the word "social" then it's not real justice, it's actually oppression.

I got this from a few different guys, including one who tried to "prove" this with a quote from Hayek, with an explanation to me that "and he's a Nobel Prize winner".
posted by Jimbob at 10:24 PM on October 15, 2014 [16 favorites]

So, I had some clandestine interactions with the Gamerghazi kids on Twitter today

Whenever people use the term "gamerghazi" my first reaction is "the cool people at /r/Gamerghazi", so it's a tiny bit disorienting to hear it used here to mean GGers.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 10:39 PM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

Damn this is the second time in this thread I've got in trouble for calling GamerGaters something other than GamerGaters in order to help kill off the term. I agree, /r/Gamerghazi is pretty great, though.
posted by Jimbob at 10:42 PM on October 15, 2014

misogynistic gamers see feminism or LGBT rights as an ideology being enforced on them, rather than a critique of an ideology they implicitly, unthinkingly accept as valid.

So not "the same as any bigot", either.
So, exactly the same as every other bigot? Hobby Lobby claimed health coverage for women was "an ideology being enforced on them." Conservative Christians claim gay marriage is "an ideology being forced on them."

As bad as they are, those two examples are less physically violent, less wingnutty. The gamer faction is just plain unbalanced, a serial murder away from infamy. Hobby Lobby and the Conservative Christians aren't outright threatening to rape and murder anyone.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:04 PM on October 15, 2014

TIL not to engage in twitter wars with these hopeless motherfuckers. sweet jesus.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:16 PM on October 15, 2014 [5 favorites]

Enlightenment.
posted by Artw at 11:18 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Front page of the New York Times, and it's not quite the narrative the GamerGaters were looking for. "Noxious".
posted by Jimbob at 12:19 AM on October 16, 2014 [9 favorites]

Front page of the New York Times, and it's not quite the narrative the GamerGaters were looking for. "Noxious".

Wouldn't want to be Nick Wingfield for the next few days.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:27 AM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

Jimbob: Front page of the New York Times, and it's not quite the narrative the GamerGaters were looking for. "Noxious".

Feminist Critics of Video Games Facing Threats in ‘GamerGate’ Campaign, Nick Wingfeild, The New York Times, 16 October 2014
posted by ob1quixote at 12:35 AM on October 16, 2014 [6 favorites]

In a phone interview, Mr. Baldwin, who said he was not an avid gamer himself but has done voice work for the popular Halo games and others, said he did not condone the harassment of Mr. Sarkeesian and others.

“GamerGate distances itself by saying, ‘This is not what we’re about,’ ” said Mr. Baldwin. “We’re about ethics in journalism.”

Gamergate logic
posted by supercrayon at 12:49 AM on October 16, 2014 [14 favorites]

“We’re about ethics in journalism.”
...and doing your damnedest to eliminate it.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:06 AM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

Where can I go to savor the ragetears of the fedora-clad trolls as they are exposed as dumbasses on the front page of the New York Times and CNN? Because I want to taste their tears. Is there a subreddit for them? /r/gamergate seemed mostly empty.
posted by Justinian at 1:57 AM on October 16, 2014 [4 favorites]

In addition to making the Gamergaters' vile idiocy front-page news, the NYT also highlights the cowardice of triple-A video game publishers: "Representatives for several major game publishers — Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard and Take-Two Interactive Software — declined to comment."

The video game industry has been riding to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount.... And Gamergate shows the tigers are getting hungry.
posted by Doktor Zed at 2:14 AM on October 16, 2014 [14 favorites]

Where can I go to savor the ragetears of the fedora-clad trolls as they are exposed as dumbasses on the front page of the New York Times and CNN? Because I want to taste their tears. Is there a subreddit for them? /r/gamergate seemed mostly empty.

8chan, /r/kotakuinaction, /r/gamerghazi for the non-jerk take.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:42 AM on October 16, 2014

Where can I go to savor the ragetears of the fedora-clad trolls as they are exposed as dumbasses on the front page of the New York Times and CNN?

Why would you assume it will upset them? The hard-core will take it as validation of their persecuted status -- or in the case of the 'old men manipulating young men', as payoff in the game they're playing.

Public denouncement is one of the few weapons available to fight them (that and criminal prosecution where it's feasible and appropriate), but it's a necessary means to the longer-term end of getting the world to recognize that they're a cadre of misanthropes* in thrall to a knot of psychopaths. Until the game is well and truly played out (and probably after), that knot of psychopaths and their cadre of misanthropes will thrive on negative validation.

You can't fight people like this with their own acceptance of your victory as your goal. You'll never get that. You've got to just stop them from doing what they're doing, and hope a few of them eventually grow up.

--
*because 'misogyny', while accurate, is too specific.
posted by lodurr at 3:09 AM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

one of the most telling parts of this whole fucked up bullshit is how adam baldwin can say he's not really a gamer and get lauded by the gamegaters but when anita says it they use it as something to try and hang her with. for all of their beepboopbeepbooplogic they refuse to see just how stunningly inconsistent they are.
posted by nadawi at 4:56 AM on October 16, 2014 [18 favorites]

a wild #GG leader appears
posted by postcommunism at 6:13 AM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

Something that probably bears repeating is that you shouldn't necessarily expect things like consistency and appeals to logic and reasoning—or, hell, even self-awareness at this point—from the more vocal GameGaters.

Take Jimbob's recent example of their argument du jour:

"Social Justice" is not a real thing, because if you have to limit "justice" by qualifying it with the word "social" then it's not real justice, it's actually oppression.

It ignores a few major obvious facts. Like how "social justice warrior" was a term that originated from their cesspool to begin with. And the concept of "social justice" is a singular term that's been around for well over a hundred years and not meant to be separated or confused with individual justice. And if you want to talk about how "an injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere," that Adam Smith quote can go fuck right off. It can also go fuck right off back in the direction of GameGaters if you just replace the phrase "the consumer" with "innocent people and women in particular."

I never really bothered to appeal to the GameGaters rather than continuing to show everyone else how utterly foolish they are. You really want to be the enemy of the entire concept of social justice? Here's a list of all the things you must disapprove of, then.
posted by Johann Georg Faust at 6:21 AM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

oh i don't expect consistency - but rather, pointing out, again, that they fail their own tests time and time again. these dudes love to run around talking about how logical they are and if you just took emotion out of it and were perfect logic beings like themselves it would make perfect sense. but, as we all know, the fact is that they are highly emotional and very bad at the logic they are espousing.
posted by nadawi at 6:26 AM on October 16, 2014 [5 favorites]

Then, I'll just leave this here, because I'm tired of dancing around particular words.
posted by Johann Georg Faust at 6:29 AM on October 16, 2014

From the NYT piece ob1quixote links to above:

Ms. Edwards said changes in games and the audience around them have been difficult for some gamers to accept.

“The entire world around them has changed,” she said. “Whether they realize it or not, they’re no longer special in that way. Everyone is playing games.”

"Difficult" is a polite understatement, but the positive final note of the last bit is encouraging.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 7:02 AM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

one of the things i wish would be mentioned and remembered more - some of us women have been here the whole time (certainly longer than a lot of the guys who are currently in a tizzy). i've been playing since summer games on the commodore 64 and kaboom on the atari 2600. i've seen so many gater memes posit that no women were interesting in gaming prior to portal and even then we were only interested in the cute fan art (a lot of which women were the producers of). they act like we're brand new, or only play casual games, or aren't real gamers, or didn't suffer for being nerds - but a lot of us walked in their shoes and then, adding insult to injury, we were sidelined by them as well.
posted by nadawi at 7:20 AM on October 16, 2014 [33 favorites]

“Whether they realize it or not, they’re no longer special in that way. Everyone is playing games.”

It's hard when you find out that not only are you no longer special, you were never special - and it was your own blindness that made you think you were.
posted by rtha at 7:23 AM on October 16, 2014 [11 favorites]

Oh man someone went into KiA to do battle and it's a thing of beauty.
posted by Andrhia at 7:37 AM on October 16, 2014 [4 favorites]

Ow. what... there's a trailer out for a game called "Hatred" that's literally about killing innocents brutally with guns. And quite a few comments supporting its creation are really... out there (and yes, they're addressing feminists and liberals derisively). Feeling pretty sick right now.
posted by halifix at 7:41 AM on October 16, 2014

Andrhia: "Oh man someone went into KiA to do battle and it's a thing of beauty."

Holy shit.

I'm most interested in the undue weight given to feminist critique of games. I'd like to see equal weight and column inches given to any and all -ists and -isms. I'm particularly interested in seeing more Islamist, Logical Positivist and Masculinist perspectives in game reviews but not to the exclusion of others. Sure, it might make reviews a little long and tricky to score, but equality is equality, is it not.

I think we've just been treated to a script reading of an upcoming 45 minute youtube video.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 7:42 AM on October 16, 2014 [15 favorites]

coming from a long line of military family, i keep doing a double take when someone calls r/KotakuInAction kia.
posted by nadawi at 7:43 AM on October 16, 2014

Logical Positivist

At this point I think they are just looking words up at random on Wikipedia and throwing them into their "arguments".
posted by Elementary Penguin at 7:45 AM on October 16, 2014 [7 favorites]

This is the part that struck me: "This is a powerful incentive for developers to cater to the ideological opinions being expressed even if they're not shared by the actual consumers of the game."

I mean that's the heart of all of this, isn't it? The fundamental disbelief that people like them who like the same things as they do aren't the only gamers.
posted by Andrhia at 7:46 AM on October 16, 2014 [10 favorites]

I'm most interested in the undue weight given to feminist critique of games. I'd like to see equal weight and column inches given to any and all -ists and -isms. I'm particularly interested in seeing more Islamist, Logical Positivist and Masculinist perspectives in game reviews but not to the exclusion of others. Sure, it might make reviews a little long and tricky to score, but equality is equality, is it not.

It really is unfortunate that the entire interwebs is full and now there is no longer any place for a person interested in those viewpoints to share and explore them.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 7:47 AM on October 16, 2014 [12 favorites]

“GamerGate distances itself by saying, ‘This is not what we’re about,’ ” said Mr. Baldwin. “We’re about ethics in journalism.”

I'm... disappointed in Adam Baldwin. I knew that he was a conservative, but having been a fan of several films and shows he's appeared in I fooled myself into believing he was benignly so.

If I may propose a loose analogy for such attempts to shirk responsibility for his compatriots' actions:

"The responsible white separatist community condemns this; it makes us look bad."
posted by The Confessor at 8:05 AM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

PixieJenni did a survey for gamergates, and there are a number of answers.

It is amazing to see how many people joined because of Leigh Alexander's article.
posted by Theta States at 8:06 AM on October 16, 2014 [5 favorites]

Interview on Huffington Post with some female members of #GamerGate - so is this a replay of Women Against Feminism?

No, this is gamergaffe using them as a shield.
posted by Theta States at 8:07 AM on October 16, 2014 [4 favorites]

Justinian: "Where can I go to savor the ragetears of the fedora-clad trolls as they are exposed as dumbasses on the front page of the New York Times and CNN? Because I want to taste their tears. Is there a subreddit for them? /r/gamergate seemed mostly empty."

You want 8chan, I think. It's an easy google. Content warning: 8chan.
posted by jokeefe at 8:07 AM on October 16, 2014

I'm... disappointed in Adam Baldwin. I knew that he was a conservative, but having been a fan of several films and shows he's appeared in I fooled myself into believing he was benignly so.

"Now, you might not believe it, but under fire Animal Mother is one of the finest human beings in the world. All he needs is somebody to throw hand grenades at him the rest of his life."

Early on Baldwin's best roles were, arguably, an amorally gung-ho Marine in "Full Metal Jacket", a bully-for-hire in "My Bodyguard", and the private-school jock leader of a hazing group in "The Chocolate War". While he's not exactly known as a Method actor, a pattern to his performances was clear from the beginning. Sometimes there's truth in typecasting.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:23 AM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

Brianna Wu at XOJane:

But, you know, because I am the Godzilla of bitches, by Saturday morning I was pissed off. I’m talking Jack Bauer pissed off. So, I decided I was going to do everything in my power to stop these fuckers.

posted by almostmanda at 8:36 AM on October 16, 2014 [15 favorites]

Adam's Twitter feed has been toxic for a _very_ long time. It was amusing to see Seth Rogen call him a fucking idiot the other day though. (Nobody involved in Firefly follows Adam's Twitter except for Nathan, as far as I can tell. I'm assuming/hoping Nathan just has him on mute.)
posted by kmz at 8:37 AM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

a wild #GG leader appears

I...what...


¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:38 AM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

This is the part that struck me: "This is a powerful incentive for developers to cater to the ideological opinions being expressed even if they're not shared by the actual consumers of the game."

There's something delightfully backward in thinking that an irate reviewer is going to prevent a game maker from giving the people what they want to spend money on.

Where can I go to savor the ragetears of the fedora-clad trolls as they are exposed as dumbasses on the front page of the New York Times and CNN? Because I want to taste their tears. Is there a subreddit for them? /r/gamergate seemed mostly empty."

You want 8chan, I think. It's an easy google. Content warning: 8chan.

r/KotakuInAction
posted by Going To Maine at 8:42 AM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm... disappointed in Adam Baldwin.

so, yeah, he's been really awful for a long time. a while back i found a system which helps me still enjoy his roles - just imagine that he is actually jayne cobb - i mean, of course jayne cobb is an asshole on twitter and holds regressive anti-women politics, that just makes sense.
posted by nadawi at 8:44 AM on October 16, 2014 [13 favorites]

Ultimate Weapon Against Gamergate (a short article about Eliza vs. Gators)

I know it's already been mentioned, but for those of you who want your daily GG schadenfreude, stick to /r/GamerGhazi, and /r/BestOfOutrageCulture. In my own experience, it's much more enjoyable to read about their antics in the company of a friendly and vehemently anti-GG crowd. For me, reading straight from the source at 8chan or /r/KotakuInAction is too anger-inducing and I want to jump in the fray, which would just be a huge waste of time.
posted by honestcoyote at 8:58 AM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

so, yeah, he's been really awful for a long time. a while back i found a system which helps me still enjoy his roles - just imagine that he is actually jayne cobb - i mean, of course jayne cobb is an asshole on twitter and holds regressive anti-women politics, that just makes sense.

I'll believe this when he figuratively knocks down the statue of himself that #GG has built in his honor. I hope no one has to get shot first.
posted by almostmanda at 9:01 AM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

Once they are exausted, we must push back hard with Sword facts and spear politeness! Give them nothing, but take from them everything !
...
Ladies of #Gamergate, we need you more than ever. We need you to be gaming's #notyourshield maidens and scream like the righteous furies of gaming we know you are, and let the world know the truth.

okay then
posted by murphy slaw at 9:13 AM on October 16, 2014 [7 favorites]

then I hope they never get near an urban art scene. They'd likely never recover their bearings.

I had this conversation with a music journalist friend of mine when I was explaining the short version of what was going on a couple months ago when this was first starting to get going (ie: back when there was a comprehensible "short" version).

Both his experiences as a writer about (mostly) electronic music and mine as someone on the periphery of the dance music scene where I live... Just. Like. There are many scarier factors at play here so I've not remarked on it so much since then ... But just wow, what these people think gaming criticism/reviews should be like is absolutely divorced from the reality of how any major creative industry (at the big level) or artistic scene (down at the smaller levels) actually works.

Their thinking is completely alien to my experiences in how art scenes (and even big industries built around them) actually work.
posted by sparkletone at 9:19 AM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

Is there an easy one-page Gamergate Debunked article that I could link to?
posted by divabat at 9:30 AM on October 16, 2014

okay then

I want to meet the dude who was like "i was gonna give up on gamergates until i saw this rousing message now i am dressed like a Valkyrie and am having second thoughts because this metal bikini really does offer little by way of protection please help."
posted by robocop is bleeding at 9:31 AM on October 16, 2014 [11 favorites]

For me, reading straight from the source at 8chan or /r/KotakuInAction is too anger-inducing and I want to jump in the fray, which would just be a huge waste of time.

Yes, learn from me, do not jump in the fray. Molly Ivins had an old quote about how getting attacked by such-and-such politician was akin to being gummed by a newt, in that it didn't actually hurt but still left you feeling disgusting afterwards.

That's what happens if you jump in the fray. Not worth it.
posted by Navelgazer at 9:33 AM on October 16, 2014 [5 favorites]

At this point I think they are just looking words up at random on Wikipedia and throwing them into their "arguments".

There's actually something of a fetish in certain internet atheist circles for (an uninformed, incredibly shallow understanding of) Logical Positivism because it's seen as being a philosophy of pure reason and logic and always acting according to logic etc etc etc. In particular it's seen as opposed to postmodernism (which is used as essentially a synonym for "Cultural Marxism"), which is squishy and illogical and promotes the idea that said internet atheist's perceptions are not absolute or objective.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:35 AM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

Is there an easy one-page Gamergate Debunked article that I could link to?

There's this, but honestly while it's much longer than one page, I still think the best takedown/refutation piece is still this Deadspin one.
posted by sparkletone at 9:35 AM on October 16, 2014

a wild #GG leader appears

Well that's a novel interpretation of Adam Smith. Someone could probably make a career out of that, but they'd have to, you know, get a PhD or something.
posted by lodurr at 9:40 AM on October 16, 2014

because this metal bikini really does offer little by way of protection please help

There's a local armorer (and GM and sometime Green politician) who can be persuaded to give public talks on realistic battle armor. This is reminiscent of one of his more crowd-pleasing riffs.
posted by lodurr at 9:44 AM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

Sparkletone: you've just triggered an epiphany.

What if the disconnect in how they think about game critique comes down to one thing: they don't perceive video games to even be art?

Somewhere upthread (can't find it) is a link to where someone has a decent twitter conversation with someone about what they wanted game critique to actually be like. And the thing that stuck out for me is that the GG guy was hoping to see something that sounded kind of like a bare-bones review - a critque of the mechanics of game play itself. I take that to mean a reference to things like "the controls that dictate grasping things is very particular so trying to pick something up is frustrating" or "it's got a really unique approach to moving from one level to another". Discussions about the "art" of it just got in his way - they could be in a separate section, maybe, he argued, where people who didn't care about the tone of the music or the characterization could just ignore it. The conversation broke down a bit between "I don't think that's quite the point of critique, though, a critic can't totally remove their emotional response" and "but that's nothing to do with game play, so it's not what I look for in a game review".

And it just hit me that it sounds like what this guy was hoping for was more like a tool review than a review of an artistic thing. And if you think about it that way, the perspective of the GG towards "what a review should be like" makes a hell of a lot more sense. Think of it like if you're looking for a review of a car - when you read a car review, you're looking for bare-bones facts like what the gas mileage is, how easy it is to suss out what the dashboard controls are, whether the gearshift sticks, or anything like that. Maybe you also look at the carbon-emissions output if that is what you care about, but such information is on a bullet point you can easily ignore if that's not a priority for you.

So if THAT'S the case, then maybe the game reviews that treat games as art are coming across like someone trying to review a car by writing about the sweet little road trip they took over the weekend with a side digression into the conversation they had about cars with the old man they met at the Citgo station where he compared the car to "a kiss from your old sweetheart at your college reunion", and meanwhile they've got readers screaming "who cares about that, what is the gas mileage?" And then, maybe Anita Sarkeesian is coming across as the Electric Car Lobby Who Wants To Ban All Gas-Powered Vehicles.

None of this excuses their behavior. But I wonder if that's what the disconnect may be, and if that can help reach people.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:46 AM on October 16, 2014 [13 favorites]

EmpressCallipygos, reminds me of this comment from Legomancer, in part:

They think of art the way a child does, as something that is beautiful and revered simply for existing. Videogames as art for them means not criticizing or analyzing them, but instead framing them and hanging them up and adoring them.
posted by papercrane at 9:50 AM on October 16, 2014 [11 favorites]

They don't want barebones reviews - they want all other types of reviews, commentary or critisism to stop existing.
posted by Artw at 9:55 AM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

From this, quoting a Buzzfeed article:

Gjoni also consulted his mother, a human resources manager who asked that her name not be used. Gjoni's mother, who trains workers in harassment avoidance, preached caution. "I advised him to cool off and not make a decision based on emotions," she told BuzzFeed News. "I was not very happy that he made the decision to publish. As a parent my feeling is that what you put on the internet is for eternity."

You have to be fucking kidding me... Also, he's apparently giving interviews and stuff still despite a restraining/gag order or something?
posted by sparkletone at 9:59 AM on October 16, 2014 [4 favorites]

Artw: read the link in murphy slaw's comment here. (FINALLY I FOUND THAT TWITTER CONVERSATION FINALLY)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:59 AM on October 16, 2014

I wonder what that completely objective reviewing mindset would actually say about a game like Depression Quest. How do you objectively review a nontraditional approach to understanding and dealing with depression? Objectively, if that game helped one person overcome depression (or even just understand things a little better), then it deserves 5 out of 5 stars.

And what does that say about the old-school text games that play almost entirely on your subjective imagination of what a "grue" looks like?
posted by Johann Georg Faust at 10:09 AM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

despite a restraining/gag order or something?

A 209a order I believe. No idea what that involves. Someone on KiA covered it from the court room (but GG is not about Zoe.) If I recall correctly they were all in violent agreement that protection orders are grave injustices.
posted by papercrane at 10:15 AM on October 16, 2014

If I recall correctly they were all in violent agreement that protection orders are grave injustices.

That makes sense, given their seeming consensus that laws or actions against death threats are censorship.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:18 AM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

"but that's nothing to do with game play, so it's not what I look for in a game review"

Which is not a surprising attitude, even as his apparent belief that it's all about mechanics is clearly mistaken.
posted by lodurr at 10:20 AM on October 16, 2014

they (a group where the membership overlaps with the mra) feel like protection orders are part of female privilege and the misandry of the court system (their words). they are especially incensed in this case because they think zoe's boyfriend's parents bought off the judge or something and that she is obviously the abusive partner and that gag orders are illegal because of the 1st amendment. so, basically, their normal not in touch with reality ideas.
posted by nadawi at 10:20 AM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

I did see a Gater on Twitter, when trying to list positive things that GamerGate had accomplished, mention that Valve now requires Steam curators disclose paid-for recommendations.

Though where I had seen that mentioned as an issue is Leigh "antichrist" Alexander's List of Ethical Concerns and I had heard it discussed on an episode of the Idle Thumbs podcast which was listed on a GamerGater boycott list for being anti-GamerGate and had Anita Sarkeesian as a guest a few weeks before.

But the very first time I see a GamerGater mention Steam curators is to take claim for it.

So that's part of the rhetoric of billing yourself as "about ethics" is you pretend nobody else would have ethics without your hard work.
posted by RobotHero at 10:23 AM on October 16, 2014 [5 favorites]

I wonder what that completely objective reviewing mindset would actually say about a game like Depression Quest.

Well, i think the kind of 'objectivity' that EmpressCallipygos was describing would be objective in the sense of having specific criteria -- a rubric, essentially. So the game could make you feel amazing, but if the mechanics of game play didn't satisfy the rubric, it wouldn't matter.

Which is clearly not what they really want. Again, I understand that they probably really do think that's what they want, but the magazines and game review sites know better than to give it to them.
posted by lodurr at 10:23 AM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

I wonder what that completely objective reviewing mindset would actually say about a game like Depression Quest.

They wouldn't find it fun, so they would want the review to say that, I guess? There's nothing "objective" about what they want. It just sounds like they want reviews which don't evaluate how a video game fits into or comments on society. They just want to know if they would enjoy playing the video game: guys who do not want to think about whether a game could be good or bad in ways that they have not already anticipated, and which do not in some way critique them.

Assuming (very charitably) that they could be placated by having a video game review site appealing to their tastes, they would probably want something like GamePro circa 1993, where the reviewer just says whether the game is "fun", has replay value, the controls are snappy, etc. They don't want to hear whether a game has anything good or bad to say about anything else on the planet.

SomethingAwful once did a great parody of this kind of writing - reviewing World War Z as if it was a video game. It was something like, "the images were in focus, you can really tell they used a camera, it filled up the entire screen".
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:24 AM on October 16, 2014 [11 favorites]

i've seen some gaters holding up christian review sites as their ideal. which...uh. no. that's a bad direction for the industry to move in.
posted by nadawi at 10:26 AM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

How do the christian review sites work? The only ones I've ever seen decidedly did not give good reviews to anything that didn't satisfy the ideological criteria. There might be some cursory mention of quality, but if it didn't meet the real criteria, it was a no-go. (Which is fine, for them, at least they're up front about what they want.)
posted by lodurr at 10:28 AM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

The feeling I get is that they don't want anything in a review that reminds them that the reviewer is not a person exactly like them. It's easy to ignore bias when it matches your own biases, so to them "unbiased" means a white male middle-class nerd who loves video games for their own sake.

An "objective" review tells them exactly how much they will enjoy the game, because it is produced by a simulacrum of themselves.
posted by murphy slaw at 10:30 AM on October 16, 2014 [7 favorites]

Artw: "They don't want barebones reviews - they want all other types of reviews, commentary or critisism to stop existing."

That's not fair. They are permitted in the designated subjective criticism zones.
posted by RobotHero at 10:30 AM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

i've seen some gaters holding up christian review sites as their ideal. which...uh. no. that's a bad direction for the industry to move in.

That's especially weird, because I associate Christian review sites with things like "moral quality" scores. I'm especially thinking of Christianity Today and Decent Reviews, both of which actually have very thoughtful perspectives of movies, where they are explicitly viewing movies through various lenses. Christianity Today literally has study questions for movies, so that families can incorporate their moviegoing with their religiously-based discussions.

I mean, it's almost literally the least objective kind of review.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:30 AM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

Exactly, lodurr. They want the misogynist asshole gamer dude equivalent of CAPAlert.

I've been impressed with Common Sense Media, who provide descriptions of the possibly offensive or age-inappropriate material in movies without the Christian ideology. Very handy if you want to see if a particular film has, say, nudity, without the site celebrating or condemning the film for doing so. If you scroll down on Netflix pages for movies/shows, a bunch of them have CSM content linked from within Netflix.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:32 AM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

I mean, it's almost literally the least objective kind of review.

But they have scores for things! And bulletpoints! And a complete faliure to engage with the subject of the review outside of narrow criteria!

OBJECTIVITY!
posted by Artw at 10:36 AM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

from what i can tell, what they like about the christian reviews is how the separate out the objectionable stuff into a list a lot of times (to make it easier for their viewers to quickly discern whether it's appropriate or not). they view this as being more intellectually honest than reviewing the game poorly without outright stating your objections in a list type format.

i mean, they also think it's censorship to not host comments and that reviewers should be forced to read and respond to comments, so, well of the deep end.
posted by nadawi at 10:37 AM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

like this one - there's a game score and a morality score.
posted by nadawi at 10:38 AM on October 16, 2014

This article on the Awl about parents talking to their kids about GG really depressed me. Either there are parents teaching their kids hate from early on, or parents whose kids don't get why diversity is important.
posted by toerinishuman at 10:39 AM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

This process has been harrowing for those targeted by it, by the sneaks and trolls that inhabit the various 'chans and worst parts of reddit.

It's been encouraging to see however, that trolls are still allergic to sunlight, that the counter-reaction may be more important to the eventual gamer subculture, as lead by mags and blogs like Kotaku and Polygon. That this won't be easy to forget and dismiss, as has happened to women in most gaming subcommunities for basically ever.

Specifically, this seems to have largely defanged 4chan as a place where horrible things can start. It's not over, it's never going to be easy, but things do look like they're getting better. The change I'm seeing isn't in the headlines, but in efforts, small, incremental but real, to be less tolerant of the assholes, on some of the gaming boards. By the end of this, being called a GGer isn't going to be a complement.
posted by bonehead at 10:40 AM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

It's kind of absurd that I ended up on Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn's side of this, because I am nearly as dismissive of liberal ideologues as I am of conservative ones.

I like to think that I'm nobody's ditto-head.

But, y'know, when I was pondering that whole "tropes vs. women" thing several months ago, long before it got rolled up into #GamerGate, I read articles and comments that highlighted the dearth of women with agency in Grand Theft Auto V. The latest entry in what is arguably gaming's most prominent series. Three years of development. A budget of more than 250 million dollars. And a near-complete absence of positively-rendered strong women with individual agency. The exceptions are the woman kidnapped by Trevor (which is subverted when she subsequently develops Stockholm Syndrome), and Franklin's ex-girlfriend, who appears for perhaps three very memorable minutes of cutscene time amid dozens of hours of gameplay.

So if you take GTAV as an example of what a prominent, top-shelf game aspires to be, then it seems that Mrs. Sarkeesian has a point.

Supporters of socially conscious gaming are not, as a rule, lobbying for Grand Theft Auto: Social Justice Edition, they are lobbying for awareness. Tropes become tropes because they are seen as effective movers of narrative; they are, in my opinion, inextricable from narrative. The lesson that game developers should take from "tropes vs. women" is to not let female characters in their games become defined primarily as or by these common tropes.

When it comes to Mrs. Quinn, I have already stated most of my views in this thread. There is nothing there; no evidence of any quid-pro-quo, which leaves only the possibility that there may have been some quidding going on behind her ex-boyfriend's back, which is hardly anyone else's business anyway, and certainly should not have inspired public disclosure of the details of her sexual life.

It's a mark of how badly the #GamerGaters have fucked up their cause -- if they have any to speak of beyond harassing these women -- that I have become Mrs. Sarkeesian and Mrs. Quinn's partisan in this matter.
posted by The Confessor at 10:44 AM on October 16, 2014 [7 favorites]

like this one - there's a game score and a morality score.

Oh, okay. Admittedly, that makes sense, as far as these things go. Still doesn't give them a leg to stand on with regard to forcing other people and publications to do things their way.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:44 AM on October 16, 2014

exactly. they told us - you want socially responsible games, go out and make them! and so we have, and they still complain. i'll say the same back to them - you want "objective reviews" (whatever those words mean to them), go on out there and pay for hosting and make them.
posted by nadawi at 10:49 AM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

What if the disconnect in how they think about game critique comes down to one thing: they don't perceive video games to even be art?

Yeah, the argument that games reviews need to be like "lab reports" is head-screwy in all sorts of ways. That doesn't necessarily mean they want a tool review, but a review framed by "laboratory" conditions defined on a normative basis, where objectivity is really just uncritical acceptance of everything within mainstream gaming. They want the equivalent of Top Gear car reviews, which give you horsepower and top speed and 0-60 and "torques", but also an aesthetic perspective ("WHOOOA", "WHOMP", "it's like riding a filthy dragon!") where the only valid framework is that of the boorish comedy petrolhead chauvinist.
posted by holgate at 10:51 AM on October 16, 2014 [4 favorites]

The nice thing about video game reviews is that they're much cheaper and easier to make than car reviews, let alone making actual video games. If they claim that they're bent out of shape over the state of video games journalism, then this seems like a classic example of "be the change you wish to see". Assuming that they would actually fill a need by doing things their way, then eventually their site would get promo copies and all the rest, and then they can go leave everybody else alone.

But nnnoooOOOoooOOOoooOOOooooOOooOOOOoooOOOooo
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:56 AM on October 16, 2014 [5 favorites]

then this seems like a classic example of "be the change you wish to see"

but-but-but-Metacritic or something.
posted by holgate at 10:58 AM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

from what i can tell, what they like about the christian reviews is how the separate out the objectionable stuff into a list a lot of times (to make it easier for their viewers to quickly discern whether it's appropriate or not). they view this as being more intellectually honest than reviewing the game poorly without outright stating your objections in a list type format.

Yeah, exactly that. Christian review sites are kind of like Consumer Reports reviews - where you have the article, but you also have the "just the facts" bullet points off to the side, so you can just get the facts if you just want to get a vacuum and not think, or you can read the article if you want to get into the deeper mechanics of vacuum technology.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:59 AM on October 16, 2014

They want the equivalent of Top Gear car reviews

That's the core of it. What PC Gamer or Nintendo Power has been doing since the Eighties. That's what's defined AAA-Gamer "culture" up to now. That these were mostly advertorials or at least tit-for-tat, don't-piss-off-the-advertisers sorts of reviews doesn't register. That's what most Gamers grew up reading, and what they expect from an "objective" review. Any real critical analysis is utterly foreign to this mindset, and viewed as a personal attack on their worldview.

GG has been from the early days framed as identity politics: gamers vs straw-feminists. That's how the original trolls recruit the kids to carry water for them.
posted by bonehead at 10:59 AM on October 16, 2014 [10 favorites]

What PC Gamer or Nintendo Power has been doing since the Eighties. That's what's defined AAA-Gamer "culture" up to now. That these were mostly advertorials or at least tit-for-tat, don't-piss-off-the-advertisers sorts of reviews doesn't register.

You mean....the older reviews were a result of corrupt journalism?

*gasps, fans self*
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:01 AM on October 16, 2014 [9 favorites]

Oh, okay. Admittedly, that makes sense, as far as these things go. Still doesn't give them a leg to stand on with regard to forcing other people and publications to do things their way.

SJW reviews might affect their precious Metacritic scores, basically.

This is all so [military shooter franchise][latest version] doesn't get less than 9/10, basically.
posted by Artw at 11:06 AM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

There's also this List of Demands, which I swear was linked on one of our previous GamerGate threads, but which I just now found by Googling.
posted by soundguy99 at 11:09 AM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

Artw: "This is all so [military shooter franchise][latest version] doesn't get less than 9/10, basically."

And also so that [unnamed shitshow shooter that had pretensions of Tackling the Big Issues and Commenting on Patriotism but then crapped the bed on racism and social issues when it came right down to it] doesn't get marked down for being a ham-handed slice of what the fuck.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 11:11 AM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

The irony with GamerGate is that if they were actually upset about corruption in game journalism, they would have been up in arms ages ago. Game journalism has always been about doing what the publisher wants in exchange for continued access.

But no, they're angry because some guy claimed that a woman had sex with someone else. Perish the thought.
posted by anemone of the state at 11:11 AM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

It's not about religion or politics, it's about family values, stop changing the topic
posted by halifix at 11:12 AM on October 16, 2014

SJW reviews might affect their precious Metacritic scores, basically.

In the KiA link above where someone went in there to battle them that was explicitly one of the arguments made.

So reviewers should collude to inflate Metacritic scores, because not doing that is corruption, or something.
posted by papercrane at 11:14 AM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

the older reviews were a result of corrupt journalism?

It's such a core irony to this whole thing, that it still surprises me that it isn't a bigger part of the conversation.

I mean, the comparison is being made between a fringe indie games community awards and possible friends writing about friends issues with a 30-year-old system of advertizing and access quid pro quo or just straight-up "reviews" by a company of their own games.

There is a conspiracy to write favourable game reviews, but it's not some shadowy SJWs, it's Microsoft, Nintendo and EA.
posted by bonehead at 11:15 AM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

BTW, tired of being classed as a social justice warrior? Not a good fit for who you are?

The Mary Sue has you covered: Social Justice Class pins for all!
posted by bonehead at 11:19 AM on October 16, 2014 [4 favorites]

Mrs. Quinn Mrs. Sarkeesian

?????
posted by jokeefe at 11:24 AM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

yeah, that jumped out at me too.
posted by nadawi at 11:25 AM on October 16, 2014

Found this blog interesting/informative (If this has been posted already I apologize, getting hard to keep track of all the comments)

Questions were asked of both sides and it is interesting to see the answers from many supporters who contributed.

PixieJenni talks GamerGate with both 'sides
posted by edZio at 11:26 AM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

Mrs. Quinn Mrs. Sarkeesian

THEY ARE MARRIED...TO SOCIAL JUSTICE

THEY HAVE SAID "I DO"...TO THE QUESTION, "DO YOU PROMISE TO HATE MEN"
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:28 AM on October 16, 2014 [38 favorites]

I was told in an earlier thread on a different subject that it is demeaning to refer to women using their first names, which is why I used last names and gendered honorific. I'm sorry if I misinterpreted that complaint.
posted by The Confessor at 11:29 AM on October 16, 2014

The Mrs stands for MiSandRy!
posted by jokeefe at 11:29 AM on October 16, 2014 [6 favorites]

last names and gendered honorific.

Ms. is the generally preferred modern choice.
posted by jokeefe at 11:29 AM on October 16, 2014 [4 favorites]

Good grief.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 11:33 AM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

The argument seems to be (charitably inserting a middle step left out of the original argument): "Person A demonstrably harassed Person B. Person A is not part of group C. Therefore, group C does not harass Person B. QED." This is proof?

If you use Underpants Gnomes Logic.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:33 AM on October 16, 2014

The Metacritic thing is lolworthy. Metacritic's success could not be more illustrative of the idea of a free market of speech. Don't like it? Make your own aggregator. It's not that hard.
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:37 AM on October 16, 2014

Just had a thought - I can't help but wonder where Anonymous is in all this. They were all up in everything in Ferguson, doxing the various police officers who were doing distasteful things with the protestors.

But here? This? Now? Where are the Guy-Fawkes-Mask tweets announcing "This is the name of the guy who threatened Anita Sarkeesian's Utah State conference" or "this is the name of the guy who threatened to rape and kill Brianna Wu"?

C'mon, guys, any time now.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:38 AM on October 16, 2014 [6 favorites]

I can't help but wonder where Anonymous is in all this.

Based on tone and tactics I think I know exactly where they are in all of this.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:41 AM on October 16, 2014 [16 favorites]

It's the exact same idiots.
posted by Artw at 11:44 AM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

I know that in the midst of this shitstorm, it might be a petty complaint: but every time I see a GGer reference Leigh Alexander's "the death of gamers" article it bugs the hell out of me. I've read that article. She never said the "death" of gamers. She said "gamers are over". There's a difference, and their reading of "over" for "death" seems to say something-- something small, but there it is-- about the hyperbole involved.
posted by jokeefe at 11:44 AM on October 16, 2014 [11 favorites]

They've never read it. Most people commenting on it in the media have never read it too.
posted by Artw at 11:47 AM on October 16, 2014 [5 favorites]

Sadly I am sure you are right.
posted by jokeefe at 11:49 AM on October 16, 2014

I don't think it is the exact same idiots. I think it's a subset.

I'll be hard pressed to find it but a couple of weeks ago I found some oblique references to 'anon' that led me to believe the gamergate core is afraid of that association. Like, if they made it an 'anon thing', they might get hurt for it.

but of course anon is not here doing what they claim to be all about, which is, as y'all say, telling. I just think it's telling us where their sympathies lie, not that this is "anonymous."

(FTR & FWIW, I think anon are a bunch of punks. But some of them understand the value of branding and some of the original gamergate psychopaths know that, and don't want to step on the anon branding.)
posted by lodurr at 11:54 AM on October 16, 2014

This series of tweets by Jonathan Blow (creator of Braid, the forthcoming The Witness) seems particularly cogent given Sarkeesian showing up on the NYT front page today, as well as going on CBS' morning show.
posted by sparkletone at 11:54 AM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

Not only do they not read it, not reading anything other than approved viewpoints is point of pride, a purity test.
posted by bonehead at 11:55 AM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

This series of Jonathan Blow tweets is better, imo.
posted by empath at 11:59 AM on October 16, 2014 [8 favorites]

The irony with GamerGate is that if they were actually upset about corruption in game journalism, they would have been up in arms ages ago. Game journalism has always been about doing what the publisher wants in exchange for continued access.

Jeff Gerstmann, one of the founders of Giant Bomb, was literally fired by Gamespot for not giving the first Kane & Lynch game a positive enough review. This was in 2007 or 2008. Several other Gamespot writers who now work on Giant Bomb left at the same time in protest.

Part of his/their intent in starting Giant Bomb was to not have to deal with that kind of bullshit anymore.... But now he and Giant Bomb in general are, of course, anathema to the Gater crowd despite the history there because their staff has been much too supportive of Anita Sarkeesian, too openly disgusted by everything around this, etc. It seems like they hate Patrick the most of the GB guys? But I'm not sure about that.

Ethics!
posted by sparkletone at 12:03 PM on October 16, 2014 [13 favorites]

This series of Jonathan Blow tweets is better, imo.

Ah, I remember these! Nice to have a link to all of them in one place.

I know Jonathan Blow has gotten flack in the past for his tendency to be over-eager to join conversations online about Braid, or whatever, but from what I've seen in interviews, his twitter, Indie Game: The Movie, et al. he seems like a really smart, thoughtful guy even if I don't necessarily agree with any particular individual point he's making about something (and those instances are mostly limited to when I don't feel qualified to have an opinion about something because I wouldn't know what I'm talking about).

He's not been as flailingly angry as someone like Phil Fish would be if he was still on twitter, but he's definitely pretty disturbed by all this, and the difference in the way that comes out between the two is attributable to temperament.
posted by sparkletone at 12:08 PM on October 16, 2014

> This series of Jonathan Blow tweets is better, imo.

Pairs well with this playstation ad
posted by postcommunism at 12:10 PM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

Although I might change Blow's "If you believe it, you're gullible." No one actually believes it; they just like the feeling.

"If that's all you value, you're missing out."
posted by postcommunism at 12:17 PM on October 16, 2014

Anita Sarkeesian cancels talk at Utah State University because Utah state laws prohibit restrictions on carrying weapons, making her extra vulnerable to a planned shooting threat? RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS! NO GUN CONTROL!

When gun rights trump public safety: It wasn't threats that shut down Anita Sarkeesian's USU event -- it was the school's response
posted by homunculus at 12:24 PM on October 16, 2014 [9 favorites]

I know that in the midst of this shitstorm, it might be a petty complaint: but every time I see a GGer reference Leigh Alexander's "the death of gamers" article it bugs the hell out of me.

I'm not sure it's actually that petty a complaint; if you read some of the responses to the PixieJenni questions (linked by edZio above), a LOT of the respondents seem to think there have been a whole slew of "gamers are dead/over" articles all over the place, and they've "joined" GamerGate in response.

But I can only find two (2) articles/blogposts actually making this argument - Leigh Alxander's, and one by Dan Goldberg. Both were published on Aug 28th, AFAICT the day after Ms. Sarkeesian felt it necessary to leave her home due to death threats, and at least a week into the accusations against Ms. Quinn. And both articles are, of course, referencing these incidents as evidence for their "gamers are over" positions.

So, clearly, a lot of GamerGaters haven't bothered to do even basic research into what actually "triggered" GamerGate and when it happened, and are drastically overestimating the number and level of "attacks" against gamers.

Like mhum said above, it's the Paranoid Style of American Politics in action.
posted by soundguy99 at 12:26 PM on October 16, 2014 [6 favorites]

So, Eron Gjoni is basically a sociopath. That's good to know.
posted by palomar at 12:26 PM on October 16, 2014 [7 favorites]

postcommunism: man, that playstation ad was creepy.
posted by lodurr at 12:27 PM on October 16, 2014

So, Eron Gjoni is basically a sociopath. That's good to know.

See also this tweet I linked to upthread.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 12:29 PM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

WOW. What a freakin' gem. I bet Zoe Quinn is just soooooooo sad that she's not with this guy anymore. :/
posted by palomar at 12:30 PM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

When gun rights trump public safety: It wasn't threats that shut down Anita Sarkeesian's USU event -- it was the school's response

Even worse, as I linked to over in the other thread, that response was probably wrong on the facts:

While USU was working with local law enforcement to increase police presence at the event, they could not guarantee guests wouldn’t bring in a firearm. Due to state law, school officials said they had to allow people with concealed carry permits to exercise their right to carry.

“Not being able to do something about that, or take precautionary measures, in terms of preventing firearms in the lecture hall, is completely outrageous,” Sarkeesian said. “This was direct, specific, credible threats that were specifically stating the types of weapons that they would use about a mass shooting.”

According to Salt Lake City defense attorney Greg Skordas, the university would have been within their legal rights to restrict firearms to the specific location, given the threats.

“I don’t think anyone can read state law to say that a person can carry a firearm on a university campus at all times, for any reason,” explained Skordas. “There are certainly some exceptions to that, and this case seemed to have some basis for people to consider those exceptions.”

posted by zombieflanders at 12:30 PM on October 16, 2014 [5 favorites]

Could the university have scrambled last minute to make arrangements at a private venue where they could provide adequate security also? I mean, surely that awful 2004 law that makes open cary on university property okay wouldn't apply elsewhere. Though admittedly, that approach has problems since this was all very last minute and stuff.
posted by sparkletone at 12:35 PM on October 16, 2014

Sparkletone: speaking as someone who has had some experience making arrangements for big event-type things like this, the chances of actually being able to "scramble last minute" to relocate the whole shebang to a different venue are nigh unto nil.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:38 PM on October 16, 2014 [4 favorites]

Presumably, USU isn't in a position to dictate terms to law enforcement operating on different assumptions unless they go out and get a court order.

Though admittedly, that approach has problems since this was all very last minute and stuff.

And at least part of the motivation behind this kind of threat is to make the cost of hosting Sarkeesian and other women for such events prohibitive because of additional security requirements. Asymmetric warfare.
posted by holgate at 12:42 PM on October 16, 2014 [5 favorites]

Yeah. I mean, I've been involved in relocating some parties and stuff last minute and it's a HUGE, HUGE pain/nightmare. I wasn't sure how big a space they'd needed for Sarkeesian, and then also I suppose arranging more security last minute on top of that. Yeah. Thinking about it more, I can see why that wouldn't work out very well.
posted by sparkletone at 12:42 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

It was Gjoni’s 9,000-word narrative blog post about the breakdown of his relationship

Jesus. Dude, it was a break up. Most likely because you are a tool. Because there few greater signs of toolness than a 9000 word screed on the bitch who dumped you.

What a goddamned child.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 12:42 PM on October 16, 2014 [5 favorites]

From the Eron Gjoni piece:

If I could go back in time and tell myself not to do this. I wouldn’t. That is, I wouldn’t tell myself not to. Because it’s for the best. Regardless of how the outcome is actually getting painted. As this giant harassment campaign against women filled with all sorts of death threats. On the ground the movement isn’t barely like that.

"On the ground" ? "Isn't barely"? What the hell does this even mean? Does "on the ground" mean in IRC chatrooms (which the logs show as being even worse than #GG's Twitter presence)? What upside to this whole situation makes this "for the best"?

Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug.
posted by almostmanda at 12:44 PM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

almostmanda: "What upside to this whole situation makes this "for the best"?"

"These women may have been threatened repeatedly with death and harassed out of their homes, but at least Polygon has an ethics policy now!"
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 12:48 PM on October 16, 2014 [5 favorites]

It's basically word salad, because how else is he going to claim he thinks this is a bad idea while by his own admission he's been egging GG on for months, enough so that Zoe got a restraining order against him?
posted by Elementary Penguin at 12:49 PM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

So I went on Twitter yesterday and today and just read a lot of stuff with both the StopGamerGate2014 and GamerGate hashtags. I saw a lot of reasonable discussion going on, as opposed to vitriol and trolling and harassment, which I liked.

What the gamergate people are saying today, right now, is that they think that people with a bias are reviewing games based on that bias, and not being honest about having that bias in the first place. Which sounds very abstract and handwavey, I know.

The example given that I read (and which made me feel like I could empathize with their position somewhat), was this:

Let's say a reviewer is a conservative Republican and homophobic. He calls himself a journalist. He reviews Dragon Age: Origins, and tears it apart, not because the game mechanics are bad or the graphics suck, but because Dragon Age: Origins has gay characters. Journalists are supposed to be objective, not biased like that.

To the gamergate people, that guy went into the game clearly biased, there was no way he was going to like the game given his biases, and journalists should not let their own biases influence the story.

I can't really argue with that.
posted by misha at 12:49 PM on October 16, 2014

Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug.

As I quoted earlier, his mother, who trains workers in harassment avoidance, told him he shouldn't publish it when he asked her about it. He didn't listen. Because of course not.
posted by sparkletone at 12:50 PM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

What the gamergate people are saying today, right now, is that they think that people with a bias are reviewing games based on that bias, and not being honest about having that bias in the first place.

As far as I can tell, that bias they're so worked up about usually boils down to "thinks women are people too."
posted by sparkletone at 12:51 PM on October 16, 2014 [22 favorites]

What the gamergate people are saying today, right now, is that they think that people with a bias are reviewing games based on that bias, and not being honest about having that bias in the first place.

Well, in between their violent threats that are forcing women to leave their homes in fear and all.
posted by winna at 12:54 PM on October 16, 2014 [12 favorites]

Journalists are supposed to be objective, not biased like that.

I thought that when a person wrote reviews, they were called critics, and they were allowed to have opinions. Is that not how reviews work?
posted by palomar at 12:54 PM on October 16, 2014 [36 favorites]

The idea of "not letting your own biases" influence a review is super goddamn dumb. If you're a conservative bigot and you don't like the gay relationships in DA, absolutely talk about that in your review. I'll think you're a shitlord for it, but it's not "corruption" or "bias", it's your honest opinion on the game.
posted by kmz at 12:54 PM on October 16, 2014 [27 favorites]

I thought that when a person wrote reviews, they were called critics, and they were allowed to have opinions. Is that not how reviews work?

The roles aren't really separate at most gaming sites. Someone will write a newsy blog posts, then turn around and post a review of a game the same day. Of course, being able to consider the two kinds of writing separately is the kind of simple, basic, nuance that these people are clearly incapable of.
posted by sparkletone at 12:57 PM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

The "objective" reviews on goodgamers.us are always good for a laugh. They read like a sleep-deprived eight year-old giving a book report.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 12:57 PM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm gobsmacked that any reasonable person could wade into the GamerGate nonsense and actually come away thinking those kids are right. Not when those kids are making rape and death threats toward women they don't like. That's fucked up.
posted by palomar at 12:58 PM on October 16, 2014 [13 favorites]

Objective review of the Mona Lisa: The canvas is 77 cm x 53 cm, the medium is oil on poplar.
Objective review of The Great Gatsby: It's a book, written by F Scott Fitzgerald, in English.
posted by kmz at 1:00 PM on October 16, 2014 [17 favorites]

What the gamergate people are saying today, right now, is that they think that people with a bias are reviewing games based on that bias, and not being honest about having that bias in the first place. Which sounds very abstract and handwavey, I know.

What makes it abstract and handwavey is that if you actually look at the "biases" they are objecting to, it's people advocating for more inclusive games, for a more inclusive gaming community, for a wider definition of "gamer".

Their "conservative Republican and homophobic" example is bullshit, because that never actually happens. What actually happens is someone reviews a game and takes a slightly "liberal", "progressive" stance by pointing out that the game might be kinda, sorta objectifying women, and then the "gamers" go ballistic.
posted by soundguy99 at 1:01 PM on October 16, 2014 [20 favorites]

> I can't really argue with that.

I can -- it's a review. Dude wants to get angry about gay people, I know to disregard his review. It's not like he's ragging on the cooldown for Magic Missile when what he really means, but doesn't say, is "I hate that the elf-man hit on me." He's not secretly trying to torpedo the game, in other words; he's totally upfront with what he doesn't like about it.

But again, that complaint is ultimately beside the point. However gaters express it, the result they want is in-grouping and pandering; the mere fact of, say, a woman, is offensive unless that person can pass some gatekeeping tests (Fake Gamer Girls / Real Gamer Girls).

And they feel so strongly about this that the whole gamergate shenanigan started out with a harassment campaign against a woman dev, with her sex life as their point of attack, where, during the backchannel discussions, they vetoed trying to drive her to suicide because it would be bad PR for them.

And it wasn't even the first time they attacked that woman. Nor the first time they attacked their second target. Or their third.

Fuck 'em.
posted by postcommunism at 1:01 PM on October 16, 2014 [18 favorites]

Even if one takes aside the difference between criticism and journalism, is there any evidence that anybody's actually written reviews which, for example, totally trashed a game's mechanics just because they objected to a game's politics, and then gotten this review published by any major gaming media outlet?
posted by Sequence at 1:02 PM on October 16, 2014 [4 favorites]

misha: " To the gamergate people, that guy went into the game clearly biased, there was no way he was going to like the game given his biases, and journalists should not let their own biases influence the story.
"

I would not like that review, but thinking as an ex-journalist, if it went down like "as a conservative christian, I thought the gay marriages were terrible and not christlike and i dwelled on it all while I was playing", I could see it. The biases are disclaimed and present, and leave me, as the reader, free to say, "I disagree intrinsically with the viewpoint that informed your review.".
posted by boo_radley at 1:04 PM on October 16, 2014 [10 favorites]

ArmyOfKittens: "The "objective" reviews on goodgamers.us are always good for a laugh. They read like a sleep-deprived eight year-old giving a book report."

Destiny

During the traditional first-person portion of the game, movement is smooth, gun-play is quick and precise, and several usable vehicles (including turrets in competitive modes) add some depth to fighting through swarms of enemies.

I thought Destiny was all FPS? Are there 3PS sections or etc in the game?
posted by boo_radley at 1:08 PM on October 16, 2014

What the gamergate people are saying today, right now, is that they think that people with a bias are reviewing games based on that bias, and not being honest about having that bias in the first place. Which sounds very abstract and handwavey, I know.

Because it's meant to be abstract and handwavey to lend a patina of objectivity. That way they can make claims like this despite the fact that it's easily refuted by their complaints centering around reviewers actually expressing their opinions on the content of the games. I mean, c'mon, it's not as if they attacked "Tropes vs. Women" because Sarkeesian wasn't clear enough on her perspective or philosophy.

To the gamergate people, that guy went into the game clearly biased, there was no way he was going to like the game given his biases, and journalists should not let their own biases influence the story.

Thus explaining their equally vehement and not at all gendered crusade against those exact kinds of reviews, which have been around since the first days of gaming? Oh, wait...
posted by zombieflanders at 1:08 PM on October 16, 2014 [4 favorites]

The idea that you would even want a reviewer to hide their opinions is just really strange to me.

And let's be clear: What they're going to get is reviewers hiding their opinions. Precisely what they claim to be afraid of.

What they really want is people reviewing the games in the way that a lot of film reviewers have traditionally reviewed movies: 'Will people like it? And what do I think?' Because we don't really know how to take their evaluation of whether we'll like it without having something to situate them, for us.

That's all assuming that the discussion is really about that, and it's not. That's just the latest thing it's pretending to be about. Because that's a simple thing that doesn't get a "gate" suffix and doesn't become the main focus of a bunch of people's lives. Right now the active gamergaters are basically living this as a cause, and living for better game reviews as a cause is...well, what the hell are these people missing? They could be playing the fucking games instead of advocating for them. I mean, it's not like EA or Valve need their advocacy help.

Really when you get down to it we've got people devoting the same kind of time and energy (ostensibly) getting better game reviews that friends of mine did to Occupy or the Climate March or Ferguson. But I guess my friends are just SJWs, they're not real activists....
posted by lodurr at 1:09 PM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

Why are we even discussing the supposed justification for this misogynistic harassment campaign?
posted by chrchr at 1:10 PM on October 16, 2014 [15 favorites]

because the usual suspects always want to play devil's advocate.
posted by nadawi at 1:11 PM on October 16, 2014 [25 favorites]

What this is really about is a bunch of psychotic trolls, directing a hard-core cadre of misanthropic sociopaths, to dupe a large group of casually sexist and deeply naive fellow travellers into devoting their lives to a transient rage-cult.

It's about a bunch of people finding something to live for.

Shit, I'd almost rather they found God.
posted by lodurr at 1:12 PM on October 16, 2014 [10 favorites]

In order to cure, you must first understand.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:12 PM on October 16, 2014

chrchr, i think a lot of us still find it difficult to accept the truth about it. It's just too...alright, I'll come out and say it: it's just too fucking sad. If I'm really honest, much as I think I get it intellectually, I still can't really truly wrap my head around it.
posted by lodurr at 1:14 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

Hey guys remember that time that Burger King stopped giving out free refills and so a bunch of dudes online starting calling in bomb threats to burger kings and somehow then that morphed into calling in bomb threats to African-American churches? Because it's bullshit that we can't get free refills.

That's what this conversation sounds like, right now.
posted by Navelgazer at 1:14 PM on October 16, 2014 [17 favorites]

The biases are disclaimed and present, and leave me, as the reader, free to say, "I disagree intrinsically with the viewpoint that informed your review.".

Yeah, but the people who are spouting this nonsense are the same type of misogynist trashbags that threw a fucking fit when a woman reviewed GTA5, spent approximately two paragraphs in a fairly lengthy review about how the game's rampant misogyny made her uncomfortable, and STILL GAVE THE GAME A FREAKING 9.0 in the end. There were petitions to try to get her fired on top of the usual grossness (though I don't think she got doxxed or anything that severe luckily).

It's incredibly difficult for me to take these people seriously or give them the normal presumption that they're arguing in good faith.
posted by sparkletone at 1:14 PM on October 16, 2014 [30 favorites]

In order to cure, you must first understand.

Yes, I understand that they're transparently lying. Which is pretty despicable when supposedly "reasonable" people are doing it to defend a movement started on and thriving on terrorism.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:17 PM on October 16, 2014 [11 favorites]

it's impossible to see them as arguing in good faith since there is actual proof that they coordinate their talking points and organize their methods (which is hilarious since one of their complaints is journalists/critics having a seekrit back channel conversation space).
posted by nadawi at 1:17 PM on October 16, 2014 [13 favorites]

Another pretty decent storify run down documenting everything about how this started, for what it's worth.
posted by sparkletone at 1:18 PM on October 16, 2014 [11 favorites]

I have a hard time believing that the Gaters have any good faith arguments underlying their rancor. To the extent that any reasonable or halfway reasonable arguments may have been rolled up into the foofaraw, there does not appear to be any substantive focus on them.

That's why I keep coming back to the fact that the best way to counter video games journalism which you do not like is to simply make the kind of video games journalism which you do like. If they were really serious about how video games journalism had gotten wrapped up in this or that, then far and away the best solution would be for them to simply create their own publication. They obviously play video games, they obviously have a passion for what they do or don't like, they obviously have internet-capable computers, so just fucking do it.

Unless, of course, this isn't really about video games journalism at all, but rather a bunch of dudes who can't deal with the fact that women not only exist in their playspace, but are sometimes even listened to...
posted by Sticherbeast at 1:20 PM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

Apropos?

Alex Hern: Lazy coverage of Gamergate is only feeding this abusive campaign

[W]hile the movement identifies itself as being about ethics in gaming journalism, its targets and its practices belie the truth. Amanda Marcotte, writing at Raw Story, says the group is the exact opposite: “#GamerGate should be understood primarily as a misogyny-fueled attack on ethics in journalism”.

Her list of reasons is extensive. Zoe Quinn, the first target of the movement, is not even a journalist. Sarkeesian, the second target, is “an exemplar of clean journalism”, taking money from reader donations, not industry advertising, to critically examine games from an independent perspective.

What’s more, the movement has succeeded in shutting down a research project on gender in gaming by flooding the survey with malicious responses. It has set fire to the wall between editorial and advertising at industry journal Gamasutra, where Intel was convinced to pull its advertising over a powerful editorial by the Guardian contributor Leigh Alexander.

“Overall, the pattern is clear,” writes Marcotte: “#gamergate opposes ethical journalism. They just claim the opposite, for the same reason conservatives say liberals are the ‘real’ racists and anti-choicers claim they want to ‘protect’ women and homophobes say they are trying to ‘protect traditional marriage’”.

Many discussions on the topic have opened by suggesting that the answer is somewhere in the middle, that there’s good points made on both sides, that the majority of gamergate is interested in ethical journalism. But none of that is true. Nick Davies would call this “false balance” – the flawed assumption that if there are two identifiable sides, conflicts between them must be presented as an equal debate.

Gamergate was described by Deadspin’s Kyle Wagner as “an assortment of agitators who sense which way the winds are blowing and feel left out”. But those agitators have been there for years; Sarkeesian was first targeted by a hate campaign in June 2012, before the first episode of Tropes v Women in Video Games was even produced.

What has changed is that the agitators have gone from being a toxic undercurrent, to a well-defined group. And in doing so, they’ve managed to play the media at its own game.

“It’s a neat trick,” says Wagner. “Agitate bare-facedly for the absolute necessity of developers investing the vast majority of their resources in games pitched at the intellectual and emotional level of a 16-year-old suburban masturbator, and no one beyond the gaming world is going to take you very seriously. But make it a story about an oppressive and hypocritical media conspiracy, and all of a sudden you have a cause, a side in a ‘debate’.”

posted by zombieflanders at 1:20 PM on October 16, 2014 [22 favorites]

The origins of #gamergate, storified... (NSFL)
posted by Theta States at 1:21 PM on October 16, 2014 [4 favorites]

One thing that Storify left out is that Baldwin's origin of the hashtag was a link to the horrible "Five Guys/In-N-Out" theory of so-called bias.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:26 PM on October 16, 2014

Yeah, but the people who are spouting this nonsense are the same type of misogynist trashbags that threw a fucking fit when a woman reviewed GTA5, spent approximately two paragraphs in a fairly lengthy review about how the game's rampant misogyny made her uncomfortable, and STILL GAVE THE GAME A FREAKING 9.0 in the end. There were petitions to try to get her fired on top of the usual grossness (though I don't think she got doxxed or anything that severe luckily).

Those comments on the GTA5 review! The GTA5 review that gave it a 9.0!
posted by Going To Maine at 1:26 PM on October 16, 2014

Let's say a reviewer is a conservative Republican and homophobic. He calls himself a journalist. He reviews Dragon Age: Origins, and tears it apart, not because the game mechanics are bad or the graphics suck, but because Dragon Age: Origins has gay characters. Journalists are supposed to be objective, not biased like that.

To the gamergate people, that guy went into the game clearly biased, there was no way he was going to like the game given his biases, and journalists should not let their own biases influence the story.

The Gamergaters have pretty thin skins, I'll tell you what. They're angry about games not getting the reviews they think they deserve (as in the example upthread of EA overpromising and underdelivering)? They should try being a feminist for a while and dealing with everyday sexism and misogyny and having to hear it all from people who are actually in positions of power with the ability to cause genuine harm to people's lives. They'd last five minutes.
posted by jokeefe at 1:28 PM on October 16, 2014 [11 favorites]

Don't you know? Games that get less than a 9.9 from Gamespot are banned from sale and all the developers are forced to go to reeducation camps. It's why GTA V was such a financial disaster and Rockstar had to shutter all its studios.
posted by kmz at 1:30 PM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

and lets not forget that the gaming sites they're holding up as the example of what they want are explicitly christian reviews which does the very thing they claim to not want.
posted by nadawi at 1:32 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

(I wish somebody would give Carolyn a job. You want to know an _actual_ problem in games journalism? The homogeneity of most of the big sites, the shrinking revenue bases and consolidations which means less opportunities for people that aren't the usual generic white male.)
posted by kmz at 1:33 PM on October 16, 2014

I don't mean to harp on this, but I can't stop laughing:

there was no way he was going to like the game given his biases, and journalists should not let their own biases influence the story.

Is this what happens when you stop making English 101 compulsory? A generation of narrative illiterates?
posted by jokeefe at 1:35 PM on October 16, 2014 [12 favorites]

i feel like valve could really take one for the team here and announce half-life 3.
posted by nadawi at 1:38 PM on October 16, 2014 [5 favorites]

chrchr: "Why are we even discussing the supposed justification for this misogynistic harassment campaign?"

I like discussing the supposed justification because it's something hard and concrete they won't try to weasel out of and I can still argue why they are wrong.

I don't have to argue over whether calling someone "bitch" and "cunt" is misogynistic. I don't have to follow some internet detective's "proof" why someone doxxed themselves. I don't have to prove a conspiracy doesn't exist. I don't have to argue over whether "both sides" harassed anyone. I don't have to prove what nine letters and an octothorpe are really "about."

I like discussing the supposed justification because I don't feel like taking a shower after.
posted by RobotHero at 1:39 PM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

Half-Life 3, but now Gordon Freeman is Gordon Freewoman!
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:39 PM on October 16, 2014 [13 favorites]

jokeefe: Is this what happens when you stop making English 101 compulsory? A generation of narrative illiterates?

It wouldn't help. It's a rare instructor in a rare school that teaches anything of value in english, rhet or comp 101. The colleges really don't seem to have the foggiest notion of what they want from it.
posted by lodurr at 1:40 PM on October 16, 2014

sparkletone: "It's incredibly difficult for me to take these people seriously or give them the normal presumption that they're arguing in good faith."

Absolutely, and I hope my response doesn't read as a defense of GG in any way.
posted by boo_radley at 1:40 PM on October 16, 2014

nadawi: "i feel like valve could really take one for the team here and announce half-life 3."

Half-Life 3, with story by Roxane Gay.
posted by mhum at 1:41 PM on October 16, 2014 [8 favorites]

I will attest that current high school English courses don't teach you much about writing/thinking. Mostly you read books, take quizzes on their content, and write a simple report at the end of each.
posted by Strass at 1:42 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

Half-Life 3, but now Gordon Freeman is Gordon Freewoman!

tagline : she was gordon freewoman all along.
posted by nadawi at 1:44 PM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

Valve announces Half-Life 3: A Twine Adventure.

(I'd play it.)
posted by kmz at 1:44 PM on October 16, 2014 [9 favorites]

Crap. Why can't we have that? I think we need to start a movement. #TwineLifeGate
posted by lodurr at 1:45 PM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

It wouldn't help. It's a rare instructor in a rare school that teaches anything of value in english, rhet or comp 101. The colleges really don't seem to have the foggiest notion of what they want from it.

it also wouldn't help because most GamerGaters are not yet old enough for college
posted by palomar at 1:47 PM on October 16, 2014

I like how the commenters in the guardian article aren't taking shit:

I'm tired of people telling me that I'm the same as the KKK or ISIS just because I support a hashtag.

I'm utterly bemused by this. If someone voices support for ISIS, people treat them as a terrorist supporter. If someone voices support for the KKK people treat them as a racist. If you voice support for gamergate people will treat you as a misogynistic asshat.

posted by Theta States at 1:49 PM on October 16, 2014 [20 favorites]

What the gamergate people are saying today, right now, is that they think that people with a bias are reviewing games based on that bias, and not being honest about having that bias in the first place. Which sounds very abstract and handwavey, I know.

A critic without biases is either a critic without an identifiable personality or no critic at all. I don't see a scandal there. The real scandal is that the big developers' money so powerfully affects most outlets' assessment of their games. Curiously, Gamergate supporters reserve their ire for small indie developers rather than the big studios.

The original scandal was Zoe Quinn's supposedly sleeping with journalists for good coverage - which turned out not to be true. The next scandal was the gaming press's unwillingness to cover the assertions that she had done this, which, again, were untrue. A concurrent scandal was apparently the existence and mainstream acceptance of feminist criticism of video games as performed by Anita Sarkeesian, but I can't see anything inherently wrong with that. The final scandal seems to be "There is opposition to Gamergate," which is nuts.

So why are Gamergate supporters mad? Their stated, respectable reasons turn to vapor if you press them. It seems to boil down to "Get the libs out of our press."
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 1:50 PM on October 16, 2014 [26 favorites]

Also, "Stop pointing out our harassment of women! Otherwise we might have to stop harassing women!"
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:53 PM on October 16, 2014 [8 favorites]

Adam Baldwin actually no joke has a bit voice part in HL2. For maximum trolling, he should be the (presumably silent) antagonist of HL3, the leader of a counterinsurgency opposing Alyx Vance and Judith Mossman, who he thinks have been manipulating Gordon Freeman through sexual favors.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:59 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

The "bias-free" critic is additionally silly in light of the fact that somebody who says that GTA V is funny would be seen as being without bias, whereas somebody who says that GTA V's treatment of women is not funny would be seen as having bias. It's unbiased when it agrees with them.
posted by Sticherbeast at 2:01 PM on October 16, 2014 [14 favorites]

I wish somebody would give Carolyn a job.

Oh, damn. I knew Gamespot laid some people off back in the summer, didn't know she was one. Giant Bomb should hire her ASAP.
posted by sparkletone at 2:03 PM on October 16, 2014

Absolutely, and I hope my response doesn't read as a defense of GG in any way.

It didn't. People here totally get the presumption of good faith until there's a very, very strong reason to believe otherwise. Just pointing another layer to the stinky, stinky onion that is these people's delusional, frequently kinda scary history of behavior towards criticism of games.
posted by sparkletone at 2:05 PM on October 16, 2014

They want the equivalent of Top Gear car reviews, which give you horsepower and top speed and 0-60 and "torques", but also an aesthetic perspective ("WHOOOA", "WHOMP", "it's like riding a filthy dragon!") where the only valid framework is that of the boorish comedy petrolhead chauvinist.

Although Top Gear isn't afraid to dump on a car without fear of manufacturer's pulling advertising because thanks to the BBC the advertising revenue of Top Gear is 0.
posted by PenDevil at 2:13 PM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

The example given that I read (and which made me feel like I could empathize with their position somewhat), was this:

Let's say a reviewer is a conservative Republican and homophobic. He calls himself a journalist. He reviews Dragon Age: Origins, and tears it apart, not because the game mechanics are bad or the graphics suck, but because Dragon Age: Origins has gay characters. Journalists are supposed to be objective, not biased like that.

To the gamergate people, that guy went into the game clearly biased, there was no way he was going to like the game given his biases, and journalists should not let their own biases influence the story. I can't really argue with that.

And if that kind of thing actually ever happened, I wouldn't be able to argue with it either.

However, that's an example they came up after the fact. What actually is setting them off is more like:

Let's say a reviewer is a woman. She calls herself a journalist, and as it turns out she actually is one - albeit, a reviewer. She reviews Grand Theft Auto, and says that she's not happy with it - not because the game mechanics are bad or the graphics suck, in fact she admits that they're good, but because she's noticed that all of the First Person Shooters always seem to have female characters who only serve a limited purpose in these games; and while the game is cool and everything, she says that maybe in the future it'd be even cooler if NPC women had a wider role. Journalists are supposed to be objective - but reviewers don't have to be objective, so she is at liberty to mention her opinions in her review. Still, because the review has a negative element, this negates everything else she said in the review, even the parts she said she liked.

The "let's say a reviewer is a Republican" twaddle is kind of like the "some of my best friends are black people" defense - something they came up with after the fact to cover their ass and try to deny that the only problem they have is that a girl said they didn't like their game, and people listened to her opinion over theirs.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:21 PM on October 16, 2014 [24 favorites]

*punches a duck*

"Hey, stop punching that duck, that's cruel!"

"Okay, yes, granted, but I've stopped punching the duck and started talking to you now, so clearly you can't talk about duck punching any more. Also, what if the duck as a huge robot tiger trying to eat a hospital? You'd want me to punch it then, right?"

*resumes punching duck*
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 2:57 PM on October 16, 2014 [29 favorites]

Half-life actually triggers my anxiety real bad so I'd love to play a Twine version.

It'd be nice if they'd say they'll start working on HL3 only when harassment stops and Quinn and Sarkeesian can go home.
posted by NoraReed at 2:58 PM on October 16, 2014 [6 favorites]

*facepalm*
posted by kmz at 3:13 PM on October 16, 2014 [5 favorites]

So, I haven't been keeping too up to speed with this...only skimming and shaking my head.

But today, I discovered that one of my close friends unironically supports GamerGate and believe it is about journalistic integrity and believes that efforts to make it about feminism are a way of avoiding the very real breaches of integrity that were happening.

He was very disappointed that I couldn't "discuss the issue rationally" and was buying hook, line, and sinker into the social justice warrior obfuscation, and that I was being just like a biblical fundamentalist, rejecting evidence.

I didn't want to debate narrative (since very obviously, if he seriously buys into the journalistic integrity thing, I can't really fight him on that), but I just said, "You know what...I'm going to say it like this. You can consider me a fundamentalist. Because if my fundamentalism is giving the benefit of the doubt to historically and presently harrassed, oppressed, and marginalized groups, I'm fine with that and I'm going to do it every time."

He, like many other people, doesn't like that average gamers get "lumped into" the folks sending death threats, etc., But I had to say, "Look, we've had this conversation, and instead of renouncing death threats, you have said 1) that they cannot be verified as being serious and 2) that they are a distraction from "real issues". i just wish people were as vocal against death threats as they were in trying to address "journalistic integrity" or whatever"
posted by subversiveasset at 3:17 PM on October 16, 2014 [17 favorites]

It'd be nice if they'd say they'll start working on HL3 only when harassment stops and Quinn and Sarkeesian can go home.

I support companies/major industry people stepping up and saying something (eg: Tim Schafer, the ESA's recent statement, and others)... But doing that would be a bit too literally negotiating with terrorists, and fuck that noise.
posted by sparkletone at 3:25 PM on October 16, 2014

i just wish people were as vocal against death threats as they were in trying to address "journalistic integrity" or whatever

My first instinct would be to show a person the documentation about how all this started and how false the breaches are... But I'm not sure that would have any effect.

I would at least maybe ask your friend to read that NeoGAF post by a former pro-GGer and really think about who he's associating himself with. Because the angle most press are taking is generally way more about harassment and death threats than "journalistic integrity," and for good reason.
posted by sparkletone at 3:45 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

*facepalm*

Oh dear god.
posted by Artw at 3:47 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

The Buzzfeed interview with Eron Gjoni gave an amazing portrayal of one of the most entitled and clueless individuals I've ever heard of. Near the end, he talks about how hard his life has become, and how he had to quit his job because of how tiring it was to launch and support an Internet hate group. "Internet warfare takes a surprising amount of dedication.”

Just . . . . I want to say "man up, you fucking crybaby," but I realize that reaction shows how much I've internalized many of the same misogynistic attitudes underlying the gamergate attacks. So . . . "grow up you fucking whiner?" You know what takes a surprising amount of dedication? Keeping yourself and your family safe from troglodytes with Twitter accounts.

Also, It's a rare instructor in a rare school that teaches anything of value in english, rhet or comp 101. - Really? Thanks for dismissing my profession with that stunningly well-grounded generalization.
posted by bibliowench at 4:23 PM on October 16, 2014 [17 favorites]

That BuzzFeed interview gets even more amazing when you check out the alleged transcript from that interview, that Gjoni posted this afternoon. It's here.

And here is a comment on the Gawker post about the interview, in which the author of the BuzzFeed interview is like, "Those are revised questions he sent me hours after our Skype talk."

Eron Gjoni, in case it's not obvious by now, is not mentally well.
posted by palomar at 4:29 PM on October 16, 2014 [15 favorites]

Eron Gjoni has basically set videogames back a decade, if not more, as a medium.
posted by hellojed at 4:32 PM on October 16, 2014 [4 favorites]

How ironic, then, that he doesn't even really like games all that much. They're not a "passion". So it's okay that he's just ruined it for a lot of people. What a mensch.
posted by palomar at 4:35 PM on October 16, 2014

He just really hates his ex-girlfriend.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 4:35 PM on October 16, 2014 [11 favorites]

Why are we even discussing the supposed justification for this misogynistic harassment campaign?

nadawi: because the usual suspects always want to play devil's advocate.

Nadawi, are you referring to my comment? You brought up the Christian reviews and how gamergaters want reviews like that. So I was responding to that to say, hey, I read StopGamerGate2014 and GamerGate peeps on Twitter and here is what the gamergates are saying they want right now regarding reviews.

I am not playing devil's advocate or trying to justify harassment in any way. I really hope you weren't trying to insinuate I was. Were you referring to me?
posted by misha at 4:41 PM on October 16, 2014

Eron Gjoni has basically set videogames back a decade, if not more, as a medium.

Not really. The irony of this all is that GamerGate is kicking up a lot of sound and fury about random smalltime indie game developers. Not even big names like Phil Fish or Jonathan Blow, though the former did get sucked into the ensuing drama and the latter did voice his opinions. Does anyone think that actual game developers on Kickstarter, or Hideo Kojima, or Notch give a hot damn about any of this?

The gamer "community", and gaming "journalism" will be wrecked for a good bit. (Not that the aforementioned Xbox Live cesspools, the harassment women gamers received at fighting game tournaments, etc. elevated the "community" in general prior to this.) GamerGate, like the Tea Party, is one of those phenomena that is part-astroturf, part-mob, and takes up a life of its own. So even after this all dies down, the GG label will be raised up again.

But most people who play, make, or otherwise participate in video games really don't care.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:41 PM on October 16, 2014

But most people who play, make, or otherwise participate in video games really don't care.

That'll come as a huge surprise to all of my game dev friends who have been talking about this issue for two months.
posted by palomar at 4:43 PM on October 16, 2014 [8 favorites]

I can't speak for anyone but myself, misha, but yes, when I saw your post, I was immediately reminded of every other time you've defended men against feminists. This seemed to fit.
posted by palomar at 4:46 PM on October 16, 2014 [16 favorites]

here is what the gamergates are saying they want right now regarding reviews

...that are in opposition to both their original and current tactics and are so completely transparent in their attempts to whitewash the movement that it won't pass the simplest smell test. You've participated in several of these threads, you've read the information provided, you know the timeline, you know how they've been trying to manipulate the narrative. Credulously reporting this as "hey, they're changed and now totally not that bad, guys!" is, at this point, pretty ridiculous.
posted by zombieflanders at 4:52 PM on October 16, 2014 [12 favorites]

But most people who play, make, or otherwise participate in video games really don't care.

I met a lot of the people affected by this, or know people who are directly affected. Some of the have quit games writing because of harassment. One of these writers was the first to feature a game I made in a podcast and talked about it at length. Gamer Gate has dominated the conversation for the past 2 months, and it's a big deal to me.
posted by hellojed at 4:53 PM on October 16, 2014 [15 favorites]

Mod note: A few comments removed, let's cut it out with the English 101 thing.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:56 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

Okay, fair enough. I didn't realize that the mob had grown to such an extent by now.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:58 PM on October 16, 2014

Really good article by Secret Gamer Girl: The Routine Harassment of Women in Male-Dominated Spaces

Also the article links to this which is also quite good: Hyper Mode: How to Be Visibly Femme in the Games Industry which talks about the sort of double-covering (appearing femme, but not too femme) that law professor Kenji Yoshino talks about in his book Covering: The Hidden Assault on our Civil Rights.
posted by larrybob at 5:07 PM on October 16, 2014 [8 favorites]

> Does anyone think that actual game developers on Kickstarter, or Hideo Kojima, or Notch give a hot damn about any of this?

fwiw, Notch cited internet hate as the reason he cashed out.
posted by postcommunism at 5:12 PM on October 16, 2014 [11 favorites]

From Eron's latest blog post about the BuzzFeed article:

"I consulted with a bunch of people — over a dozen [which approaches statistical significance]. Most of them women, most of them in tech fields, a few in games. We thought through the risks, the potential fallout, I made flowcharts of probabilities and possibilities. We debated, we considered, and we came to consensus. From strictly utilitarian terms, the probabilistic risk she posed to those around her was greater than the probabilistic risk posed by the situation turning toxic. The deontological problem of a false idol struck us as more grievous than the deontological problem of potential for a false idol to be harassed. "

"You don’t spend weeks making flowcharts and discussing probabilities with a bunch of people without accounting for the loudest possible outcomes. So yes, I’d considered it possible that things would devolve this way, but I’d assigned it an extremely low probability. Because the model I’d based my predictions on was that of Temkin and Mattingly. "

This kid is so full of himself
posted by Strass at 5:12 PM on October 16, 2014 [14 favorites]

what
posted by Elementary Penguin at 5:16 PM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

That sounds fucking nuts.
posted by Artw at 5:17 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

He's seriously citing Max Temkin's response (which for the record was publicly saying "no, I didn't") to being accused of rape as his model for his ridiculous hate campaign?
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:18 PM on October 16, 2014

> Eron Gjoni has basically set videogames back a decade, if not more, as a medium.

Personally, GG has made me discover a lot more interesting games, including Brianna Wu's Revolution 60 and Vi Hart's Synthesis. Lots more indie developers are getting their voices heard, and of course they will win out in the end. I really think GG (and its eventual failure) might herald the true start of gaming as an artistic medium.
posted by archagon at 5:19 PM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

"I'm calculating a 32.3333% (repeating, of course) chance of survival."
posted by Apocryphon at 5:20 PM on October 16, 2014 [6 favorites]

That sounds fucking nuts.

That sounds fucking actionable. He knowingly put her in a position that could possibly (however small) result in injury or death. He just bet that it wouldn't.
posted by zombieflanders at 5:20 PM on October 16, 2014 [10 favorites]

"but it wasn't a vindictive plot against my ex-girlfriend - i used SCIENCE!"
posted by pyramid termite at 5:20 PM on October 16, 2014 [11 favorites]

That sounds fucking actionable. He knowingly put her in a position that could possibly (however small) result in injury or death. He just bet that it wouldn't.

Given the way she's behaved in general towards this thing and the way this interview thing's gone, I would be more than a little shocked if Quinn hasn't been on the phone to her lawyer today.
posted by sparkletone at 5:25 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

"but it wasn't a vindictive plot against my ex-girlfriend - i used SCIENCE!"

The part I can't get past is that he thought that this would make him look good.
posted by Gygesringtone at 5:26 PM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

by the way, i thought he was under a gag order - just how is that going to work for him?
posted by pyramid termite at 5:27 PM on October 16, 2014

Re: restraining order - there are charming exchanges like this that make me think he's actually unstable and I don't know, everything about this is fucked.
posted by naju at 5:29 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

He has a restraining order against him. Someone posted a link to a tweet from him earlier today (it's just a bit upthread) in which he says he doesn't care and he's going to keep violating the order.
posted by palomar at 5:29 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

Amazingly it WILL make him look good to some people. "well, he put on his Mr. Logic hat and figured this all out, it's not like women are people anyway Also we found out about CORRUPTION so it was for a good cause."
posted by Artw at 5:29 PM on October 16, 2014

by the way, i thought he was under a gag order - just how is that going to work for him?

Someone quoted the type of order up above in the thread 209-something? I haven't googled the details about that. I'm honestly sort of hoping he really is stupid enough to just flagrantly violate it and get punished for it.
posted by sparkletone at 5:29 PM on October 16, 2014

And on non-preview, naju provides the link. thanks, naju!
posted by palomar at 5:29 PM on October 16, 2014

He has a restraining order against him. Someone posted a link to a tweet from him earlier today (it's just a bit upthread) in which he says he doesn't care and he's going to keep violating the order.

Welp. That answers my question about whether he's dumb enough to flagrantly violate the thing constantly.
posted by sparkletone at 5:30 PM on October 16, 2014

The deontological problem of a false idol

What in the actual fuck.

What gets me about this is how completely wrong-headed the entire thing is, from the ground up. They're so deep into this that they throw around terms like "false idol" with a straight face, as if ANYTHING they're talking about is remotely weighty enough to merit that kind of language.

But like...yes! GamerGate is an important thing that a lot of people are talking about! But only because these GG jackasses are behaving so abominably, not because anyone actually thinks that their points are reasonable or their grievances worth ruining women's lives over.
posted by Narrative Priorities at 5:31 PM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

The storyify so far.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:35 PM on October 16, 2014 [9 favorites]

Welp. That answers my question about whether he's dumb enough to flagrantly violate the thing constantly.

And publicly! I suspect that judges really, really hate people who do that.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:38 PM on October 16, 2014

That's a nice summary, EmpressCallipygos.
posted by postcommunism at 5:42 PM on October 16, 2014

I suspect that judges really, really hate people who do that.

... for values of 'hate' roughly equivalent to 'enjoy awarding maximum penalties to.'
posted by lodurr at 5:47 PM on October 16, 2014 [4 favorites]

That's a nice summary, EmpressCallipygos.

To be clear, that's not anything I wrote, it's just something I found.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:52 PM on October 16, 2014

The sad thing is like everything else, judges also vary significantly in how seriously they take threats against women and such, so--I try to be optimistic, but you kinda never know.
posted by Sequence at 5:55 PM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

The fact that there's even a restraining order against him at all gives me hope that the judge will treat violations of the order with the seriousness they deserve.
posted by palomar at 5:56 PM on October 16, 2014

Strass: "From Eron's latest blog post about the BuzzFeed article: [...] You don’t spend weeks making flowcharts and discussing probabilities with a bunch of people without accounting for the loudest possible outcomes."

I don't know what's more scary/hilarious (scarylarious?): that he's lying and never did this or that he actually did do this. What I wouldn't give to see those flowcharts.
posted by mhum at 5:57 PM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

One of the big things I got from the @FuckNoVideoGames storify is the degree of conviction the original gamergate crew had with regard to the insincerity of "SJWs". It reminded me really strongly of the few times I've tangled with MRAs. (That and the cargo-cult deployment of debater's terms.) They seem utterly convinced that feminists can't possibly mean what they say, indeed can't even possibly understand what they're saying.

It must all be a con, seems to be the thinking.

They don't even consider the alternate possibilities.

One of the consequences has been that when it turned out that feminists actually could understand one another, and thus knew when the language was being used in a cargo-cult fashion -- and so, as a consequence, could recognize when an MRA in #gamergate drag was transparently trying to manipulate the conversation -- it didn't go as they planned.

That too is how it usually goes with MRAs. They bounce back, though; seem to assume that you just managed to put one over on them, because there's just no way you could actually be sincere. It's just not possible.
posted by lodurr at 5:57 PM on October 16, 2014 [17 favorites]

For anybody interested, the Isometric podcast with Brianna Wu is going to be starting momentarily at http://5by5.tv/audio, I believe.
posted by Sequence at 6:00 PM on October 16, 2014

Literally minutes ago, I was in my local vape (autocorrect keeps wanting to turn this to "cape" which would be awesome but wrong) shop and the guy in front of me in line asked the friend he was with if she'd heard about the Eliza bot trolling gamergaters on Twitter and she hadn't and suddenly me and the guy and the guy at the register were all acting out the "That's interesting! Tell me more!" and I nearly fell over.
posted by rtha at 6:01 PM on October 16, 2014 [27 favorites]

Wow. They seem like horrible political campaign smear coordinators.

Outside of their huge biases, they seem very rational. Very psychopathically rational. Not trying to win any individual argument, but trying to utterly destroy someone because of their own warped code of justice.
posted by halifix at 6:03 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

Twitter and the poisoning of online debate
posted by Apocryphon at 6:15 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

Or not. It sounds like because the IRC is continuing to exist and isn't moderated (all the 5by5 shows use the same room which stays up all the time), they're maybe not going to livestream. Pity.
posted by Sequence at 6:17 PM on October 16, 2014

They seem like horrible political campaign smear coordinators.

Eh, maybe. I still think the fun of it for them is in the fight. We talk about them as though they're kids, but I'd lay odds that most of the worst of them are over 25, and a lot are over 35. It never ceases to amaze me how long people can hold onto that kind of anger and for a lot of people it just gets worse as they age.
posted by lodurr at 6:22 PM on October 16, 2014 [7 favorites]

IOW: They may be self-sabotaging, to an extent, in order to keep the fight going. Cult leaders do that. I think it's one of the finer distinguishing points between a cult and a religion: if the leaders continue to pick new fights instead of accepting potential resolutions to conflict, it's a cult, not a religion. E.g, compare the Mormon church to their "Latter Day Saints" offshoots.
posted by lodurr at 6:25 PM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

lodurr: It reminded me really strongly of the few times I've tangled with MRAs.

I think there's a pretty big overlap between the two groups.
posted by rmd1023 at 6:30 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

...it's a venn diagram made up of a single circle.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:35 PM on October 16, 2014

Gamergaters are not playing with a full deck.
posted by humanfont at 6:38 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

David Futrelle over at We Hunted The Mammoth has been posting a lot about MRA involvement in and response to GamerGate. Mostly Anita Sarkeesian in the past couple of days, due to her USU talk being cancelled. And yes, there is a TON of overlap between MRAs and GamerGate.
posted by palomar at 6:38 PM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

And yes, there is a TON of overlap between MRAs and GamerGate.

SURPRISE! If anyone is wondering why this took off the way it did, there's your answer. Why would a bunch of videogame nerds on a message board let themselves get suckered by a jilted ex into mobilising? Because it allowed them to say shit they were already thinking and saying, but gave them a justification for it beyond "I despise vagina owners."
posted by supercrayon at 6:42 PM on October 16, 2014 [7 favorites]

well, yeah: I assumed when i read that comment about 'older men manipulating young guys' that it meant MRAs.
posted by lodurr at 6:48 PM on October 16, 2014

halifix: "Outside of their huge biases, they seem very rational. Very psychopathically rational. Not trying to win any individual argument, but trying to utterly destroy someone because of their own warped code of justice."

In D&D terms, I believe this would fall under the Lawful Evil alignment.
posted by mhum at 6:58 PM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

NYT, CNN and CBS morning show today, but also the BBC weighing in on online harassment. The bit of that post that caught my eye in particular:

And it does seem that in the last 24 hours Twitter has made urgent efforts to assist Brianna Wu. She tweeted last night: "I want to thank the Twitter security team for working with me to get my account secure. They get flack, but they've been wonderful to me."

It's widely-accepted that twitter's reporting UI for harassment is execrable, and I totally agree. At the same time, good on them for having some people that will do what they can to help particularly prominent targets.
posted by sparkletone at 7:15 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

At the same time, good on them for having some people that will do what they can to help particularly prominent targets.

Would that they did the same for all targets.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:21 PM on October 16, 2014 [13 favorites]

The deontological problem of a false idol--

Oh, fuck right off, all the way to a contempt charge.
posted by holgate at 7:26 PM on October 16, 2014 [12 favorites]

A few weeks ago, the GG people have boycotted 4chan because they view Moot as a SJW. Does anyone have any idea if that has had any kind of impact on 4chan's popularity? If any site would be vulnerable to a GG boycott, it would be 4chan.
posted by clockworkjoe at 7:26 PM on October 16, 2014

Time.com: The Comic Book World Is Getting Safer for Women, But the Gaming World Isn’t
...using New York Comic Con's prominent anti-harassment policy signs as part of the contrast. And I must add, the fact that nobody threatened to shoot any feminists attending Salt Lake Comic Con last month is a good sign.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:31 PM on October 16, 2014 [5 favorites]

Would that they did the same for all targets.

Like I said upthread, the tools available to verified users can mitigate (to some degree) the experience of being a Twitter target. They are handed out far too sparingly. She's been asking for verified status to restrict sockpuppeting as well. If Twitter doesn't have the resources to support a far lower threshold than it currently sets for the protections that come with verified status, well, um, it's a $30bn public company, and it should have.
posted by holgate at 7:33 PM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

Would that they did the same for all targets.

Presumably this would be the active goal of a team dedicated to making their reporting infrastructure less bullshit. Which they clearly need. They're too busy finding new ways of showing us tweets by accounts we don't follow though.
posted by sparkletone at 7:34 PM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

I really don't feel like looking up the link again, but at one point I saw somebody in KiA asking about the 4chan thing and another GGer saying that basically it hadn't had much impact but they were sure it would eventually and then more people would move to 8chan.
posted by Sequence at 7:37 PM on October 16, 2014

Does anyone have any idea if that has had any kind of impact on 4chan's popularity?

I'm guessing it's negligible, to be honest. 4chan's audience is shockingly broad, and given the built-in anonymity, unless moot says they've seen a real traffic drop, I don't trust any of them to really have been boycotting. They just take that sliver of traffic elsewhere.
posted by sparkletone at 7:37 PM on October 16, 2014

A few weeks ago, the GG people have boycotted 4chan because they view Moot as a SJW. Does anyone have any idea if that has had any kind of impact on 4chan's popularity? If any site would be vulnerable to a GG boycott, it would be 4chan.

~3000 people not going to the site even if it was never again wouldn't even be a drop in the bucket of their traffic. 4chan used and probably still does regularly place super high in alexa rankings. it's been a top 50 site for years.

The idea that this would do anything is something that is only real in the minds of delusional assholes.

Remember what came up above, this is not a large group of people. It's a couple thousand at most.
posted by emptythought at 7:42 PM on October 16, 2014

Also, it's impossible for me to read his update post without thinking that he's trying to basically go revisionist history and say "well since i didn't ask for this what happened isn't my fault" in a lot more words.

Because he's gotten exactly what he wanted. He got revenge on her in a way he couldn't personally do on his own. Now that it worked, it doesn't need to be associated with him at all in any way so he's trying to pull the plug.

I hope he gets eviscerated in court.
posted by emptythought at 7:46 PM on October 16, 2014 [8 favorites]

He got revenge on her in a way he couldn't personally do on his own. Now that it worked, it doesn't need to be associated with him at all in any way so he's trying to pull the plug.



Yeah, narcissists gonna narc.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:58 PM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

I am not playing devil's advocate or trying to justify harassment in any way. I really hope you weren't trying to insinuate I was. Were you referring to me?

I didn't say anything at all in response to your comment, misha, but I surely did think to myself,"This? Again?"

Several hundred comments ago I made a smart ass remark that you took me to task for. I made a more serious response because I thought the topic deserved one, but that you haven't bothered to engage with at all. And yet somehow, in reading the transparent bullshit put forth by the gamergate cretins to justify driving perfectly innocent people out of their homes, dragging their name through mud, and suppressing free speech in academia, you've managed to look past the mountain of toxic crap that they spew, and actual terrorism for fuck's sake, to find something that you can agree with. So maybe take it on board that your approach here seems...idiosyncratic. And that's me expressing it politely.
posted by Ipsifendus at 7:59 PM on October 16, 2014 [24 favorites]

Strass: "From Eron's latest blog post about the BuzzFeed article:
"

"GamerGate can’t distance its self from the trolls because the trolls chase it around, and GamerGate can’t gain legitimacy,"

What a garbage dude.
posted by boo_radley at 8:09 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

The deontological problem of a false idol.

Ignoring the nonsensical pretension of that phrase, it seems like he is waaaaay overingflating the actual significance of Quinn to the game industry & community.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:28 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I think all interviews from here on out will have to be done under some ground rules
posted by boo_radley at 8:47 PM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

Yeah, I think all interviews from here on out will have to be done under some ground rules

Ground rules for interviews (even pre-approved questions) aren't out of the norm at all. Where this goes off the rails is what his suggested ground rules are.
posted by sparkletone at 8:52 PM on October 16, 2014

yes that is the point

that is why it is notable

i went "well that's not unreasonabwa" when I read them

he's clearly in mourning and doesn't know how to process at all
posted by boo_radley at 8:54 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

zoe quinn is actively being doxxed on 8chan (link goes to screen shots where no doxxing info is shown) - note the 5 guys icon...but this isn't about her or the zoepost, nosiree.
posted by nadawi at 8:57 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

Haha goddamn he has no introspection whatsoever. Reminds me of Dave Sim insisting that anybody who wants to communicate with him by letter sign a form stating they think he doesn't hate women.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:59 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

i don't think he's mourning, i think he needs professional help (and maybe court mandated time away from the internet since he can't seem to follow the restraining order). i don't know how anyone read the zoepost and came out of that thinking everything was exactly as he presented it. even people on 4chan saw through it immediately.
posted by nadawi at 8:59 PM on October 16, 2014 [10 favorites]

mourning isn't the right word -- he's looking for sympathy and validation and he doesn't understand why he's not getting it from the people who matter. so odd
posted by boo_radley at 9:08 PM on October 16, 2014

A woman scorned hath not nearly as much fury as a man scorned. Because women aren't encouraged to be pompous, self-absorbed narcissists and men are. Heck, in some circles it's required.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:13 PM on October 16, 2014 [7 favorites]

Honestly, I think he and this kid have a lot in common. previously
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 9:13 PM on October 16, 2014

There has to be some place to send these guys that doesn't buy into the prison industrial complex
posted by divabat at 9:14 PM on October 16, 2014

Why would we ruin a decent place with these guys?
posted by palomar at 9:16 PM on October 16, 2014

Honestly, I think he and this kid have a lot in common.

No. Assuming the engineer isn't lying about lack of payment, that is an entirely justified response that kind of horseshit from people who agreed to pay you in return for work you've done for them who then refuse to pay you. They are not remotely morally equivalent.
posted by sparkletone at 9:24 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

Assuming the engineer isn't lying about lack of payment

Listen to the song, man!
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 9:25 PM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

The cognitive dissonance between "reviews with a bias ahhhhh" and "everyone who wants to talk to me has to agree to these rules which are terrible" is...wow. Just wow.
posted by jetlagaddict at 9:26 PM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

I've been waiting for this whole mess to be addressed by one of the webcomics I follow (even knowing that Penny Arcade is hiding from the issue in an underground bomb shelter), and finally, we have something from David 'Damn You' Willis in "Shortpacked". But if you're looking at something more 'moderate', here's Chris Hallbeck's "Minimumble".
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:29 PM on October 16, 2014 [5 favorites]

Listen to the song, man!

I did back when I first saw this. I don't see the connection to it and the thread we're in right now. As the link states:

Attempting to explain the situation away via YouTube comments, vocalist Alexander Ruiz claims, “Basically we just weren’t financially stable at the time but we WERE planning on paying him back.” Which was instantly shot down by pretty much everyone.

If they promised payment, failed to come through, and then failed badly enough that this seemed like a fun idea to the engineer they screwed over... I have little to no sympathy for the band. Is there something I'm missing here?
posted by sparkletone at 9:34 PM on October 16, 2014

Misogyny isn't our message! It's just our exclusive medium!
posted by Navelgazer at 9:36 PM on October 16, 2014 [17 favorites]

Several hundred comments ago I made a smart ass remark that you took me to task for. I made a more serious response because I thought the topic deserved one, but that you haven't bothered to engage with at all.

were you waiting on a response from me? I didn't realize. I have some major life shit going on right now and have barely glanced at this thread all day.
posted by misha at 9:38 PM on October 16, 2014

Penny Arcade did address it, didn't they? With the whole "wtf people why do we even have to say that you shouldn't threaten and harass people" thing.
posted by Sequence at 9:38 PM on October 16, 2014

The Penny Arcade writer actually came out pretty firmly against gaters recently, saying that even if they had a good point on the side, they've totally ruined it by being awful and need to stop.

"Here’s what’s going on: a distilled form of Abuse is being iterated on a profound and gruesome scale. Such people cannot be allowed to win. Ever.

You can’t threaten people with death, and I resent very strongly being made to type that out. Not only can you not do that because you can’t fucking do it, it has the power to obliterate everything else you say. In fact, it obliterates everything the people around you are trying to say.

[...]I’ve enunciated a reasonable position though, right? That you can’t threaten people’s lives? Watch me get crucified for it; let my crossbeams be made from two sturdy hashtags."
posted by sandswipe at 9:40 PM on October 16, 2014 [4 favorites]

nadawi : "i don't think he's mourning, i think he needs professional help (and maybe court mandated time away from the internet since he can't seem to follow the restraining order)."

I read this comment and thought "wait, did I post this and not remember doing so? No, I generally use capital letters."

Which is to say, what nadawi said.
posted by Lexica at 9:49 PM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

nadawi: "i don't think he's mourning, i think he needs professional help (and maybe court mandated time away from the internet since he can't seem to follow the restraining order)."

Professional help is a good idea. After reading the buzzfeed article, I get the sense that his mom is trying to be a positive/ nurturing influence to him. I hope she succeeds, because, like you say, he's having problems following his restraining order.
posted by boo_radley at 9:55 PM on October 16, 2014

PBS News Hour.
posted by sparkletone at 10:10 PM on October 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

I'm amazed that dude *quit his job* (or was he fired?) so he could prosecute his restraining order violating Internet stalking campaign full time. I can't wait for the ask meta where he wants to know what to say to future employers about that.
posted by chrchr at 10:20 PM on October 16, 2014 [10 favorites]

I was dumb enough to engage again, but I think it went better this time.
posted by Navelgazer at 10:22 PM on October 16, 2014

Age, medication, and fatherhood appear to be working their magic on the PA guys. I'm not sure which of the three are affecting which of the principals but I know all three are involved in various combinations.
posted by Justinian at 10:55 PM on October 16, 2014

So I went to the PA forum to see how the fans reacted to his comment and found:

Good job on Gamergate Tycho. Didn't know you learned from late 1930's Germany in how to deal with groups of people, but the Nazi's would be damned proud of you.

I... I... what? It's just one guy but still... what?
posted by Justinian at 11:01 PM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

Also he used an apostrophe for pluralization. Who is the real Nazi here, I ask you?
posted by Justinian at 11:02 PM on October 16, 2014 [8 favorites]

Thanks for bringing to my attention Penny Arcade's not-very-strongly-worded opinion as an add-on to the newspost attached to a cartoon about Star Wars (which I had otherwise missed) and gave some wiggle room by only dealing with the threats and abuse and giving the #Gaters who 'did it right' an out...

I know that this situation is more complex than anyone is willing to enunciate. I know that “Gaming Journalism” is a contradiction in terms. But they’ve broken your banner, now, and you helped them do it. I grieve for the ones who tried to do it right.

But the response in the PA Forum was heartening... it starts out weak (yes, Godwin was on the #GG side), but by the third page of comments, the not-all-that-numerous defenses of the 'reasonable' #Gaters (most from users who don't even have avatars in the forum) have been responded to rather conclusively by a few good people with facts on their side. Sorry, Tycho, but it wasn't too complex for users Djiem, Cambiata, Pony and Aegeri to enunciate, and you're still hanging too close to the Dickwolves.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:06 PM on October 16, 2014 [4 favorites]

Extra Credits has been similar: on the side of good (Daniel Floyd has used the #StopGamerGate hashtag, for instance, but also specifically telling threateners and doxxers to "fuck off," which is, I guess, strong language for him) but considering their position, they really really need to say something off-twitter about this.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:12 PM on October 16, 2014

I really liked this article by Arthur Chu on the Daily Beast: Of Gamers, Gates, and Disco Demolition: The Roots of Reactionary Rage

He theorizes that there's not as much space as you might think between blowing up disco records and creating a movement to terrorize women for the perceived crime of existing.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 11:28 PM on October 16, 2014 [14 favorites]

He theorizes that there's not as much space as you might think between blowing up disco records and creating a movement to terrorize women for the perceived crime of existing.

oh, please. I was there when the disco records got exploded. That mostly had to be done*. There is very, very much space between that and this.

* I won't derail any further here as I already said my piece about Disco + Suckage in the mid-late 70s in this thread.
posted by philip-random at 11:41 PM on October 16, 2014

I really liked this article by Arthur Chu on the Daily Beast: Of Gamers, Gates, and Disco Demolition: The Roots of Reactionary Rage

I'd been debating with myself the last couple hours whether to post this article. I'm still not entirely done processing it. A connection between that facet of (to me) gay culture and this current bullshit... Well. It hadn't ever occurred to me, even given that I'd long ago recognized Disco Demolition as a deeply homophobic part of Chicago's history.

Yet as removed as I am both temporally and in terms of race and class from disco's roots, it's... Incredibly personal to me for reasons I can barely begin to articulate. But I'm about to try:

I mentioned earlier in this thread being on the periphery of dance music in Chicago... Well. My roots in getting into that are falling in a roundabout way deeply in love with disco. Yes, the super-polished, cheesy-as-fuck, top 40 shit... But even more than that the beautiful, emotional, and frequently musically just batshit crazy/awesome real stuff that most people have never heard of or about (I'd be happy to give pointers to gateways). The kind of disco that gave rise to house. The kind of disco whose roots are in communities of gay men (primarily) of color, whose experiences at the time are so removed from mine, I can only admire their fortitude.

The kind of shit that when it was played at the public memorial for Frankie Knuckles, who passed away this year, in the heart of Chicago... EVERYONE that was there got emotional.

Everyone I admire in dance music modernity either is blatantly working to be a legit part of that lineage, or pays enough tribute and has clearly done their home work to the point that it's not appropriation even if they're working on some other shit. It's veneration. It's knowing what you're about and why you're about it.

I can't say I was any kind of part of it until at most 6 or 7 years ago, but the feelings have been there since 3 or 4 more before that, and it's only grown more intense since I got closer to the epicenters. It's sort of funny. Gaters scream about objectivity, but I feel like my relationship to that music and to the things descended from it is too intense for me to really discuss it coherently. As we've discussed endlessly here, art that really connects with people (even if it's a very few) can't be boiled down to some bullshit lab report "review."

There are other factors, but this plays a major role in what I hope has made me turn out to be an adult I'm vaguely sure isn't inexcusably shitty or blind-folded about the social issues feminists and many others are trying to address despite my deeply white and very privileged background. It's very much part of why I get MAD AS FUCK about this stuff (I've been much more calm in this thread than I've been on twitter and by a large margin more even calmer on twitter than I'd be in real life). If it's not me it's my friends, and if it's not anyone personally, it's values we hold dear.

This is a really long-winded way of saying... The particular connecting of some dots in the linked article gets to some really fucking live-wire shit for me even on top of how this was already and I'm not sure how to deal because I was already sort of red-lining in terms of handling the last few months of this shit.

I guess at the moment ... Preaching to the converted ... But maybe let's all give a fuck or two about other people, especially ones who aren't like us and might not be so fortunate... And then maybe think about how that came about and give another fuck or two.
posted by sparkletone at 11:57 PM on October 16, 2014 [29 favorites]

Amen.
posted by naju at 12:28 AM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

I've been thinking about Gjoni and his use of language in his 'enhanced transcript.' Particularly his insistence that he cares deeply about social justice, and that that's why he was so concerned with 'the deontological problem of a false idol' (a.k.a. destroying Zoe Quinn).

And what struck me was that a month or two or three from now, we will be able to see Gjoni doing a total bitflip on his 'social justice' position. He'll be waxing grandiloquent about the illegitimacy of Social Justice as a concept, and insinuating the insincerity of feminists trying to work for social justice.

In short, I'm pretty sure we'll see him transition into a slick, pretty MRA.

I showed his screed to my wife, on the page that has that cheesecakey picture of him in on the balcony as a background graphic. And her immediate reaction was [paraphrasing from memory] "oh, how predictable, he wants to look like Jesus."

More swirling around in my head, but having a hard time articulating it right at the moment... basically, the guy is creeping me right the hell out.
posted by lodurr at 2:13 AM on October 17, 2014 [7 favorites]

Of Gamers, Gates, and Disco Demolition: The Roots of Reactionary Rage
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:25 AM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

The deep danger and the great trap, the sticky shitty mire that traps our boots and our happy feets and our souls to the dirty floor, almost every-goddamned-one of us in these days of easy instant and disposable 'celebrity', is paying attention to the personalities and so losing sight of the important and enduring things that we should keep pinned flapping to our foreheads so we don't forget to stop thinking about them.

It shouldn't be about who, it's never about who when you take even a marginally longer view, it's about what and why. Or it ought to be, anyway. I'm far from perfect -- I get my furyjuices all a-flowing and running down my chin mixed with the blood and swearwords all the fucking time -- but I still recommend. I always make with the recommending.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 2:25 AM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

But, you know: when the impulse is positive, when the doing is about support and help and defense of those who need our help and support and defense, the bit flips decisively to 'who'.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 2:30 AM on October 17, 2014

oh, please. I was there when the disco records got exploded. That mostly had to be done*. There is very, very much space between that and this.

If you RTFA, the author does a very, very good job of bridging the very, very much space between that and this.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:03 AM on October 17, 2014 [7 favorites]

That Arthur Chu piece really is pretty great.

One of the things I really like about it is where he doesn't go: He doesn't talk about the fallout from being an asian guy who had the temerity to win against caucasians by Using A Strategy. I thought that was an incredibly smart choice of what to not talk about.

I was also impressed by his willingness to eat crow on his own complicity in things like the Dunham pileon.

Chu's turning out to be an interesting voice.
posted by lodurr at 3:09 AM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

"I consulted with a bunch of people — over a dozen [which approaches statistical significance]. Most of them women, most of them in tech fields, a few in games. We thought through the risks, the potential fallout, I made flowcharts of probabilities and possibilities. We debated, we considered, and we came to consensus. From strictly utilitarian terms, the probabilistic risk she posed to those around her was greater than the probabilistic risk posed by the situation turning toxic. The deontological problem of a false idol struck us as more grievous than the deontological problem of potential for a false idol to be harassed. "

So, a creepy dude who thinks his ex is a "false idol" found a cohort of creepy people who give terrible advice?

This. Changes. Everything.
posted by running order squabble fest at 3:19 AM on October 17, 2014 [9 favorites]

Well, he says he did. creepy logicdudes are always talking about the flow charts they've made that never were, and the research they've done that never was. As someone else said up thread, I'm not sure which is worse: if he did, or didn't. If he did, there over 6 women, at least one of whom was in a tech field, who 'came to a concensus' with him that this was a good idea.

But of course that whole passage is weasely as shit. the 'we' referent is vague and he can retroactively claim that 'we' in the third sentence doesn't refer to all 12+ consultants. And it couldn't, because we know that one of them was his mother, and we know that she wasn't part of the concensus.

So he's really a creepy dude, and we just can't take anything he says at face value.
posted by lodurr at 3:27 AM on October 17, 2014 [11 favorites]

He is obviously delusional and everything he has written is a fantasy.
posted by humanfont at 4:48 AM on October 17, 2014

You disappoint me, friends.

You disappoint me.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:01 AM on October 17, 2014

Well, then, the 'what': someone deploying deceptive language to make his enterprise appear well thought out and meticulously reasoned. And the 'why': because that impresses some people.

The 'who' being relevant insofar as we can see from the particulars of this who that he appears to be exhibiting highly narcissistic behaviors -- to have what look like delusions of grandeur. Which leads to another potential 'why': He wants to exercise power over weaker beings. Not just women, but also "betas."
posted by lodurr at 5:26 AM on October 17, 2014

I only caught the tail end of an NPR story this morning, but right before the reporter signed off, she said that "GamerGate" originated as criticism of corruption in gaming journalism. To which I responded, "No, it started as a jilted ex claiming that his former girlfriend recieved favorable press coverage in exchange for sexual favors, which was a total lie, and you're helping give credence to that lie and the rancid movement it spawned."

Sadly, yelling at the radio has had little effect at improving poor journalism.
posted by Gelatin at 5:26 AM on October 17, 2014 [20 favorites]

And the 'why this who': because he's the proximate cause (at least, appears to be, and certainly thinks himself to be) of the current shape the discussion has taken. (He did the flowcharts, after all.)

but stravros, i do take your point: making gjoni the villain of the piece misses the larger and deeper picture.
posted by lodurr at 5:31 AM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm also marveling at the weird shit in Eron Gjoni's skype transcript where he claims both to be pro-polyamory AND seems to believe infidelity "violates consent". I feel bad for picking on someone who clearly is having a major breakdown, but Christ, no, regardless of the terms of your relationship, you were not raped, son.
posted by almostmanda at 5:37 AM on October 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

Gelatin: I'm an NPR member and I'm going to comment on that report on their web site.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:02 AM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

....Never mind, about 999 other people have done so already.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:03 AM on October 17, 2014 [4 favorites]

@EmpressCallipygos: Good; I hope in this case reading the comments would be heartening.
posted by Gelatin at 6:07 AM on October 17, 2014

I'm also marveling at the weird shit in Eron Gjoni's skype transcript where he claims both to be pro-polyamory AND seems to believe infidelity "violates consent".

I haven't seen exactly what Eron Gjoni said, but those concepts aren't mutually exclusive. One can be pro-polyamory and believe that when in a monogamous relationship arrangement, having sex with someone else without one's partner's knowledge and consent is out of bounds.

(I hasten to add that no, it doesn't make the monogamous relationship "rape," and if he's claiming that I do agree that's deeply weird. It means you were cheated on -- and I've known polyamorous couples in which one partner still cheated -- not raped.)
posted by Gelatin at 6:12 AM on October 17, 2014 [4 favorites]

I've been reading The Fine Young Capitalists interview on apgnation. They seem to throw around some terms pretty loosely -- e.g., posting a link to someone's Facebook profile seems to count as "doxxing", tweets that lead to high traffic count as "DDOSing", and there's a picayune level of tit-for-tat detail. It's interesting. Are these folks supposed to be actually representative of some new feminist wave? Because the vibe I'm getting is not very trustworthy. I would not want to interact professionally with these folks, based on what I'm reading here.
posted by lodurr at 6:21 AM on October 17, 2014

I think he's only using the word "consent" to signal transgressions far more severe than whatever went down in this relationship. The interviewer gives him several opportunities to explain what she did that warranted such a severe, public reaction, and all he can do is speak in generalities peppered with words like "abuse" "violation" and "consent" to make a very typical bad breakup sound like domestic violence.
posted by almostmanda at 6:24 AM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

That transcript is here btw.
posted by almostmanda at 6:27 AM on October 17, 2014

Gelatin, I had a similar thought re. polyamory and "cheating" -- I know that a lot of people in 'open relationships' have an agreement that permission will be asked, and in something that qualifies as 'polyamory' I've always understood that consent of the partners was generally required. Gjoni's not a terribly trustworthy source, though, so who knows what the real relationship was. He's admitted to sexing up the narrative to make it appealing. Apparently that was OK because it served the larger, and critical, deontological imperative of bringing down that false idol. Given that, we don't really have a way of knowing what else he's going to deem is less important than his deontological imperative.

Which is the key thing, I guess: His deontological imperative is used to justify a 'useful lie.'

And this is another 'what', to deploy stavros's criteria: someone who accepts the 'useful lie' will probably assume that everyone else accepts it, too. Which could explain the conviction that anyone who claims an interest in social justice must be lying.
posted by lodurr at 6:28 AM on October 17, 2014 [6 favorites]

Gjoni's not a terribly trustworthy source, though


This. We're trying to examine the motives of someone who would be the perfect unreliable narrator of his own 18th-century bildungsroman.


We know what he did, and even he freely admits it. At this point, his self-serving justifications are wholly irrelevant.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:32 AM on October 17, 2014 [14 favorites]

... the perfect unreliable narrator of his own 18th-century bildungsroman.

Has this been done? I mean, as an 18th (or 19th) century period piece. It could be neat.
posted by lodurr at 6:39 AM on October 17, 2014

That would probably involve a closer reading of his corpus than I am willing to do.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:43 AM on October 17, 2014

5 Responses to Sexism That Just Make Everything Worse, Winston Rowntree, Cracked, 15 November 2013

The worst response to sexism is of course to brush it off or cheer it on or suggest that it is somehow "over"; let that not be in doubt. But as good as it would feel to go off on a jeremiad about such things, it's likely going to be more productive to focus on what we the non-sociopaths are doing when faced with the depressingly ongoing issue of people treating others based on a few trivial anatomical differences. Like all problems, it persists because the majority of people are not doing enough to combat it, so what could we the majority be doing better? A lot, probably. Because so often our reactions when faced with sexism are a Pogo paradox-style causality loop of inadvertently making the problem worse.

posted by ob1quixote at 6:59 AM on October 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

lodurr: Where the Fine Young Capitalists are concerned, I think the thing that they found most objectionable is that there isn't actually a "they". It's a "he". One guy appears to own the whole thing, but he didn't want his name associated with any of it. It's also a for-profit corporation, not a charity, and that wasn't clear from their original fundraising, either. That information coming out sort of wrecked the chances of his getting rich off of his alleged feminism; the GGers are his second choice revenue stream. So now he's playing up the victim thing and deliberately baiting Zoe Quinn and whoever else he can think of.
posted by Sequence at 7:15 AM on October 17, 2014 [12 favorites]

If he did, there over 6 women, at least one of whom was in a tech field, who 'came to a concensus' with him that this was a good idea.

being a woman does not automatically make you side with other women, especially if you think you're "not like the other girls." i know a group of self proclaimed feminists, men and women, who all rallied around a dead beat dad because they didn't like the mother of his child - they have bought his side of the story (which is weasel-y bullshit) and attacked her while absolving him of having any interaction or responsibility to his child. so he continues on surrounding himself with poly affection and bolstered by women who swear he's not a bad guy while his ex and his child get by on their own. this awesome fpp discusses how women turn on each other (and maybe how we can stop).

as far is the sad sack of shit that started this santorum ball rolling, the rape stuff comes directly from thezoepost, he claims it's something she said - that infidelity was forcing your partner into a non-consensual relationship and as such was rape. whoever said it, it's a dumb idea and very wrong - and what inspired a bunch of fuckboys to fill up my twitter mentions accusing me of being a rape apologist and a rapist.
posted by nadawi at 7:18 AM on October 17, 2014 [18 favorites]

That helps. TFYC was recently cited on a Facebook thread my wife was on as an example of "bad feminists who need to be called out." (In context that was a totally inane thing to say, regardless of any +/-virtues of TFYC.) The term 'fifth-column feminists' was also used, which piqued my interest.
posted by lodurr at 7:19 AM on October 17, 2014

as far is the sad sack of shit that started this santorum ball rolling, the rape stuff comes directly from thezoepost, he claims it's something she said - that infidelity was forcing your partner into a non-consensual relationship and as such was rape. whoever said it, it's a dumb idea and very wrong - and what inspired a bunch of fuckboys to fill up my twitter mentions accusing me of being a rape apologist and a rapist.

Congratulations, you've found literally the worst thing I've heard since I got up last night. That's simply amazing.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:20 AM on October 17, 2014 [9 favorites]

... and what inspired a bunch of fuckboys to fill up my twitter mentions accusing me of being a rape apologist and a rapist.

They thought they'd found a linguistic exploit.
posted by lodurr at 7:22 AM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm sitting here trying to parse the idea and can't make sense of it; I need to let it go and get work done. But it occurs to me that there are 2 basic options with a concept like that:

1. Accept that it doesn't make sense and put it aside in some sense.
2. Treat it as a linguistic exploit, as though it actually meant something.

posted by lodurr at 7:24 AM on October 17, 2014

It's a cargo-cult argument: a bunch of important sounding words and phrases strung together without any deeper understanding of what makes an argument persuasive.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 7:24 AM on October 17, 2014 [13 favorites]

being a woman does not automatically make you side with other women, especially if you think you're "not like the other girls."

Quoted for motherfucking TRUTH. I've encountered so many girls and women in my lifetime who prided themselves on not having any female friends because they can't get along with other women and prefer being "one of the guys". The women who are part of GamerGate seem very much like the women I've known before.
posted by palomar at 7:26 AM on October 17, 2014 [8 favorites]

Re: TFYC, I'd say it's more like "not feminist at all, but would like to financially take advantage of feminists".
posted by Sequence at 7:26 AM on October 17, 2014 [10 favorites]

sequence, that reminds me again of Faludi's Stiffed -- she basically calls out the Promise Keepers for trying to do that to conservative men, as the organization seemed to really be all about harvesting revenue off of underemployed christian men.
posted by lodurr at 7:29 AM on October 17, 2014

they use rape because they think it's a trump card and they think that's all women use it as. they often don't believe in non-violent, non-stranger rape. they think we've weaponized it it "win."
posted by nadawi at 7:29 AM on October 17, 2014 [25 favorites]

What's terrifying is, as lodurr said above, this is what they think women do because they assume insincerity. They think when feminists/women talk about rape culture or accuse someone of sexual assault, they are twisting innocent things to be associated with rape to tar people with opinions they don't approve of. And figuring out some language trick to call feminists "the real rape apologists" is just dishing out what they're receiving, not complete nonsense.
posted by almostmanda at 7:31 AM on October 17, 2014 [7 favorites]

Interesting angle: GamerGate is McCarthyism. Don't let it silence you.
posted by palomar at 7:43 AM on October 17, 2014 [4 favorites]

Anita Sarkeesian on GamerGate: 'We Have a Problem and We're Going to Fix This'
posted by palomar at 8:00 AM on October 17, 2014 [5 favorites]

I saw one argument that game reviews should be like lab reports, with any "opinions" (i.e. discussion on game narrative as it intersects with, um, real life) relegated to separate pieces, which blows my mind. It's arguing that games should be reviewed using similar criteria to, I suppose, game consoles or game controllers.

I wonder if that person agrees with Roger Ebert's initial contention that video games are not art, because that position seems a powerful argument in favor of it.
posted by Gelatin at 8:02 AM on October 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

So Brianna Wu just got targeted by this.

"Now remember, we are doing this to incite as much butthurt as possible, so don't engage in civil reasoned debate."
posted by murphy slaw at 8:23 AM on October 17, 2014

I've never felt the 'art'/'not-art' distinction helps much at all for this kind of thing, but that may be because I have a particular view on what constitutes art. To me, 'art-making' is the process of (I would say, consciously) engaging in creative activity to solve what for lack of a better term & being sloppy will call a 'metaphysical problem.'

So most commercial video games, like most *wood movies, aren't really art, because the creative activity is engaged in to solve a commercial problem, not a metaphysical one. Some would be, if their creative teams are in it for that kind of juice and have the latitude to push that agenda.

But still I'm not sure what that would do for a review. To me the review's qualities are the same, because whether it "is" art or not doesn't necessarily have any bearing on whether someone reads it as art.

And if they did or didn't, what bearing would that have on the review? There are still functional criteria to address. (Does it play well? Are the graphics fast?) Some of those are aesthetic. (is the imagery attractive? Does the character-logic make sense?) Some may be artistic. (Does it speak to me? Does it say anything I think is interesting?)

I think you can read almost any narrative product as art, regardless of whether it fits some definition, mine or anyone else's. And I think people routinely do.
posted by lodurr at 8:29 AM on October 17, 2014

There's also the fact that "objective reviews" are nothing more than a gossamer fig leaf for their actual purpose.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:32 AM on October 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

Of course, and just another example of how, as nadawi pointed out earlier, they fail their own tests time and again.
posted by Gelatin at 8:34 AM on October 17, 2014

... a gossamer fig leaf for their actual purpose.

You mean in the gamergate rhetoric, or in general?

If the former, I agree wholeheartedly.

If the latter, I respectfully disagree. But that's probably a derail we don't need to get into.
posted by lodurr at 8:37 AM on October 17, 2014

So Brianna Wu just got targeted by this.

I just copied the URL of the screenshot and did a search for any new game reviews that seemed to take this tack, and commented on how fishy it was that a 3-month-old review had a 3-day-old comment and pasted the URL for the screenshot. Sort of an "I saw what u did ther".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:37 AM on October 17, 2014 [11 favorites]

So Brianna Wu just got targeted by this.

They're holding on to their straw-feminist stereotypes ("womyn") so tightly that they can't even let them go when attempting to infiltrate feminist discussion. I can't even gin up outrage for this, it's so pitifully inept.
posted by almostmanda at 8:42 AM on October 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

One of the big things I got from the @FuckNoVideoGames storify is the degree of conviction the original gamergate crew had with regard to the insincerity of "SJWs". It reminded me really strongly of the few times I've tangled with MRAs. (That and the cargo-cult deployment of debater's terms.)

They're holding on to their straw-feminist stereotypes ("womyn") so tightly that they can't even let them go when attempting to infiltrate feminist discussion. I can't even gin up outrage for this, it's so pitifully inept.

You know what it really reminds me of? It reminds me of people who are bad at a game and who have no interest in understanding it, don't understand even the real basics of skillful play, and so they freak out and scream at people who do have that understanding and skill. They're the people who button mash because they don't understand the difference between that and skillful play, all the while screaming at the people who win for being lucky or cheating. They're the people who are angry that skill exists and angry at people for having it, and never caring to acquire it for themselves.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:48 AM on October 17, 2014 [19 favorites]

A+ for Arthur Chu for ending with a Gloria Gaynor quote
posted by Strass at 8:52 AM on October 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

That Arthur Chu piece really is pretty great.

I'd seen that piece but hadn't caught that it was Chu (filed it away in my to-reads in Instapaper and then just read it without noticing the author). Every time I see something he's written, it's solid. I'm glad he tackled gamergate.
posted by immlass at 8:54 AM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

"Objective" is a meaningless term primarily used to indicate the user is a Mr. Logic type about to bore the listener with their smug superiority.
posted by Artw at 8:54 AM on October 17, 2014 [5 favorites]

That hits really close to home, Pope_Guilty, if I think back to myself before certain growth events (when I was about 17 or so, back in teh stone age).

If the pretty, smart girl you'd like to make time with thinks you're a clown, it can feel utterly humiliating -- but it's even worse if she's got access to language and intellectual tools you don't have the most basic comprehension of.

And letting yourself run away with that digs you into an even deeper hole, where you see it all as a bunch of tricks that exist just to keep you down. It's the same mindset that underpins the MRA/PUA cults.

If you allow yourself to literally grow into that culture, as a lot of guys these days seem to do...well, once you're past about 28-30, there's probably not a lot of hope you'll really change in any deep way.
posted by lodurr at 8:55 AM on October 17, 2014 [4 favorites]

lodurr: They seem to throw around some terms pretty loosely -- e.g., posting a link to someone's Facebook profile seems to count as "doxxing", tweets that lead to high traffic count as "DDOSing", and there's a picayune level of tit-for-tat detail.

They're too young to remember when we called that "slashdotting", bless their little blackened hearts.
posted by sukeban at 8:56 AM on October 17, 2014 [17 favorites]

I started following Arthur Chu on twitter due to his patient discourses with some of the gaters. And wow, his article is one of the best pieces I've read. It is also rather heartening, and doesn't directly address gamergate as much as other articles.
posted by Theta States at 9:28 AM on October 17, 2014

sparkletone: the beautiful, emotional, and frequently musically just batshit crazy/awesome real stuff that most people have never heard of or about (I'd be happy to give pointers to gateways).

aw yeah any time
posted by sandswipe at 9:29 AM on October 17, 2014

From Waxy: Gamergate is Running Out of Heroes

It's interesting that Yahtzee Croshaw hasn't taken a stand against Gamergate. Granted, he's on Australian time, but still...
posted by Going To Maine at 9:33 AM on October 17, 2014 [7 favorites]

My brain is pulsing in preparation for explosion at the idea that you could read Oglaf and assume the creators are pro-GG. Yeesh.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:37 AM on October 17, 2014 [7 favorites]

Maybe they got pro-GG and pro-GGG confused.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:43 AM on October 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

Quick correction, everyone: Eron Gjoni does have one regret! And it's a doozy.
posted by palomar at 9:50 AM on October 17, 2014 [5 favorites]

Pope Guilty: "My brain is pulsing in preparation for explosion at the idea that you could read Oglaf and assume the creators are pro-GG. Yeesh."

Because Oglaf has sex in it and feminists hate sex, doncha know?
posted by RobotHero at 9:52 AM on October 17, 2014

Hilarity :

The Leader of Gamergate 10/17/14 (Fri) 01:52:14 ID: 3511f8 No.147792
Can someone link me the tweets in question? I'm on my dad's ipad and twitter makes even less sense than usual.

posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 9:53 AM on October 17, 2014 [5 favorites]

I don't see Yahtzee being in a rush to jump into this, but I also don't see him being faintly concerned with game criticism being overrun with SJWs, either, since he's been fairly pragmatic about such things in the past. I.e., he seems to regard statements like "shooters where all the bad guys are brown are uncomfortably racist" and "there is not actually a reason to make the same boring white guy the protagonist of every single game" as not actually controversial.
posted by Sequence at 9:56 AM on October 17, 2014

I'd never heard of Oglaf before someone mentioned it in reply to my sharing of the waxy.org post elsewhere. But I'd guess GG dudes believe all SJWs/feminists hate everything sexy, and therefore it's theirs. (ha!) But...apparently most of them think that having done anything X-rated renders you morally compromised and a fair target. Now, don't ask me how they manage to hold both of those ideas at once, but I'm pretty sure "zero self-reflection ever" MIGHT have something to do with it.
posted by wintersweet at 10:06 AM on October 17, 2014 [4 favorites]

It makes sense if you assume they thought Oglaf was drawn by a dude.
posted by almostmanda at 10:09 AM on October 17, 2014

From Waxy: Gamergate is Running Out of Heroes

If Gabe Newell said anything, this movement can be over yesterday.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:12 AM on October 17, 2014

But...apparently most of them think that having done anything X-rated renders you morally compromised and a fair target.

For some of them it's obviously just vicious misogyny [which it kind of freaks me out that people actually & unironically say that kind of thing outside of rage-porn].
posted by lodurr at 10:13 AM on October 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

If Gabe Newell said anything, this movement can be over yesterday.

Unless he owns a controlling interest that would likely mean losing his job. You will note the absence of anyone corproate commenting anywhere in the whole thing.
posted by lodurr at 10:15 AM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

But I'd guess GG dudes believe all SJWs/feminists hate everything sexy, and therefore it's theirs.

feminists are humorless and think sex is bad, unlike me, a man who screams slurs at women online for having sex
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 10:18 AM on October 17, 2014 [21 favorites]

Quick correction, everyone: Eron Gjoni does have one regret! And it's a doozy.

Yes, I regret Zoe was willing to risk doing this to those women. I.e, you are assigning blame arbitrarily down a causal chain

"If I have one regret, it is that the bitch set me up"?
posted by murphy slaw at 10:24 AM on October 17, 2014 [7 favorites]

From the closing paragraph of the Eurogamer piece, because it's a nice button:

GG is now a common acronym for GamerGate. But it has another meaning in games culture: "good game", quickly typed at the end of a match of StarCraft or Counter-Strike or sent over Xbox Live after a close race in Forza; a sportsmanlike bow at the end of a duel, and always considered good form. Even within the heated world of online gaming, it's a universal expression of courtesy, of community spirit, of common enjoyment - which, it's worth remembering, have always been deeply held values of the gaming community.

Let's keep talking about how games matter, but let's turn our back on the term GamerGate and all the hate and exclusion it has come to stand for. We hope this is the last time we'll ever have to use it on this site. Let's have GG mean "good game" again.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:25 AM on October 17, 2014 [4 favorites]

Then WTF is he waiting for? are there any indies he respects? They could apply some gentle pressure. (Of course we don't know what the blowback for him would be inside the company, but fuck that.)
posted by lodurr at 10:26 AM on October 17, 2014

E.G.: you are assigning blame arbitrarily down a causal chain

"But not as arbitrarily as I am."
posted by lodurr at 10:28 AM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

Quick correction, everyone: Eron Gjoni does have one regret! And it's a doozy.

Wow, what a narcissist piece of shit. At least Quinn's well rid of him.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:30 AM on October 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

Oglaf is a two-person collab, is it not?
posted by bonehead at 10:31 AM on October 17, 2014

I have a fantasy, today, which is Gabe Newell says "GamerGate is absolute bullshit. Go ahead and boycott Valve. Oh, by the way, Half Life 2: Episode 3 will be shipping next week."
posted by rmd1023 at 10:40 AM on October 17, 2014 [10 favorites]

rmd1023: "I have a fantasy, today, which is Gabe Newell says "GamerGate is absolute bullshit. Go ahead and boycott Valve. Oh, by the way, Half Life 2: Episode 3 will be shipping next week.""

yes, ala steam_modern_warfare2_boycott.jpg for those unfamiliar with How This Sort of Boycott Usually Goes.
posted by boo_radley at 10:47 AM on October 17, 2014 [9 favorites]

Rolling Stone published an interview with Anita Sarkeesian today.
posted by papercrane at 10:47 AM on October 17, 2014 [5 favorites]

aw yeah any time

MeMail me, sandswipe and anyone else, because I am both less likely to forget to do this if you do, and also this thread isn't the place for that kind of infodump!
posted by sparkletone at 10:54 AM on October 17, 2014

I have a fantasy, today, which is Gabe Newell says ...

Valve announces Twitter integration with Steam. Users who have never tweeted #Gamergate or have tweeted #stopgamergate2014 get special hats (or DOTA items, or CS:GO items.)
posted by papercrane at 10:58 AM on October 17, 2014

rorgy: I believe, and I am sympathetic to, the idea that this game of conquest hurts men, not just women.

Jimbob: Yep. Saw this the other day, it's great and I don't understand why so many men don't get it.

Because misogyny is so damned systematic that put-downs like "man-boobs" aren't generally recognized as a misogynistic diss. I've only become aware of "You [do x] like a girl" being recently treated as a put-down to women, though discussions don't usually take this to calling out those disses as misogyny, which they are. When misogynistic jokes are part of the cultural norm, it's hard to step back and realize there's something deeply wrong.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:05 AM on October 17, 2014 [7 favorites]

I love this last part from the Rolling Stone interview...

Yet you've been targeted in ways that are literally criminal. Have you ever wanted to say "OK, that's enough" and walk away?

I'd be lying if I said I'd never considered stopping. I mean, anyone in this position would have doubts now and again. I've been terrorized nonstop for over two years now. It's a lot for one person to take in.

But I feel like the work I'm doing is really important. The amount of support that I get for doing it, the actual change that I am starting to see, the really sweet messages that I get from people about how they were resistant to identify as feminist, but then they watched my videos and they were like, "Oh, obviously! I agree with these things!", the parents who use it as an educational tool for their kids…all of this is really inspiring to me. When I was in Portland for my talk at the XOXO Festival, this little boy came up to me and said, "Hi, I'm a feminist gamer." How do you stop doing this work after that?
posted by naju at 11:09 AM on October 17, 2014 [28 favorites]

MetaFilter's fearless leader
posted by Going To Maine at 11:54 AM on October 17, 2014 [29 favorites]

On the one hand, I'm happy that more and more mainstream news groups are doing good reporting on the issue, further isolating the Gameegate people. On the other herbs, it worries me that this is feeding the gaters sense of being persecuted "truth holders".

I find myself comparing it to the old "fandom is a way if life" and "fans are slans" beliefs from SF fandom, of being a special group misunderstood and persecuted by the larger society. But while that attitude lead to some horrific results (like MZ Bradley), it was oriented toward separatism and maintaining internal order, not attacking perceived enemies.

On the other hand, I'm glad that Vox Day and the Baen Boys didn't have GamerGate as an example when they were attacking women in science fiction.

So I'm seeing Gaters in the future becoming more isolated, conspiratorial and extreme. I think the best case scenario is that the true believers give up on engaging with people, make their own walled garden, and create their own review sites. Of course before then, the people using them are going to have to drop out.
posted by happyroach at 11:54 AM on October 17, 2014

Going To Maine: "MetaFilter's fearless leader"

I have to admit I was expecting a link to this.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 12:01 PM on October 17, 2014 [12 favorites]

Happyroach: Vox Day used a lot of the same tricks, including trying to co-opt the language. He just had the misfortune (or we the good fortune, depending on your PoV) to be widely and deeply disliked and distrusted within the SF/F community. That, and going up against a bunch of people who were way, way better writers than him.
posted by lodurr at 12:06 PM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

In fact Vox Day could pretty much be a template for your typical original-core-gamergater.
posted by lodurr at 12:09 PM on October 17, 2014

Rolling Stone published an interview with Anita Sarkeesian today.

Their subhead calls her "pop culture's most valuable critic". Good going, Gamergaters, you have put one of your biggest targets in the mainstream cultural spotlight.

Meanwhile, from the above link to Waxy's Gamergate is Running Out of Heroes, they have officially "lost" Felicia Day, William Gibson, Patton Oswalt, Seth Rogen, Greg Rucka, John Scalzi, Tim Schafer, Jon Stewart, and Joss Whedon, Wil Wheaton, among many others whose support they never had in the first place.

Isn't it time Gamergate changed its mascot from "Vivian James" to this?
posted by Doktor Zed at 12:21 PM on October 17, 2014 [16 favorites]

I find it beyond hilarious that these chumps ever dreamed that Felicia Day would be on their side, let alone any of the other people listed. To me, that's probably one of the biggest indicators of how delusional they are. Sure, kids, a big bunch of famous people who are against sexism and racism and bullying and general shitweaseldom are TOTALLY going to be cool with you. Suuuuuuure.
posted by palomar at 12:25 PM on October 17, 2014 [14 favorites]

I love how "lost" implies a straying from the herd

like William Gibson or Scalzi would ever have given their attitude the time of day.

EDIT: although of course, "lost" is also framing to say "we are so sincere and innocent in our beliefs that of course we assume these people would be with us"
posted by postcommunism at 12:26 PM on October 17, 2014

Oh, Scalzi would have given it the time of day, alright. And it would have wished it had never made the acquaintance.
posted by lodurr at 12:28 PM on October 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

the short version of jscalzi's take on it, c. 10/11.
posted by lodurr at 12:32 PM on October 17, 2014 [4 favorites]

Oh, Scalzi would have given it the time of day, alright. And it would have wished it had never made the acquaintance.

In fact, that's pretty much how it played out.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 12:33 PM on October 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

Scalzi's been mocking them since shortly after the whole thing began, and Wheaton's posted a lot of links to takedowns in his tumblr/blog.
posted by zombieflanders at 12:33 PM on October 17, 2014

The Guardian has a new piece today on Brianna Wu:

Brianna Wu and the human cost of Gamergate: 'every woman I know in the industry is scared'
posted by palomar at 12:33 PM on October 17, 2014 [6 favorites]

The New Yorker has a new piece up on Gamergate. Loved the conclusion:

Those who wish to censor or expel certain creators and critics are often avid fans of video games, but their views are antithetical to its virtues. At their best, video games promote empathy and understanding by allowing us to experience virtual life from another’s perspective. Those who stand against honest debate and dialogue may think that they are protecting a beloved pastime, but their actions compromise its vibrant future.
posted by papercrane at 12:36 PM on October 17, 2014 [7 favorites]

In the thread mourning the "loss" of William Gibson, one the first comments is "red pill him. the 60 seconds of gamergate usually works". Like the level of delusion here is hilarious. Red pill him, bro. The 60 second video will convince him!
posted by naju at 12:37 PM on October 17, 2014 [10 favorites]

So, serious question:

I'm currently interning at a major international organisation working on a project aimed at highlighting women in STEM. The project is in conjunction with the larger organisation's main vision of funding women's rights projects worldwide, and the plan is to have a Technology fund to support projects that either support women in technology or help bring access to technology to other women's groups.

After GamerGate (which my direct supervisor is aware of) I'm wondering about how we can better support ourselves and our would-be grantees against this level of abuse. For instance, if we funded Feminist Frequency (and I really hope we do) we might get a zillion death threats and hatemail from GamerGate types.

(I kind of anticipate that we'll get some backlash just for the exhibition content alone, but the money aspect could be yet another factor.)

What are some things we could do as an organisation to provide support and safety both for us and for our grantees? Is there anything we can do?

As mentioned, I'm an intern, so I'm not entirely sure how much power or say I have in how the Technology fund will run. But they've appreciated my content ideas so far and I'm personally curious anyway.
posted by divabat at 12:39 PM on October 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

Why would anyone have assumed Felicia Day, creator of a series about gamers including women, would be on Gamergate's side?
posted by jeather at 12:47 PM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

the human cost of Gamergate: 'every woman I know in the industry is scared'

I know that after I engaged my first gater I went through my feed and deleted any tweeted family pics so they couldn't be vandalized and then used against me.
posted by Theta States at 12:47 PM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

For instance, if we funded Feminist Frequency (and I really hope we do) we might get a zillion death threats and hatemail from GamerGate types.

I think at this point there is SUCH a critical mass that the odds of anyone targeting your group would be slim.
It's like with #StopGamerGate2014, many women finally felt there was the critical mass that they weren't a risk for being "made an example of".

And GG is all "slick PR talk" this days, so I don't think they'd say boo about a Women In STEM org.
posted by Theta States at 12:51 PM on October 17, 2014

I'm still enjoying /r/BestOfOutrageCulture. It's basically become a list of what one commenter there called "attempted Braveheart speech moments".
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 12:51 PM on October 17, 2014 [8 favorites]

We are a major international organisation that is 100% focused on women - if anyone's going to get the brunt of the death threats it'd be us. They've already harassed Intel and The Guardian.
posted by divabat at 12:54 PM on October 17, 2014

(the Women in STEM thing is a new subproject, not the entirety of the organisation's work)
posted by divabat at 12:55 PM on October 17, 2014

I'm still enjoying /r/BestOfOutrageCulture. It's basically become a list of what one commenter there called "attempted Braveheart speech moments".

Oh those motherfuckers did not invoke To Kill a Mockingbird.
posted by Navelgazer at 12:55 PM on October 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

From BestOfOutrageCulture:

"I personally want revenge for my attempted murder as a result of SJWs."

....and when you click through for the explanation, it's someone tweeting about "nearly getting shot in the head through the actions of '68 Marxists".

....Uh?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:59 PM on October 17, 2014

We are a major international organisation that is 100% focused on women - if anyone's going to get the brunt of the death threats it'd be us. They've already harassed Intel and The Guardian.

I would just inform your Public Relations department to expect about 1100 concerned-yet-stern letters about The State Of Gaming Culture today, then. :)

But really, they have no way to pile on you. Writing to Intel was just a tactic to punish Leigh Alexander, trying to make her "a very expensive writer for a site to hire".
I am sure The Guardian fields a mountain of crackpot letters daily. Have they done anything else for The Guardian that I am not aware of?

They don't take on large orgs of any stripe, which is part of the Gamergate joke: They only attack small-reach [women] indies so they can chalk up victories.
posted by Theta States at 1:01 PM on October 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

This breakdown of the similarity of the KiA subreddit to others, and the overlap of users with other subreddits, is kind of interesting.
posted by palomar at 1:08 PM on October 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

In fact Vox Day could pretty much be a template for your typical original-core-gamergater.
posted by lodurr at 12:09 PM on

Including having a bunch of followers who are convinced they everyone else has "drunk the koolaid". And moving from general forums to a private forum where there are no dissenting voices.

I'd wonder if there is much overlap between the two groups, but the Baen Boys seem even too reactionary for the gamergate crowd.
posted by happyroach at 1:25 PM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

So someone in my propaganda class just linked to this story about Hatred, which appears to be a mass murder simulator. How kicky and fun! My classmate floated the rumor that the developers (who are Polish) are honest to god neo-Nazis, but I can't find anything to back that up... in any case, their decision to release the game trailer this week pretty much reeks of trying to capitalize on GamerGate. Grosssssssss.
posted by palomar at 1:26 PM on October 17, 2014

Good going, Gamergaters, you have put one of your biggest targets in the mainstream cultural spotlight.

I'd like to take this opportunity to express our undying gratitude to all the brave Social Justice Rogues who went undercover, with no regard whatsoever for their reputations, to bring what started out as a desperate false flag operation to such a triumphant conclusion.

Sadly, their medals shall remain in the Vault of the Fallen at the Hall of Social Justice. We long for the day their contributions can finally be openly acknowledged.
posted by tigrrrlily at 1:26 PM on October 17, 2014 [8 favorites]

Here's a tumblr post about Hatred being developed by neonazis (via our own FlatLuigi)
posted by Strass at 1:29 PM on October 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

Sadly, their medals shall remain in the Vault of the Fallen at the Hall of Social Justice. We long for the day their contributions can finally be openly acknowledged.

Nooooo! Wherever are our wayward Social Justice Clerics with their Social Justice Potions and Social Justice Cure-Moderate-Wounds Wands?!
posted by Navelgazer at 1:30 PM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

Like, we can't do that it would be a dead giveaway duh.
posted by tigrrrlily at 1:40 PM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'd love to know more about how the GamerGoobs are coordinating their astroturfing campaign. I have a slightly obscure linkblog twitter account where I tweeted a link to the Rolling Stone interview. Some 5 hours later three replies showed up, all obliquely critical of Sarkeesian. I guess they found my tweet with the keyword "Sarkeesian", but who is writing this stuff?
posted by Nelson at 1:43 PM on October 17, 2014

I'd wonder if there is much overlap between the two groups, but the Baen Boys seem even too reactionary for the gamergate crowd.

As far as I can tell, that entire crew is all in with the Gators. When your proudest achievement is making sure that people that think women and GLBTQ people are less than human get more attention and money, it's no stretch to do the same for people who think that they deserve to die. Throw in a little "Sarkeesian is Literally Hitler because she wanted USU to take away our guns!" and you've got the average Weasel's social media and blog posts.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:56 PM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

That's where their use of 'shill' comes from, isn't it?
posted by postcommunism at 2:04 PM on October 17, 2014

Giant Bomb weighs in.
posted by bitterpants at 2:07 PM on October 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

Meanwhile in Portland, a poster-defacing campaign and a single craigslist post came out criticizing the 3rd annual women's comedy festival "All Jane No Dick." After much uproar, hilarious local comic Amy Miller tracked down the guy.

He has no support and is clearly influenced by online MRA discussions. But IRL he sounds like a sad, naive and deluded little boy. Her interview with him is both funny and interesting in the context of all this stuff.

It seems like men would be more threatened by the severed dicks than women. Don’t you think? A woman wouldn’t have to worry about that.
posted by msalt at 2:09 PM on October 17, 2014 [4 favorites]

He's going to be protesting Rock and Roll Camp for Girls? SERIOUSLY?
posted by divabat at 2:14 PM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

Of all the places, I don’t think the Country Fair is the kind of place where men are threatening. Those hippie guys are not threatening. They’re totally non-threatening, passive, friendly guys.

omg if only
posted by divabat at 2:14 PM on October 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

To all Social Justice Guerrilla Fighters engaged in the People's Struggle!

Sisters and Brothers- the hour is nearly at hand! On all fronts the paper tiger GamerGate reactionaries are defeated and flee in panic and disorder. Soon we will crush the final pockets of counter-revolution, and pull down the message boards and chatrooms of the Patriarchy! It is then that the real work of revolution must begin, and gaming will be re-shaped in the image of that revolution! Female nudity or outfits of a titillating nature will no longer be permitted! Intimate relations will only be portrayed between same-sex male characters! Womyn player-characters will automatically receive stat bonuses and special items! The only Destiny armor shaders allowed the crucible will be "Pride Rainbow", "Leather Bear", "Mother Goddess", "'80s Dynasty Fierceness", and "Anti-Sex League"! Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare will now be an exploration of PTSD and re-integration into civilian life! It will take place entirely in a series of menial jobs, community centers, VA waiting rooms, and bars! Your character will be a lesbian amputee person of color! It will be text based!


A Luta Coninua!
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 2:16 PM on October 17, 2014 [6 favorites]

Fucking finally, Jeff. Still a little more hedgy than I'd prefer, but not bad. And already LOLing at the sad sad GGers who are all mad at GB now.
posted by kmz at 2:19 PM on October 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

This Matt "Lone" Woof kid is fucking delusional as fuck:

You’ve admitted to not being a comedy fan or a consumer of comedy. According to the All Jane website, fewer than 19 percent of all stand-up comics are women. At the top tier of comics, it’s probably closer to 5 percent. We’re working in an extremely male-dominated industry. In that case, can you understand the motivation to organize an all female comedy festival?

Are you saying that comedy festivals and comedy clubs, that some of them just don’t want women doing comedy? Can you mention a comedy club that discriminates against women?

I could, but I want to work in them. So, no. But they exist.

Well that’s sexist and that’s wrong and I would be down to protest that fact too, right alongside you. It’s sexism that I’m against. But I really doubt people have any problem with women. People will laugh at a man just as fast as they’ll laugh at a woman. It’s just as good for business.

I have some hilarious female friends. I don’t even think about the gender of a comedian I’m watching. It’s like a grocery checker. I don’t care if they’re a man or a woman. Even though most checkers in this town are women.

I find it hard to believe that women are being discriminated against in comedy. Why would they be? What’s the money in it? Who wants to have all men on a show? That doesn’t make any sense.

"I really doubt that people have any problem with women"?! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! How far up your ass does your head fit, son?
posted by palomar at 2:21 PM on October 17, 2014 [6 favorites]

> This series of Jonathan Blow tweets is better, imo.

Pairs well with this playstation ad

Especially recently I've noticed how hilariously over the top the "you, gamer, are the most important person in the universe, we've been waiting for you--the chosen one--and it's all up to you now" marketing has become. Either by having that statement almost be verbatim what the voiceover narration in the Destiny trailer. Also, the recent AAA trailer trend of having an average Joe and his buddies magically teleported into Call of Duty world to effortlessly mow down enemies and flirt with Megan Fox. I am not even making this up.
posted by whittaker at 2:22 PM on October 17, 2014 [6 favorites]

I’m not anti-feminism. What I really am is I guess you could call me a Men’s Rights Activist. Does that make sense? Is that a thing?

Totes. Adorbs.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:30 PM on October 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

That's not even new. "It's time to slay the dragon!"
posted by Apocryphon at 2:34 PM on October 17, 2014

Gamespot released something at basically the same time as Giant Bomb. Makes me wonder if CBSi bigwigs were dictating a steer-clear policy until now...
posted by kmz at 2:36 PM on October 17, 2014

I would have liked a bit less hedgy from Jeff.

That said, it does contain the line "So when "GamerGate" rose up to cover over a campaign of harassment with a veneer of concern for the ethics of games journalism, it more or less set off every single disgust alarm I have." Which is pleasantly unequivocal.

GameSpot weighed in too. Not very impressed by that one.
posted by bitterpants at 2:36 PM on October 17, 2014 [4 favorites]

ah, the old "well, sure most ceos are men, but most kindergarten teachers are women, so i ask you, who are the real sexists??" argument. always adorable when that comes out, and it's often along side "i don't even notice gender but i happen to notice that this entire group is women!"
posted by nadawi at 2:37 PM on October 17, 2014 [6 favorites]

Gamergate folks are saying that apparently they got Mercedes to pull ads from Gawker?
posted by Going To Maine at 2:52 PM on October 17, 2014

Should I be concerned about these sites that have had 2 months to signal their disapproval but were strangely silent until today? I feel like they're only doing so now that mass mainstream disapproval has set in, and the cards are so clearly against GamerGate. Not a very brave stance, and I just wonder what the source of the delay is and how badly it reflects on them.
posted by naju at 2:57 PM on October 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

Going To Maine: "Gamergate folks are saying that apparently they got Mercedes to pull ads from Gawker?"

"Es ist der verschwitzt Ruck Mart, Dieter! Sie sind entscheidend! Müssen wir kapitulieren!"
[teutonic wailing intensifies]

Seriously, I don't think that Mercedes is looking at the gamer segment with that kind of deference.
posted by boo_radley at 2:58 PM on October 17, 2014 [4 favorites]

Metafilter: [teutonic wailing intensifies]
posted by Tknophobia at 3:00 PM on October 17, 2014 [14 favorites]

I just wonder what the source of the delay is and how badly it reflects on them

They were hoping it would go away. And it absolutely reflects badly on them.
posted by bitterpants at 3:01 PM on October 17, 2014 [4 favorites]

TIL I adore boo_radley
posted by Navelgazer at 3:19 PM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

A senior editor at Gawker made some bad jokes, GamerGaters talked to advertisers, and Mercedes-Benz pulled their ads.
posted by Woodroar at 3:53 PM on October 17, 2014

"Es ist der verschwitzt Ruck Mart, Dieter! Sie sind entscheidend! Müssen wir kapitulieren!"

"It's the sweaty jerk Mart, Dieter! They are critical! Must we surrender!"

Google Translate has probably failed me again but I do love "It's the sweaty jerk!"
posted by honestcoyote at 3:56 PM on October 17, 2014

A senior editor at Gawker made some bad jokes, GamerGaters talked to advertisers, and Mercedes-Benz pulled their ads.

"Dear Sirs:

When I get old enough to drive and get a job at McDonalds, I am so NOT buying a Mercedes ..."
posted by pyramid termite at 4:04 PM on October 17, 2014 [4 favorites]

It's funny how from this side of the fence the GiantBomb piece seemed too charitable, and yet GGers are losing their minds over it in the comments and on Twitter.
posted by bitterpants at 4:20 PM on October 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

As far as I can tell, that entire crew is all in with the Gators.

I confess I haven't had enough Pepto Bismal on hand to visit their area of the net recently.

I really have to wonder just how much high-end coordination there is between these groups. I'd it Jumping into a social media bandwagon? Some shared membership? Or does the leadership of the International League of Reactionary Fuckwits have regular conference meetings? I
posted by happyroach at 4:20 PM on October 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

A senior editor at Gawker made some bad jokes

I think calling those "bad jokes" is really a minimalization. GamerGaters are being rightly excoriated for the same type of thing. FWIW two of the tweets in question:

Bring Back Bullying

Ultimately #GamerGate is reaffirming what we've known to be true for decades: nerds should be constantly shamed and degraded into submission.

Those tweets are obviously inappropriate and I don't see how anyone could think otherwise. People on the right side of an issue can and do act badly and they shouldn't get a pass. That's how the GamerGate folks act. Be better than they are.
posted by Justinian at 4:22 PM on October 17, 2014 [11 favorites]

i think those tweets were really dumb and not ok and of course gawker is filled with shitheels.
posted by nadawi at 4:24 PM on October 17, 2014 [8 favorites]

Well, yeah, it's Gawker. One hopes they will soon be consigned to the dustbin of history. But I am not holding my breath.
posted by Justinian at 4:26 PM on October 17, 2014

Yeah, that seems a lot less like #Gamergate got Mercedes to bow to their awesome power and a lot more like they brought something to Mercedes' attention, which Mercedes responded to appropriately. This is totally orthogonal to anything actually at issue in this conversation.
posted by Navelgazer at 4:34 PM on October 17, 2014 [4 favorites]

"It's the sweaty jerk!"

I'll thank you to stop quoting my business cards.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 4:40 PM on October 17, 2014 [4 favorites]

Biddle apologizes.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:41 PM on October 17, 2014

Trawling for something that looks like it might offend someone then shopping around for someone to pay attention to it is totally their MO, in this and the previous case.
posted by Artw at 4:47 PM on October 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm sorry, my definition of "bad joke" is pretty broad. I agree the tweets weren't okay. I first read them as poorly-worded biting sarcasm of the "it sounds like he's punching-down but he's actually punching-up" variety, but a) I can't be sure of that intent at all, and b) even if that was the intent, 140 characters isn't sufficient to get that point across.
posted by Woodroar at 4:53 PM on October 17, 2014

I wonder if they pulled the nerds-as-oppressed-minority bullshit or just flat out decontectualised it and argued the joke went to far or if they just flat out claimed it was a blunt pro-bullying statement. My money is on the later.
posted by Artw at 5:04 PM on October 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

> Especially recently I've noticed how hilariously over the top the "you, gamer, are the most important person in the universe, we've been waiting for you--the chosen one--and it's all up to you now" marketing has become. Either by having that statement almost be verbatim what the voiceover narration in the Destiny trailer. Also, the recent AAA trailer trend of having an average Joe and his buddies magically teleported into Call of Duty world to effortlessly mow down enemies and flirt with Megan Fox. I am not even making this up.

Wow — that's really weird, now that I think about it. I grew up with the types of games that barely even acknowledged the player: here's a world, here's a gun, good luck not getting shot. I loved getting thrust into a hostile environment and figuring out the rules. Now it's all about YOU! YOU! GET THAT POWERUP! HAVE AN ACHIEVEMENT! GOOD WORK, HERO! There's been a toxic cultural shift somewhere along the line. Maybe that's why games don't captivate me as much anymore.
posted by archagon at 5:09 PM on October 17, 2014 [4 favorites]

while not stepping back at all from "those jokes were not ok" (they weren't), i will say that the gators' response is the exact same intellectual dishonesty that they have been exhibiting all along. i was on kia this morning and it was wall to wall with the biddle outrage, comparing it 1:1 with the type of harassment they have been dishing out - which, no. not even close. they keep confusing "someone was mean about something i identify with" and "i had to leave my house and they keep calling my dad to tell him about their imaginations of my sex life."

and on preview, yes - 100% bully and direct harassment was their take on the tweets.
posted by nadawi at 5:10 PM on October 17, 2014 [7 favorites]

The Gaters remind me of the Westboro Baptist Church. Not just because they're shitty, but also because their shittiness is impervious to others' behavior. Arguing with them is like wrestling a pig: you'll get covered in shit, and the pig likes it. You can't have a good faith discussion with the real movers and shakers. Mockery can be fun, but it gives them attention, plus they'll disingenuously whine if you make a joke one-tenth as mean as they are.

I wish there was a way to coordinate a campaign which combined a Swear Jar with a Penny War: donate a dollar to $CAUSE_ONE for every time a Gater invokes Sarkeesian, donate a dollar to $CAUSE_TWO for every time a Gater invokes Quinn.
posted by Sticherbeast at 5:12 PM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

what's funny is they compare their "opposition" to the wbc.
posted by nadawi at 5:13 PM on October 17, 2014

Should I be concerned about these sites that have had 2 months to signal their disapproval but were strangely silent until today?

IMO the turning point is Anita Sarkeesian's death threats and subsequent cancellation of her appearance at USU. It was unambiguously illegal, unambiguously about silencing female voices, and got a lot of widespread media coverage, with specific details about the threat.

So that made it very clear that ignoring this shitstorm won't make it go away. It also made it very easy to choose a side, and the widespread media coverage greatly reduced the amount of pain any one site is likely to get just from talking about it.

The non-gaming media coverage also greatly improved gaming media's rhetorical footing. Until they were widely debunked, claims that gamergate was focused on journalistic integrity made it difficult for gaming journals to issue a simple statement without looking like they were just circling the wagons or otherwise trying to deflect the accusations. "Allegations that we're corrupt? Nah, nobody really cares about that. Let's talk about how you're harassing women!"

However, there were gaming sites who did weigh in on this much earlier on. I feel Polygon did a fairly good job of covering this. They do have a fairly well moderated reader/commented community, and a more socially progressive user base, but I am sure their moderators have still been dealing with a lot of extra bullshit over this.

I'd like there to be more sites like that. And yeah at this point, statements like, for instance, Penny Arcade's "you can't send people death threats", are so incredibly safe that they don't suggest a whole lot of conviction.

Polygon gets a gold star. A weak, late, "me too" denouncement doesn't, but it's a lot better than silence. I'll take it.
posted by aubilenon at 5:17 PM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

I don't think Polygon actually officially weighed in (if they did, I missed it). They covered some of the events, and it's not exactly a secret that they are a progressive-learning site, but I was sort of disappointed they didn't take a firmer stance.

The Verge weighed in about as unambigously as you can,as in "A lot of people are finally fed up with Gamergate's dumb crusade against women"
posted by bitterpants at 5:28 PM on October 17, 2014

The thing is, I just feel like right now, the easiest way for a gaming site to de-toxify their community is to unequivocally come out against GG, while GG is making their list of all the shunned sites. Good riddance and all that.
posted by Navelgazer at 5:28 PM on October 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

The only gaming site I read daily is RPS. Their community has noticeably improved since GG put them at the top of the "most corrupt" list.
posted by honestcoyote at 5:31 PM on October 17, 2014 [9 favorites]

Meanwhile, from the above link to Waxy's Gamergate is Running Out of Heroes, they have officially "lost" ... Jon Stewart ...

Did Jon Stewart actually make a statement about GamerGate, or is this just from him being progressive in general? I don't remember anything from The Daily Show.
posted by Gary at 5:37 PM on October 17, 2014

My impression from reading the thread on 8chan that waxy linked is that they were disappointed by his discussion about white privilege with William "Bill" O'Reilly on Thursday's show.
posted by chrchr at 5:44 PM on October 17, 2014

i could be wrong, but i think the jon stewart thing was actually about him believing in white privilege.
posted by nadawi at 5:45 PM on October 17, 2014

Thanks, that makes sense. I usually skip the interview segment and certainly wasn't going to make an exception for O'Reilly.
posted by Gary at 6:00 PM on October 17, 2014

i finally watched it because we were talking about it and it really is incredible. it's full on shouting at times (of course) and super smug and dumb bill-o, but jon stewart eviscerates him.
posted by nadawi at 6:02 PM on October 17, 2014

So they crossed Jon Stewart off their list because he discussed white privilege? Well, that strips the veneer off the "ethics in journalism" angle, doesn't it?

I'm engaging a gater on KotakuInAction, and his/her first response was all about 'corruption' and journalism and ethics, nothing obviously objectional so far. I'm curious to see where this goes.
posted by msalt at 6:09 PM on October 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

sticherbeast: plus they'll disingenuously whine if you make a joke one-tenth as mean as they are

Thing is, i think a lot of the people we're seeing in comment threads and the like aren't being disingenuous about it -- I'm pretty sure a lot of them really have no clue what it feels like to take what they dish out.

Of course the hard-core MRAs are a lost cause, and it's hard to tell the difference. One possible way might be to say something nice to them and see what happens. MRAs like to think they're so wise and clever and manipulative, but from what I've seen they just smell that as weakness and go for what they think is your throat. Ordinary people will often relax a little.
posted by lodurr at 6:23 PM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

I don't think Polygon actually officially weighed in (if they did, I missed it). They covered some of the events

Yeah looking back through their archives... they had dozens of articles about this stuff, and while they don't actually ever issue a single clear statement, they've written lots of articles on the harassment of women, many of which rely heavily on statements by the women themselves. The framing of the coverage clearly indicates their stance, and the quantity shows they feel it's an important issue. That's means a lot more than just saying "harassment is bad" and now that that's out of the way let's talk about VR goggles.

(They did quite early include the harassment of Zoe Quinn on a list of awful things gamers did that week, though they don't mention her name there or use the word GamerGate.)
posted by aubilenon at 6:26 PM on October 17, 2014

Hot off the presses: Polygon weighs in.
posted by bitterpants at 6:36 PM on October 17, 2014 [12 favorites]

I like the way Polygon put it: GamerGaters don't want politics out of games journalism, they want progressive politics out of games journalism.
posted by Justinian at 6:46 PM on October 17, 2014 [5 favorites]

I like Sticherbeast's idea about donating. I've only been contacted a few times by Goobergrape shills, but there's been an uptick. So what causes do you think are both excellent causes and, you know, so in oppositions to the GG rhetoric that they'll actually be OBVIOUSLY in opposition?

Feminist Frequency, We Hunted The Mammoth (not familiar with, will look up), anything else?

I'll have to cap my own contributions, but still, why not.
posted by wintersweet at 6:48 PM on October 17, 2014

We Hunted the Mammoth looks interesting. Sharp writing, and they don't put up with their commenters stooping to the enemy's level. At a quick glance, seems to be a strong trans presence there.
posted by lodurr at 7:03 PM on October 17, 2014 [4 favorites]

"what causes do you think are both excellent causes"

There's always donating to Zoe Quinn's Patreon for sheer karmic value-for-money.
posted by bitterpants at 7:06 PM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

Disclaimer: I donate to that patreon. I think that means I'm corrupt or something.
posted by bitterpants at 7:10 PM on October 17, 2014 [5 favorites]

The Giant Bomb official statement is a little hedgey, but I don't know how anyone's surprised at its overall tone. They've to a person made offhand comments on Twitter and in morning shows, podcasts, unprofessional Fridays about how disgusted they are by what's been happening. And they've not shied away from covering any of the major events. From my POV, that full statement is basically a (welcome) formality form them.
posted by sparkletone at 7:15 PM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

Sparkletone: it's hedgey, but it does not make /r/KotakuInAction/ very happy.

I think the value in it is mostly that they are fairly loved by "core" gamers. Those folks can write off Polygon, but coming from Jeff, it hurts.
posted by bitterpants at 7:18 PM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

I know I'm guilty of FTFY jokes way too often (and for some of you, once is too often), but there is one very minor adjustment I'd make to the last sentence of the Polygon statement:

"No need to jump at shadows of conspiracy or collusion, GamerGaters; you've already unearthed become the most damaging force in video games today."
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:20 PM on October 17, 2014

but coming from Jeff, it hurts.

Yeah. I'm just saying that, well. In typical GG-er fashion, if they'd been paying any attention at all without their insane blinders on, it was clear that Patrick and Alex weren't the only GB dude that are completely fucking disgusted by them. It's all of them. They just hadn't made a Formal Statement™ about their disgust. "Merely" expressed it steadily and casually in their regular output.

Their sadfaces about GB are the same kind of bizarre as expecting Tim Schafer et al. to think they are anything but scum.
posted by sparkletone at 7:25 PM on October 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

And skimming that godawful comment thread... Unshockingly: They still seem to hate Patrick the most lol. And even more bizarrely think Ryan would've given the time of fucking day. Idiots.
posted by sparkletone at 7:28 PM on October 17, 2014

The irony of hating on Patrick is he spends an inordinate amount of time trying to listen to and politely engage with his haters, which is ostensibly the very thing that they want: "real discussion."
posted by bitterpants at 7:32 PM on October 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

The irony of hating on Patrick is he spends an inordinate amount of time trying to listen to and politely engage with his haters, which is ostensibly the very thing that they want: "real discussion."


Well I think it may be their image of "discussion" works something like the way conversions are supposed to go in people informed by Jack Chick tracts. That is, the reasonable person merely has to listen as the Gamer recites "the facts", and, instant conversion! And if they aren't convinced, if they exhibit skepticism or bring up contrary facts, then they are corrupted or one of the enemy, and they're lying if the say the want dialogue.
posted by happyroach at 8:00 PM on October 17, 2014 [15 favorites]

I think that's exactly how it goes... a GoobleGobbler jumped up my ass in a Polygon comment thread on Facebook and told me to just take the time to watch some videos and I'd see that it's all about ethics in journalism. Then he linked to the Quinnspiracy and "five guys" videos.

What's with these guys and videos?
posted by palomar at 8:09 PM on October 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

they want their opinions spoonfed to them?

edit: I feel like this is a super derisive statement but I can't find a better way to explain what I mean. They confuse a host who talks quickly with logic.
posted by Strass at 8:12 PM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

The Fund Better Tech twitter account has some suggestions for places to donate to.
posted by divabat at 8:20 PM on October 17, 2014

What's with these guys and videos?

To be fairer than I'd like to be, Anita Sarkeesian makes videos and gives talks and doesn't really write articles, and the aim there was to get beyond a more scholarly audience. (Ian Bogost, who's an academic but also engages with more popular media, asked today whether her work would have provoked the same response had it been in a different format.)

Many responses to that question suggested that YouTube -- the space of gamer playthroughs and fan reviews and so on -- was a space that gamers considered their own.
posted by holgate at 8:21 PM on October 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

And if they aren't convinced, if they exhibit skepticism or bring up contrary facts, then they are corrupted or one of the enemy, and they're lying if the say the want dialogue.

I'm not even saying this to give the GooterGrubbers any credit whatsoever, but many people in general labor under the misimpression that people who disagree with them simply don't understand. A surprisingly high percentage of people have a hard time with the idea that a peer could look at a situation and come away with a different opinion than their own.

Sure, these guys take it to an especially immature and nasty level...
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:02 PM on October 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

well, yeah the tropes series is videos - but this goes back to a reoccurring theme with them - they think they're attacking people with no talent who don't "deserve" the recognition they are getting. one of the first smokescreens to attack sarkeesian with was that she asked for way too much money and her project took far too long, because how long does it take to put together a ten minute video?! and so they gave their rebuttal in the same venue for no money with no prep or writing process and they think it's wonderful while everyone else is pretty much reacting - "uh, who's the crank on youtube?"
posted by nadawi at 9:11 PM on October 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

a new jonathan blow tweet
If you support harassment either directly or implicitly by group affiliation, please don't play my games.
posted by nadawi at 9:13 PM on October 17, 2014 [4 favorites]

oh damn, i missed these that came right after :

I do not want to make games for an audience of internet trolls, harassers, and boys who won't grow up. If I made my living from an audience like that, I would feel dirty and start looking for another line of work. So when a GGer tells me they won't buy my game because something I just said does not sufficiently caress their oh-so-precious ego, I feel relieved actually. It means I am doing the right things in life.

1 2 3
posted by nadawi at 9:17 PM on October 17, 2014 [17 favorites]

Autostraddle takes on GamerGate.
posted by divabat at 9:26 PM on October 17, 2014 [10 favorites]

The only gaming site I read daily is RPS.

Good plan, especially as Mefi's Own notmydesk writes for them.

RPS is a nice demonstration of how the "objectivity" thing is a pile of crap. RPS is gloriously subjective-- their writers all have a personality, individual preferences and opinions, and that's precisely what makes the site interesting.
posted by zompist at 9:45 PM on October 17, 2014 [6 favorites]

For all instances of "corrupt journalism," replace with "activist judges."
posted by Navelgazer at 9:48 PM on October 17, 2014 [8 favorites]

Yeah, I've been reading RPS since someone (maybe on MeFi) linked to the famous Pathologic articles over there. Hard to believe it's been six years now.

One of the things about GG which makes me the most angry is how they've treated RPS. They're clamoring for an ethical, honest, transparent source for gaming journalism and I really want to scream at them: RPS is right over there. RPS, where Walker and Kieron and Jim and Quinns did an enormous part of re-inventing and re-invigorating gaming journalism. If GG thinks it's bad now, they should remember the glory days of Gamespot and IGN with their breathless previews of AAA games, almost entirely ignoring indies, and re-written press releases masquerading as reviews. 10/10!

RPS doesn't get all the credit for changing things, but, good god, they get a very large share. GG should be hailing them as they way things should be done. But no. RPS brings up social and feminist issues regularly, are very subjective (and completely honest about it), and don't put numbers on their reviews. Plus, there's the idiotic, disproven accusations about Grayson which GG still stupidly believes. So, one of the best gaming publications is relegated, by them, to the worst of the corrupt.

Whatever. The community is much better without them. And I"m happy there's now a lot of people pointing out RPS (along with Polygon and Kotaku) have uncovered far more corruption than Gators ever dreamed of doing.

Sorry for the fanboy rant / derail, but GG's irrational hatred of RPS shows the utter fraudulence of their demands for better journalism.
posted by honestcoyote at 10:20 PM on October 17, 2014 [8 favorites]

For anyone who hasn't clicked through on it, the Autostraddle post divabat linked is great. Well worth reading.
posted by Lexica at 10:25 PM on October 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

I've always been struck by the degree to which the excellence of RPS's writers (let's just ignore that bizarre New Vegas review) is matched by the crapulence of their commenters. While occasionally it's funny, like when they cover Bloodlines modding and Tessera shows up to pitch the fit he always throws when people fail to provide him with adulation, idolization, and blowjobs, it's mostly bizarre and discordant, to the point that I've stopped reading anything but the posts. If their anti-GG stance has driven away the shitty folks who weren't driven off by their earlier expressed pro-feminism stances, that's great.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:38 PM on October 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

Sorry for the fanboy rant / derail, but GG's irrational hatred of RPS shows the utter fraudulence of their demands for better journalism.

I read RPS links when I get them from certain sources and I generally think very well of RPS.... What you're pointing out here about them is a thing I've harped on quite a bit in this thread about Giant Bomb and it speaks to how vacuous the "concerns" of anyone even remotely associated with GG are.

Like. It's already been documented in this thread how empty their whining about GB is given how that site started (ACTUAL FOR REALS CORRUPTION AND HALF A DOZEN PEOPLE SAYING NO TO IT). RPS isn't significantly different. Gerstmann's firing is a Thing, but RPS very definitely has their head on straight.

As has been noted by a REALLY HIGH number of people/outlets... There's no way to pretend this is about anything but harassing women for the "crime" of being women.

And to be clear: I'm not saying you're doing that or promoting it. I'm just saying what's going on with RPS is the same godawful bullshit that's happening everywhere else and it needs to be shut down as such. It's already way clear how unprepared these crapsacks are for how unsympathetic the real world is to their whining.
posted by sparkletone at 11:56 PM on October 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

They seem to have officially debunked the Mercedes thing. Looks like Mercedes wasn't even a sponsor.
posted by Sequence at 12:00 AM on October 18, 2014 [2 favorites]

I do wish the our side would talk about the good journalists more. When GG goes on and on about "journalistic corruption" the pushback is often "yes there is corruption but your side isn't doing anything about it." And that's correct of course. There is corruption and GG isn't doing a damn thing about it.

But I hate that the good sites get overlooked. We don't have to wish for some ideal of good gaming journalism. We have examples now. I focus on RPS because I'm most familiar with them but there's others too. Like GB, or Polygon. Sometimes Kotaku and the Escapist. Ars Technica does a good job. Pocket Tactics is great for the iOS / Android side. I'm sure there's tons of others I'm overlooking. We're not in a golden age but there are good and honest outlets which shouldn't be lumped into the cesspool inhabited by places like Gamespot and IGN.
posted by honestcoyote at 12:33 AM on October 18, 2014

There should be more talking about that sort of thing, but the problem is, GG isn't really about that. It's like if GG said it was about solving the Ebola crisis. Ebola is a real thing. There are lots of good conversations to be had about solving the Ebola crisis. But not with people who primarily want to harass game developers.
posted by Sequence at 12:39 AM on October 18, 2014 [2 favorites]

Of course, GG isn't about that but I still wish there was a better defense of the journalism we already have. It completely undercuts their stated reason for existing and the excuse some people have for staying with the movement.
posted by honestcoyote at 1:37 AM on October 18, 2014

Connecting two threads: it sounds like the org that divabat is working for is a little hesitant about their women in STEM project because of gamergate, and it occurs to me that probably funding (to help promote the project if this turns out to be an empty worry; to hire someone to deal with volume of harrassment if not) would help. Other folks are asking where to send moneys. Maybe coordinate in memail?
posted by eviemath at 5:15 AM on October 18, 2014

RPS is exactly the sort of thing they hate and want to stop.

They're not only pro-corrupt journalism, press releases with 9/10 slapped on and the like, they're pro-boringness. Fuck 'em.
posted by Artw at 5:22 AM on October 18, 2014 [9 favorites]

Yeah, you can essentially take the list of websites that GG hates & use it as a source interesting games journalism.

Tweeting anything to #gamergate still results in a pile on of #notyourshield crud even today. Do these people never stop?
posted by pharm at 5:29 AM on October 18, 2014 [1 favorite]

happyroach: ...the reasonable person merely has to listen as the Gamer recites "the facts", and, instant conversion! And if they aren't convinced, if they exhibit skepticism or bring up contrary facts, then they are corrupted or one of the enemy, and they're lying if the say the want dialogue.

Right: The Red Pill. REALITY. That's a constant theme with MRAs and PUAs* and now Gaters, though they come at it from slightly different angles. If you can't see it, you're an inferior class of being. Not even beta.

But people they respect have spent long productive lives seeing facts in the world and building amazing shit with them, and yet they don't seem to see the reality. Like, say, William Gibson, of whom some gater remarked "just show him the 60 second red pill video."

I harp on this because it was a huge factor for me, personally, when I was trying to deal with my own adolescent 'red pill' ideations (which happened to be mostly around Objectivism and supply-side economics): There were people I respected a whole lot, whose work I valued, who thought those ideas were ridiculous, and I decided that rather than assume they were chumps after all I should maybe take a closer look.

That means something to some people...nothing to others. It's the true-believer watershed: once you're over it, you probably can't influence someone anymore.

--
*I view RedPill-ers as just a subspecies of PUA.
posted by lodurr at 5:47 AM on October 18, 2014 [8 favorites]

palomar: What's with these guys and videos?

My experience is that people who value rationality really, really intensely are often really, really bad at recognizing when they're being non-rational.

Which is prologue for saying that I think the videos are basically the rationalist equivalent of a sermon. Ever read a sermon? It's a very rare sermon that reads well. Most require delivery. They seem comical or trite or flat when you read them, even if they were AMAZING when you heard them delivered.

It's not that the guys doing the videos are Jeremiah Wright. It's that the videos have emotional content that resonates with that particular audience. It's the same emotional content that makes it really difficult for me to watch them for more than about 30 seconds, because it's pretty ugly.
posted by lodurr at 5:54 AM on October 18, 2014 [15 favorites]

on prev, Holgate's point (that this was space gamers had previously considered their own) is also important. But I still think the reason their own videos resonate so strongly is the emotional content (which they don't acknowledge).
posted by lodurr at 5:56 AM on October 18, 2014 [1 favorite]

Right: The Red Pill. REALITY.

one pill makes you larger
and the next pill makes you small
and the ones that morpheus gives you
don't do anything at all
posted by pyramid termite at 6:48 AM on October 18, 2014 [6 favorites]

Some interesting and relevant history: When Women Stopped Coding
posted by eviemath at 6:48 AM on October 18, 2014 [8 favorites]

Predictable comment #1 on that Planet Money piece eviemath just linked:

Why are men naturally drawn to fields like computer science and petroleum engineering, while women are naturally drawn to fields like child development and social work?

Why do men choose to play football and serve in combat positions in the military? Why do women choose careers in fashion and interior design?

These questions aren't all that interesting. It is more interesting to explore why liberals obsess with these questions.

posted by lodurr at 7:39 AM on October 18, 2014

That commenter clearly didn't actually listen to the show, eh?
posted by eviemath at 8:12 AM on October 18, 2014 [7 favorites]

Or even read the summary, which contains a helpful graph clearly illustrating the trend line crashing after 1984.

(I'm not a fan of Planet Money, but this one is well worth listening to. The short version is that it's a side effect of the 'pc revolution' and the rise of the home computer, which was marketed largely to boys. the anecdote about the computers being kept in the boy's room even though the girl has more skill with it was just maddening.)
posted by lodurr at 8:18 AM on October 18, 2014 [3 favorites]

and back when "computers" were humans, it was women's work.
posted by nadawi at 8:30 AM on October 18, 2014 [7 favorites]

Eviemath, that's a brilliant link that deserves its own post. I was 16 in 1984 and their explanation makes perfect sense. 1982-84 was when personal computers started making their way into homes and schools and being monopolised by boys. Before that, everyone taking computer science at university was coming to it cold, so young men and women were starting on a level playing field. By 1986, when I took first-year comp sci at uni, you could already see the new "computers are for boys" narrative bedding in.

My daughter is getting her own Raspberry Pi as soon as she's old enough.

Now I'm reminding myself that this is my first post in this amazing thread, because every time I came back to it it would take me ages to catch up on all the new entries and it never felt the right time to chip in, what with things moving so quickly this week. But what a staggeringly awful situation this has been. As someone who was a nerdy, shy teenaged male obsessed with computers and games, my sympathies are naturally with... the people who aren't waging a misogynistic hate campaign. I mean, Jesus. #neverwouldhavegatored #beingateenisnoexcuse

Many thanks and favourites to all the Mefites who have contributed valuable links and righteous outrage here.
posted by rory at 8:40 AM on October 18, 2014 [12 favorites]

it sounds like the org that divabat is working for is a little hesitant about their women in STEM project because of gamergate, and it occurs to me that probably funding (to help promote the project if this turns out to be an empty worry; to hire someone to deal with volume of harrassment if not) would help

The hesitation is purely mine! They're all pretty gungho about the women in STEM project; I just wanted to know if there's anything we should consider in case the worst happens.

The organisation in general does accept donations (it's primarily a grantmaking org) - feel free to contact me if you want to chip in. The Tech fund isn't open yet but any little bit counts!
posted by divabat at 9:07 AM on October 18, 2014 [2 favorites]

Which is prologue for saying that I think the videos are basically the rationalist equivalent of a sermon. Ever read a sermon? It's a very rare sermon that reads well. Most require delivery. They seem comical or trite or flat when you read them, even if they were AMAZING when you heard them delivered.

On a more prosaic level, it's because they are being designed for people who are playing video games while consuming them.
posted by running order squabble fest at 9:20 AM on October 18, 2014 [2 favorites]

Do these people never stop

If they stop, they're left with nothing. All they have is fury.
posted by bitterpants at 9:26 AM on October 18, 2014 [8 favorites]

I really like that the only places I can find articles that support GamerGate are places like Breitbart News.
posted by palomar at 9:42 AM on October 18, 2014 [2 favorites]

and the ones that morpheus gives you
don't do anything at all

"You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and a pompous dude with a stupid hat yells nonsense at you until you get up and leave in disgust."
posted by almostmanda at 10:14 AM on October 18, 2014 [23 favorites]

Why do men choose to play football and serve in combat positions in the military? Why do women choose careers in fashion and interior design?

lodurr: I'm still trying to decide whether he's unaware that women still aren't allowed to serve in combat or so clueless that he never even thought to check.
posted by adamsc at 10:38 AM on October 18, 2014 [2 favorites]

They're all pretty gungho about the women in STEM project; I just wanted to know if there's anything we should consider in case the worst happens.

You know, I think the best thing to do is not let these assholes affect your project in any way at all. Don't even give them a second thought, because that's exactly the kind of result they want with their adolescent-terrorist tactics. They would be thrilled to know they caused even a moment's hesitation in a women in STEM project, so don't even give them the satisfaction.

Not intending to dismiss your concerns at all, I completely understand where you're coming from, but this is exactly the outcome they want. They are nobodies, completely inconsequential people, and you are doing wonderful important work. They don't deserve to affect your project in any way, shape, or form. If they decide to turn their pathetic little Eye of Sauron on you, well, there are a lot of good people who will have your back.
posted by dialetheia at 11:02 AM on October 18, 2014 [9 favorites]

women also can't play college or professional football.
posted by nadawi at 1:20 PM on October 18, 2014 [3 favorites]

Well, clearly he's an idiot, but he certainly seemed to think he'd made a clever.
posted by lodurr at 1:24 PM on October 18, 2014 [1 favorite]

And although clothing and cooking are considered women's concerns, all the highest paid fashion designers and chefs are men. I don't know a thing about interior design, but I would not be surprised if that were true there as well.
posted by hydropsyche at 2:35 PM on October 18, 2014 [5 favorites]

The ban on women serving in combat positions was lifted a couple years ago (though implementation is still in progress) and women are allowed to play both college and professional football.
posted by Justinian at 2:47 PM on October 18, 2014

In the NFL? Because I doubt that bringing up Jen Welter is going to mean anything to a GG.
posted by palomar at 2:53 PM on October 18, 2014

Yes, in the NFL.
posted by Justinian at 2:57 PM on October 18, 2014

If we broaden it from his example of football to all professional sports, there are plenty of women who choose to be professional athletes, and plenty more who would choose to do so if the opportunity truly existed (I'm thinking of the now-defunct women's soccer and softball professional leagues in the US). In other words, nothing that dude said was an argument for what he thought it was an argument for.
posted by hydropsyche at 2:57 PM on October 18, 2014 [1 favorite]

Exactly. Women choose the play pro sports all the time. The reason they aren't in the NFL has little to do with that and everything to do with the fact that there aren't many (any?) women who are 6'7" and 450 pounds.
posted by Justinian at 3:02 PM on October 18, 2014

Justinian, who? I only found a couple of articles referencing Jackie Chamoun being signed to the KC Chiefs, but I also found articles saying that was a hoax, and there's nothing on her Wikipedia entry about being signed as a football player. Then there's Lauren Silberman, but she failed her tryout, according to Google. I can't turn up anything regarding a female player actually being signed to an NFL team. Since you said that yes, women are playing in the NFL, maybe you could provide a link, since Google didn't seem to agree?
posted by palomar at 3:03 PM on October 18, 2014

Huh? I didn't say women are playing in the NFL, I said that women are allowed to play in the NFL.
posted by Justinian at 3:04 PM on October 18, 2014

Uh.. what? Just upthread, not even so far that you need to scroll, you said this to me:



In the NFL? Because I doubt that bringing up Jen Welter is going to mean anything to a GG.
posted by palomar at 2:53 PM on October 18 [+] [!]


Yes, in the NFL.
posted by Justinian at 2:57 PM on October 18 [+] [!]
posted by palomar at 3:04 PM on October 18, 2014

Oh, wait. I see. It's not that you said any women actually play, it's just that they're allowed. My mistake. Of course it's only a technicality that no woman has ever been signed.
posted by palomar at 3:06 PM on October 18, 2014

It's not a technicality? Women aren't big and strong enough to play in the NFL? But lots of women would probably choose to play in a women's pro football league. The GG guys were talking about choices.
posted by Justinian at 3:11 PM on October 18, 2014

i disagree that all women are too small to be, say, placekickers. i also wonder if the nfl has a male only rule, it wouldn't surprise me. looking it up it does seem that there have been a few college players that are women, so i retract that.

and i was talking about choices too - it's silly to discuss the "choice" of women wanting to be football players when the infrastructure is not there - that becomes less of a choice at that point. that makes it very different than fashion or teachers or whatever other women dominated careers sexists like to use in this sort of comparison (not even getting in to what hydropsyche points out which is even in "girly" things like that, the men still usually lead).
posted by nadawi at 4:32 PM on October 18, 2014 [2 favorites]

i also wonder if the nfl has a male only rule, it wouldn't surprise me

This is a factual question and the answer is that it does not have such a rule.
posted by Justinian at 4:35 PM on October 18, 2014 [2 favorites]

i was honestly asking. i'm not sure why you're being a jerk about it.
posted by nadawi at 4:42 PM on October 18, 2014 [1 favorite]

Mod note: I'm puzzled as to why this football line is relevant. Substantial derails in very long threads are generally better avoided, thanks.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 4:44 PM on October 18, 2014 [11 favorites]

the relevant part is that when people talk about these supposed biological drives and interests they set up a false dichotomy between things anyone can choose to do, but something we normally undervalue, where women make up the majority, against things that are majority male where women have historically been not allowed to participate or are systemically discouraged from advancing. it's as ridiculous as, "well sure, most CEOs are men but most secretaries are women!" the inequality is evident in the example (something those offering the example rarely acknowledge).
posted by nadawi at 4:54 PM on October 18, 2014 [2 favorites]

I think the important takeaway is that the GamerGaters are wrong about women "choosing" not to play professional sports or serve in combat. When given the opportunity they do make those choices. Whether in exactly the same numbers is impossible to say without a lot of societal changes, but they're wrong either way.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to come across snippy I was just doing something else at the time and in a hurry.
posted by Justinian at 5:03 PM on October 18, 2014 [1 favorite]

I've mentioned before that my son is a gamergater. He is very careful around me to present this as a "journalism ethics" issue. When I press him, he gets agitated over SJWs and storms off. So if you were under the impression that gamergaters were autistic teenagers rebelling against their feminist mothers, well, in this case, you're right.
posted by Biblio at 5:30 PM on October 18, 2014 [43 favorites]

METAFILTER: autistic teenagers rebelling against their feminist mothers
posted by philip-random at 5:44 PM on October 18, 2014 [2 favorites]

My sympathy goes out to Biblio. You try to raise a son right and then they get exposed to the negative influences of ... well, most of Modern Western Culture. I don't know if my personal Feminist and Social Justice leanings (I prefer Social Justice Wizard, personally) came from just being a good person or a youthful rebellion that I never needed to outgrow.

Regarding the comment from the Planet Money piece, the truth comes down to: "Things Women Prefer to Do" == "Things the Patriarchy Allows Them to Do"

And here's a BIG dose of Truth Serum for the 'Red Pill' crowd.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:46 PM on October 18, 2014 [13 favorites]

Sorry, where did that manifesto come from? I've seen at least one other supposed Gamergate manifesto in this thread, & it also didn't go back to some original group of GG'ers as a source. Not trying to be combative - I just have yet to see some official thread from this leaderless movement that indicates that it has an official list of demands.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:25 PM on October 18, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think lists of demands pop up more or less at random, like bubbles rising to the surface of a lake of boiling poop, as various #GG types make their own fumbling attempts to put a respectable face on the movement. They are all representative of GamerGate -- the "we're not misogynists and racists" talking points are well-known -- and none of them are.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 6:31 PM on October 18, 2014

Also, you don't fuckle with Shuckle.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 6:32 PM on October 18, 2014 [1 favorite]

can i hit shuckle over the head with a history book? - one that correctly states that john brown was hung for his activities in virginia, not kansas, and that it was "bleeding kansas" not "burning kansas"?

(and that's just the first two sentences of his rather ignorant screed)
posted by pyramid termite at 6:47 PM on October 18, 2014 [3 favorites]

I just have yet to see some official thread from this leaderless movement that indicates that it has an official list of demands.
That's called "deniability". But show me a #GGer who doesn't declare he agrees with everything on the left side of that sheet and I'll show you somebody whose "red pill" is wearing off.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:49 PM on October 18, 2014

Also, you don't fuckle with Shuckle.

Yes, contemporary SJWs are just as bad as 19th-century Abolitionists...wait, what?


hjrrrnnnkzh?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:08 PM on October 18, 2014 [3 favorites]

...and the #GGers just want to live peacefully on their plantations with their slaves. It makes PERFECT sense.
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:19 PM on October 18, 2014

There was a time when I'd identify "Shuckle" as a Classic Troll: that is, somebody who dropped something expertly crafted into an online discussion so that it exploded from all sides while he (yeah, usually a he) watched from a safe distance. But the Classic Troll is dead and gone, it's with alt.nuke.the.usa in the grave.
posted by holgate at 8:21 PM on October 18, 2014 [1 favorite]

I found this excellent storify in Zoe Quinn's feed: #gamergate isn't a misogynist movement. It's the latest outburst of a larger misogynist movement going back years.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:02 PM on October 18, 2014 [14 favorites]

Yeah, it shouldn't be forgotten that #gamergate isn't something new- it's a continuation on the War Against Women, Fandom Front. You can easily relate the attitudes, reasoning style, and hatred of social justice to the James Desborough contremps, the Vox Day crusade against the Hugos, and before that, the sexism in the Science Fiction Writers of America controversy.

The parallels between the SFWA petition drive and #Gamergate are obvious:
* a woman in a public position receives large amounts of harassment from reactionaries and misogynists.
* A movement s formed under the guise of "protecting rights".
* A number of sincere dupes sign on under the false pretenses, as well as a core of "true believer" activists.
* The core retreats to a "Walled Garden" to plan and reinforce their message...unaware that their conversation is public.

The "culture war" attitudes, the anti-feminist paranoia, the conviction that the media is against them but the truth will one day cause them to win...the main difference is that the #gamergate people are a larger cabal, have a larger base of support, and are much better at online harassment.
posted by happyroach at 11:55 PM on October 18, 2014 [10 favorites]

When the GG enemies lists started popping up, I thought I'd use them as a sort of checklist to finally make good on my vague intentions towards more diverse games and games writing in my pop culture diet. More than half of all of the "unethical" sites, and a fair percentage of the "SJWs" named, were people I was already following to some degree. Hell, I was already supporting more than a few on Patreon.

I guess it's possible that I'm just, like, a natural feminist, and totally deserve a cookie despite never really thinking much beyond, "Gone Home was pretty good, I should probably look for more stuff like that I guess." But what's always seemed more likely is that the muckrakers and the witch-hunters alike are as fundamentally lazy as I am, never bothering to look beyond their pet targets.
posted by structuregeek at 12:03 AM on October 19, 2014

Insomnia thoughts:

So GamerGaters prowl Twitter for any negative mention of GamerGate, find appropriate copypasta from their secret stash that used to be on Girhub, and spam replies, right? I just realized that this is exactly Searle's Chinese Room. So does any part of the system actually understand what it's doing?
posted by Elementary Penguin at 12:28 AM on October 19, 2014 [20 favorites]

Going To Maine: I found this excellent storify in Zoe Quinn's feed: #gamergate isn't a misogynist movement. It's the latest outburst of a larger misogynist movement going back years.

Elementary Penguin: So GamerGaters prowl Twitter for any negative mention of GamerGate, find appropriate copypasta from their secret stash that used to be on Girhub, and spam replies, right?

I think that the people in Twitter HQ should be burning the midnight oil to figure out how they're going to handle this crisis. They've worked very hard to make Twitter "indispensable" to marketers, but it will all be for nothing if they can't eliminate the roving packs of bullies.

I don't go to the seedier parts of the Internet like the 'chans' precisely because I have no interest in interacting with its denizens. "Debating" with people who aren't fully engaged with reality isn't my idea of a good time.

If Twitter becomes a bad part of town, I imagine people will leave it in droves. As well they should.
posted by ob1quixote at 1:51 AM on October 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

I think that the people in Twitter HQ should be burning the midnight oil to figure out how they're going to handle this crisis.

This might be a question better suited for AskMe, but is there an official way or iPhone App that will completely hide people once I block them? I'm using tweetbot and have blocked a bunch of GGs, but they still show up when I view the replies to other people's tweets. Do I need to mute them as well? Something else?

The idea of shared blocklists has been mentioned and seems like it would be a good idea. There's always the possibility of blacklisting innocents (much like being in AdBlock's bad graces) but some of these are really obviously troll accounts.
posted by Gary at 2:00 AM on October 19, 2014

Something else?

There's Block Bot and Block Together. Not official services, but they seem trustworthy.
posted by tapeguy at 6:32 AM on October 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

gators turned their roving eye towards anil dash last night - attempting to bully him into donating to charity so they could say he was on their side and then when he refused to play along, "exposing" his "deep involvement" with gawker.
posted by nadawi at 6:45 AM on October 19, 2014 [14 favorites]

I honestly wonder how many actual, active Gators there are. How many sock puppets per Gator?

Gator is probably the best term for them, but I have vicarious affection for U of F. So it goes. (One of my best friends is from Gainesville.)

Also, that Shuckle link is super bizarre, especially since it contains rueful, vocal support for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I mean, how did that even get in there? Is the Gators' next step the conversion of Trieste to the center of a new Küstenland?
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:54 AM on October 19, 2014 [3 favorites]

I think that the people in Twitter HQ should be burning the midnight oil to figure out how they're going to handle this crisis.

I'm disappointed in Twitter's handling of the persistent attacks. Reflexively I'm sympathetic to the company; it's hard to deal with lots of anonymous accounts and any moderation policy has to be careful lest it's abused to attack people by getting their legitimate accounts removed. And Del Harvey the VP (!) of Trust & Safety at Twitter is one of the good ones, I have faith in her judgement and leadership.

But then it took Twitter at least two days to suspend @femfreq_, an obvious troll impersonation account. The reporting options are really frustrating; you go through about 5 pages of filling out a complaint only to be told "you can only report an impersonator if you personally are the one being impersonated". And the legitimate @femfreq still is not a Verified Account. Maybe that's Sarkeesian's choice, but it sure would help.

Block and mute work reasonably well, but since accounts are free there's really no way to stop a persistent attacker from creating new Twitter accounts just to harass people. I'm starting to understand why Robin Williams' daughter quit Twitter; if it's just a place where you see harassment, you'll leave.
posted by Nelson at 7:04 AM on October 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

nadawi: "gators turned their roving eye towards anil dash last night - attempting to bully him into donating to charity so they could say he was on their side and then when he refused to play along, "exposing" his "deep involvement" with gawker."

That's as plain an example as anyone could want of how the "innocent" and "genuine" rank and file of #gg become convinced of the villainy of their "enemies". They're so unsavvy it doesn't take a master manipulator; just someone with a position of perceived authority who won't stop beating a fabricated point until it's dead.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 7:22 AM on October 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

happyroach: it's not just fandom. If you used The Block Bot you'd immediately notice a ton of the howler monkeys disappear, because there's a non-trivial overlap between the people who support #gamergate and the harassers in the atheist/skeptic community who originally spurred the creation of The Block Bot. These days, I'm thinking of #gamergate as the under-60 Tea Party since it shares an astroturfed creation myth tapping into a deep lode of reactionary hatred from people upset that the world no longer considers them special.
posted by adamsc at 7:50 AM on October 19, 2014 [9 favorites]

gators turned their roving eye towards anil dash last night

We demand our games journalism have a professional white background.
posted by Navelgazer at 7:53 AM on October 19, 2014 [10 favorites]

I'm disappointed in Twitter's handling of the persistent attacks. Reflexively I'm sympathetic to the company; it's hard to deal with lots of anonymous accounts and any moderation policy has to be careful lest it's abused to attack people by getting their legitimate accounts removed.

I share your sympathy for the general problem – attempting to police norms which vary so widely is an unwinable fight – but I think they've been too quick to conclude that they can't do anything.

There's one specific area where I think they're actually negligent: they explicitly refuse to investigate threats reported by anyone other than the target. You fill out a huge form and then get an auto-response telling you that they've concluded there's no need to investigate.

Beyond that, however, I think they've been focused on freedom of speech, which isn't wrong, but has resulted in a massive blind spot about ways to give people a better experience by controlling what they listen to. This could be basic stuff like more nuanced filtering for notifications (e.g. no notifications from ignore new accounts which they don't follow, rate-limit notifications from someone you aren't replying to) but the most interesting ideas would leverage the social graph:

* Block/filter unfollowed accounts which n of my friends (or specific trusted accounts) have blocked
* Block/filter unfollowed accounts which follow or retweet accounts I (or my friends) have blocked
* Automatically filter tweets / notifications which my friends have reported as annoying
* Automatically filter tweets / notifications which contain images which I or my friends have reported

Some of these can be experimented with using tools like The Block Bot or Blocking Together but in many cases the power would come from data which those tools can't access, such as other peoples’ block list or reports.

There are also some basic anti-spam measures they could make such as rate-limiting new accounts ability to send messages to strangers or tying blocks to the email address so a griefer has to burn a validated email address each time.
posted by adamsc at 8:07 AM on October 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

The other thing Twitter can do is extend the anti-impersonation protection that is available to verified accounts. Presumably, that requires some human input, which is why it's reserved for the blue-tick minority, because it doesn't scale without employing more humans. If there's a perception that Twitter cares enough to protect celebrities and brands from abuse but throws regular users to the jackals, that's a good way to start a death spiral.

(Targetting Anil Dash is bizarrely amusing, because Anil has more online savvy in his little finger than the numpties attacking him, and he's also verified mainly because he was around in 2006.)
posted by holgate at 8:46 AM on October 19, 2014 [11 favorites]

It doesn't need to scale, though--it's not that anybody thinks that @Spacekatgal and @femfreq and @TheQuinnspiracy need to have been verified before anything happened, you know? Take the three of them and verify them and you've handled the three most likely targets. If the GGers shift their attention elsewhere, you verify one more person. That they haven't verified those three users yet, if Anita Sarkeesian has been dealing with impersonators since her crowdfunding campaign, it does suggest that Twitter's priorities are entirely screwed up. Not that I'm dumping my Twitter account, but I'm starting to feel like they've had lots of opportunities to do the right thing, and that failure to do so is starting to look more explicitly like they're actively doing the wrong thing.
posted by Sequence at 10:02 AM on October 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

Those tweets are obviously inappropriate and I don't see how anyone could think otherwise. People on the right side of an issue can and do act badly and they shouldn't get a pass. That's how the GamerGate folks act. Be better than they are.

I think the context of who Sam Biddle is and what he does at Gawker is relevant here. Biddle writes for Valleywag, which for all its inflammatory nit-picking of Silicon Valley remains one of the only publications that gives a shit about, you know, ridiculous corruption in the industry. He is by far Gawker's most vitriolic writer, more biased and unfair than even his fellow Valleywag writers — but that's partly because his job is to be one of the very, very few people writing about Silicon Valley with a critical eye, amidst a wave of TechCrunch, Mashable, and PandoDaily writers whose roles are basically to write ads for companies under the guise of journalism.

Valleywag's coverage is sometimes seemingly split between "bros who've realized there's way way way too much money in startups" and "socially inept ex-nerds fail to recognize that the world no longer owes them for their decades-old vendettas", so it makes sense that Biddle would make off-color jokes about bullying nerds and giving people swirlies. Kind of tasteless, but by no means the outrageous tit-for-tat that people are making it out to be, for whatever reason.

(It feels particularly inept to call Gawker a sewer in this thread, which was prompted by an article in Jezebel and pushed along by an excellent takedown of #GamerGate by Deadspin — not to mention how this whole controversy "began" over a supposed Kotaku review that was written in exchange for sex. Gawker is a fairly terrific empire at this point, despite its absolute willingness to deal in sensationalism and low culture right alongside its higher-quality work, but on #GamerGate it has been especially on-point, turning out killer article after killer article — and there've been some terrific ones that didn't even reach the blue.)
posted by rorgy at 10:18 AM on October 19, 2014 [16 favorites]

(Gawker has been on the forefront of exposing misogyny in online culture — their exposé on Reddit user violentacrez has been one of the more significant articles written about/criticizing Reddit culture to date.)
posted by rorgy at 10:22 AM on October 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

Take the three of them and verify them and you've handled the three most likely targets.

I agree, though we've seen how quickly the mob can shift its targets. Perhaps the problem is that because verified status has acquired cachet and a brand/celeb association, there are certain parts of Twitter's hierarchy that are reluctant to hand it out more broadly, because it confers... status. And perhaps because there's a growing quid pro quo on the brand side.

There's a certain amount of ugh in Valleywag -- it's at its weakest when targetting obscure startups that don't have much money or presence and are destined to stay that way -- but for the most part, it punches upwards.
posted by holgate at 11:20 AM on October 19, 2014

I noticed that Polygon calls their forum discussing the site 'meta'.

Do they owe Mathowie some licensing fees or something?
posted by el io at 11:39 AM on October 19, 2014

el io: 'meta' is a pretty common term used to describe such forums - I've seen it in a few places.
posted by divabat at 12:05 PM on October 19, 2014

Another Storify, related to the gators targeting Anil Dash: Make no mistake: Gamergate condones harassment, of Zoe Quinn, and of others. (Guy tweets suggestion that if Gamergate wants to be viewed as strongly anti-bullying, how about donating directly to Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, and/or Brianna Wu, then tallies the responses he gets.)
posted by Lexica at 12:05 PM on October 19, 2014 [12 favorites]

I seriously doubt the gators are "reporting abuse" at the rate they claim, being that a part of this conversation has been Twitter's refusal to accept reports from parties who aren't being directly targeted. Unless they're reporting them as "spam," they're lying.
posted by almostmanda at 12:31 PM on October 19, 2014

There was a whole thing about how one of their number was talking to the FBI about a Brazilian blogger who was harassing Anita Sarkeesian. Not sure how long that conversation would actually take...
posted by running order squabble fest at 1:01 PM on October 19, 2014

I seriously doubt the gators are "reporting abuse" at the rate they claim, being that a part of this conversation has been Twitter's refusal to accept reports from parties who aren't being directly targeted. Unless they're reporting them as "spam," they're lying.

Anyone can report "This tweet is annoying" without the huge form. I rather suspect that this is completely ignored, however, as there's no obvious sign of action.
posted by adamsc at 1:14 PM on October 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

rorgy, that's all good context, but the argument can be made that we ought to stop doing it that way: that using abusive language to target abusers simpler perpetuates the problem.

Yeh, enemy of my enemy, etc, but: if at the end of the day we "solve" the problem of abusive behavior through abusive behavior, we've simply sent a signal that abusive behavior is OK if it checks off these boxes, and give unwitting credence to one of the main complaints [gamergaters / PUAs / MRAs / etc.] levy: That "social justice" activities are insincere.
posted by lodurr at 1:22 PM on October 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yep. Most of what rorgy said is true (about Gawker's coverage and so on) and none of it is all that relevant to whether Biddle's tweets were acceptable. We can pay attention to more than one thing at a time and say two things are wrong without them being exactly equivalent. Biddle screwed up and was forced to apologize. And one of the ways he screwed up was by giving the GamerGaters legitimate ammunition to say "they're doing it too!". That's not precisely true but it is close to true enough that he should have known better. If simply not being an asshole who makes abusive tweets wasn't enough to stop him, I mean, which it clearly was not.
posted by Justinian at 1:55 PM on October 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ok, big news from delusion-central: Elizabeth Warren is going to come out in favor of gamergate, because she is PRO consumer. I think I need to check my kid for a head injury.
posted by Biblio at 2:42 PM on October 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

Elizabeth Warren is going to come out in favor of gamergate, because she is PRO consumer

Wtf....... what. Do you have a link?
posted by naju at 2:45 PM on October 19, 2014

To her coming out in favor? Of course not, that would be insane. I think some of the deluded Gaters wrote her a letter or something. Which her staff undoubtedly either never saw or ignored.
posted by Justinian at 3:10 PM on October 19, 2014

Ah, I misunderstood. Yeah, delusional indeed...
posted by naju at 3:21 PM on October 19, 2014

Maybe they can write to President Obama. The President of Poland did give him a copy of The Witcher 2...
posted by Justinian at 3:38 PM on October 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

Which he didn't even play! Total SJW.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 3:48 PM on October 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

It's starting to become hilarious how many of their talking points are so reactionary, and yet they want all these people to be on their side... Elizabeth Warren. Jon Stewart. Like, I can't tell if either they haven't noticed how many of their talking points are conservative bullshit, or if they haven't noticed that these notable people are liberals and feminists.
posted by Sequence at 4:15 PM on October 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

I grew up knowing what it's like to be bullied. The #Gamergators are all bullies. Period.

Yes, some of them are former bullying victims, but have you ever heard of the Cycle of Abuse? It absolutely applies to bullies and their victims... when they grow up and have any minimal amount of power over others, the temptation to do even worse than was done to them can be irresistable. (And yes, I have personally resisted it although it wasn't THAT hard for me.)

I am certainly looking forward to Jon Stewart's show Monday, but I suspect John Oliver will beat him to it tonight with a takedown that's almost guaranteed to be awesome. If they're looking for support from the "funny pundits", the only one with a chance of Going #Gater would be Bill Maher.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:22 PM on October 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

Bill O'reilly might jump on board. He's pretty funny.

(oh, wait, he isn't trying to be funny, nevermind)
posted by el io at 4:26 PM on October 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Why do people think these folks are even remotely aware of what is going on? We know what is going on but if you say "GamerGate" to 99.9% of the population I think they'd just stare at you blankly and wonder if you were having a stroke.
posted by Justinian at 4:27 PM on October 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Well, Justinian, it has been on the front page of the Times, so it's known amongst the cognoscenti. Whether a TV outlet will feel it's worth giving coverage, though, that may be a harder nut.

As far as that Storify shows, they haven't yet figured out that Anil spent all of 2013 retweeting only women, which would surely put him more in the SJW column than the journalist column.

But it proves, at the very least, that these dunces have no internet skillz whatsoever.
posted by dhartung at 4:30 PM on October 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

these fools "doxxed" andy baio through a seekrit document filled with things found on his wiki page. they are really bad at being as shitty as they want to be.
posted by nadawi at 4:40 PM on October 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm sure Roger Ailes is doing in depth research on what talking points FoxNews should use on the subject... if he okays an anti-GG stand, he'll let Shep Smith anchor it, but pro-GG he'll probably assign to one (or all) of the blonde 'female faces' on the channel. (And he does have that much control - I'm sure Smith had to beg for many hours over many weeks to get to do his 3-minute piece on Climate Change... or Ailes is punishing the oil companies for not buying enough ads)

But this mess is going to get greater exposure... the GGers are damned determined to do that, with full disregard as to the obvious blowback. And John Oliver has previously dedicated 15-minute segments to Net Neutrality, Civil Forfeiture and Miss America, so he's not afraid to break an 'obscure' issue.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:40 PM on October 19, 2014

Gators mad at a Boston Globe reporter tell him he was looking at the wrong sources. So he looks at the sources they provide and returns to KiA to give his assessment.

posted by honestcoyote at 4:41 PM on October 19, 2014 [23 favorites]

Huh, Brianna Wu (@spacekatgal) has nice things to say about Twitter's help.

I want to thank Twitter for helping me stop the fake account impersonating me. I can't stress enough how great they've been to me.

I think adamsc above is right about some technical measures Twitter could take to mitigate the harassment spam.
posted by Nelson at 4:42 PM on October 19, 2014

This mess has even improved my opinion of Gawker (I like io9, kindalike lifehacker, the rest from meh to ugh), and when I saw its "endorsement of bullying" from a writer in a snarky tweet, I LOLed, and that's coming from a former bully victim who understands the Cycle of Abuse. And yet, there is a part of me who would not object to ALL of them getting a major dosage of their own bullying medicine, even though I know it would only let them play more victim cards.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:52 PM on October 19, 2014

Someone in KiA immediately jumped on to GOTCHA the thing about Zoe getting harassment before the ex-boyfriend thing because she'd clearly been advertising on 4chan, because THAT makes sense, and there's totally plenty of feminists in GamerGate--really! They just cannot let these things go, not even when someone is seriously trying to explain to them that they can really get their hand out of that box again if they just stop making a fist...
posted by Sequence at 4:59 PM on October 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

That Reddit comment from the Boston Globe reporter that honestcoyote linked is pretty great. It points out a fundamental problem with GamerGate: without any official leadership or platform, what can they actually achieve? How can anyone meet their demands if there the only thing to respond to is a formless, anonymous rabble? Yet more evidence of the fundamental bankruptcy of GamerGate as a so-called "movement" and more evidence that they're nothing better than a lynch mob.
posted by mhum at 5:13 PM on October 19, 2014

I only have an email from my son re: Warren. Apparently they think this is going to become an issue in the midterms. Because this is what what America cares about. The economy, the environment, Ebola.....all take a backseat to Leigh Alexander being mean to some babbys on the internet.
posted by Biblio at 5:33 PM on October 19, 2014 [14 favorites]

without any official leadership or platform, what can they actually achieve?
Not to be alarmist (just pessimistic), but didn't we say the same thing about the Tea Party five years ago?

"babbys on the internet" may be an important target group for GOP outreach...
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:44 PM on October 19, 2014 [6 favorites]

@MattBinder reveals the truth about #GamerGate's anti-bullying hero Mike Cernovich with his own tweets.
posted by Gary at 5:57 PM on October 19, 2014 [16 favorites]

More and more it is clear this is just a bunch of crybabies throwing a temper tantrum. Unfortunately they are hurting other people in the process or we could just let them cry themselves out and go sleepy nap time.
posted by Justinian at 5:57 PM on October 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

gators turned their roving eye towards anil dash last night - attempting to bully him into donating to charity so they could say he was on their side and then when he refused to play along, "exposing" his "deep involvement" with gawker.

FFS. This shit just keep getting more and more unhinged.
posted by homunculus at 6:11 PM on October 19, 2014

That Reddit comment from the Boston Globe reporter that honestcoyote linked is pretty great.

It is great. I'm glad to see it has at least two Reddit Gold attached, too. I like the thought of that, a comment in the middle of the gross KotakuInAction subreddit, with 50+ upvotes and at least $5 worth of user thanks on it.
posted by Nelson at 6:15 PM on October 19, 2014

Well, since it's been linked to from elsewhere, I'm guessing it's gotten a lot of attention from people other than the usual KiA crowd. There's an accusation of brigading in there, at least one, too.
posted by Sequence at 6:19 PM on October 19, 2014

There's an accusation of brigading in there

That's pretty rich
posted by aubilenon at 6:26 PM on October 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

Multiple links to a Reddit comment from a gator: look at the power of our movement!

Multiple links to a Reddit comment calling out the gators: see the collusion at work!

What the gators don't yet realise is that they're creating a fantastic corpus for future social studies researchers examining the emergence of distributed online cult movements.
posted by holgate at 6:33 PM on October 19, 2014 [13 favorites]

I love the comment in response to the journalist's which, in classic chan-argument style, lays out

[supposed credentials which would in any other circumstances ally me against [cause]]

[but I support [cause]!]

[link to random blog post shining a selective light on a single deeply questionable "incident"]

[faux-reasonable directionless waffle]
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 7:06 PM on October 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

I've got to throw out some recognition to Veeren Jubbal, the guy who started the #StopGamerGate2014 hashtag. His vast stores of patient and kindness are genuinely awesome.
posted by wintersweet at 7:18 PM on October 19, 2014

oneswellfwoop: GamerGators were trying to get John Oliver to cover "games corruption" but now there's some pushback.
posted by divabat at 7:20 PM on October 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

without any official leadership or platform, what can they actually achieve?
Not to be alarmist (just pessimistic), but didn't we say the same thing about the Tea Party five years ago?

Isn't this essentially how Occupy worked?
posted by divabat at 7:26 PM on October 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Both Gamergate and the Tea Party have a lot in common - they're both essentially about "legitimate" topics (Obama's birth certificate or socialized healthcare, ethics in game journalism) covering up some visceral hate toward an other encroaching on their perceived territory (black/socialist/foreigner in White House, feminist and social justice concerns in video games). Occupy was pretty heart on sleeve: it was decentralized and leaderless, but you knew exactly where they stood on the stuff they talked about, and there was no subterfuge. The bullet points and lists of demands were exactly what they intended to be, and any journalist who wanted to figure out the talking points and motivations could do so without trouble.
posted by naju at 7:38 PM on October 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

I don't think the structural comparisons to Occupy are unfair: Quinn Norton's long retrospective piece on the movement touches on this:

Because the GA had no way to reject force, over time it fell to force. Proposals won by intimidation; bullies carried the day. What began as a way to let people reform and remake themselves had no mechanism for dealing with them when they didn’t. It had no way to deal with parasites and predators...

There was no critique in Occupy, no accountability. At first it didn’t matter, but as life grew messy and complicated, its absence became terrible. There wasn’t even a way to conceive of critique, as if the language had no words to describe the movement’s faults to itself.

The origin stories are different, the deep background in MRA culture is different, and abuse was its first manifestation, but there are parallels in the lack of critique, the lack of accountability, and the speed with which it becomes a steady-state (yes, Chinese Room-like) recapitulation.
posted by holgate at 7:50 PM on October 19, 2014 [9 favorites]

The fellow who got into the Twitter scuffle with Anil has quite the Twitter history. (This is really just adding another level of "Ick! What an unpleasant person!" to the discussion, but sometimes that feels like the thing to do.)
posted by Going To Maine at 8:11 PM on October 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

One Fell Swoop is right on. what we are witnessing is the birth of a young republican movement. If I were a republican strategist I would be all over gamergate
posted by chaz at 8:48 PM on October 19, 2014

The Week: Gamergate has backfired spectacularly on its nincompoop perpetrators

The so-called Gamergate movement cannot be regarded as anything but an enormous own goal.

There are surely many decent members who don't realize what they've joined, believing they are rallying against unethical behavior in gaming journalism. But the more you examine the movement, the more you realize that the only coherent objective ever elaborated or carried out by it is the harassing of certain writers, critics, and game developers, most of them women, who have spoken out against prejudice and misogyny in gaming.

posted by Lexica at 8:49 PM on October 19, 2014 [10 favorites]

Good work guys, you bought it hook, line, and sinker. Equivalency of anyone who posts up a hash tag is guilty by association.
posted by MrLint at 9:05 PM on October 19, 2014

Maybe this will end up doing as much damage to #hashtageverything as it does to -Gate... Nah, too optimistic.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:09 PM on October 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

Good work guys, you bought it hook, line, and sinker.

Bought what? Anybody know what this means?
posted by Justinian at 9:29 PM on October 19, 2014

I read that as we (anti-gg) people have been suckered? But we'll never know, because MrLint disabled their account.
posted by rtha at 9:39 PM on October 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

$5 in the bank.
posted by Artw at 9:44 PM on October 19, 2014 [8 favorites]

Hey, I see a funding problem solution...
posted by Artw at 9:45 PM on October 19, 2014 [4 favorites]

If Anil Dash is a target, I'm a bit surprised they haven't stormed the $5 gates of this place by now in droves...
posted by naju at 9:49 PM on October 19, 2014

"1999: gamers demand we stop blaming school shootings on videogames.
2014: gamers threaten a school shooting because videogames."

so much this.
posted by anti social order at 10:02 PM on October 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

If Anil Dash is a target, I'm a bit surprised they haven't stormed the $5 gates of this place by now in droves...

I'm not too surprised. Because there's plenty of free places to go harass people. Even if they don't know about MeFi's active and excellent moderation.

Also I don't think you'd have to read much of this thread to realize we're a lost cause for them.
posted by aubilenon at 10:06 PM on October 19, 2014

But we'll never know, because MrLint disabled their account.

That's too bad, honestly. He seemed to have an actual posting history and didn't look like the usual hit and run thread derailer.

I want to believe there are some reasonable people who have their reasons for sticking with the tag. But poke a few holes in the "journalistic integrity" line and it always seems to be about how much they hate feminists. I'd even settle for someone who can talk about what Nathan Grayson did (the actual journalist) without bringing up how Zoe Quinn cheated on her boyfriend. Because I've read the two Grayson articles in question and it's pretty weak sauce to start a movement over.
posted by Gary at 10:08 PM on October 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

Well, Anil hasn't participated actively in this thread, nor has John Scalzi, who has been joyfully baiting them on his own blog (with #Pineapplepizzagate and the misogyny-related The Scalzi Gender), and they are the two most high-profile targets among MeFites right now. Apparently the Gators' famous 'doxxing' skills are inadequate to trace either of them here. Now, I have two twitter accounts, one I'm actively using and @oneswellfoop which is inactive. I could use it as a 'honeypot' to drag them in here to harvest some quickly banhammered accounts, but I'm sure that just my mentioning it will make our already-overworked moderators scream in chorus "NO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O!!!" like the entire Skywalker family on a bad day, so let me assure you I am absolutely not going to do that (but if you think I may be giving anybody else a bad idea, you may delete this comment - but do it with love).
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:08 PM on October 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

This article was already posted, with the hashtag, to the @metafilter twitter.

But the framing makes it clear it's going to be an uphill battle for anyone coming to defend gamergate. And $5. There's easier targets elsewhere.
posted by aubilenon at 10:17 PM on October 19, 2014

I wouldn't be so sure. Not to make them seem like Skynet or anything, but after turning up on Wikipedia as an anonymous IP didn't work out for them all these reactivated accounts started turning up, people who hadn't posted since 2008 suddenly very concerned about the state of the GamerGate article.
posted by Artw at 10:30 PM on October 19, 2014

Gary: "I want to believe there are some reasonable people who have their reasons for sticking with the tag."

I don't, I think. I mean, what reasonable person could believe that sucking the terror of feminist thought out of toy reviews could be worth death threats? You sort of have to throw compassion away to support the tag, or just be really, really, incredibly, unbelievably unobservant.

or astonishingly gullible
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 10:48 PM on October 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

This week's New Yorker: A Scandal Erupts in the Video-Game Community.

Gamergate is an expression of a narrative that certain video-game fans have chosen to believe: that the types of games they enjoy may change or disappear in the face of progressive criticism and commentary, and that the writers and journalists who cover the industry coördinate their message and skew it to push an agenda. It is a movement rooted in distrust and fear.

posted by jokeefe at 11:00 PM on October 19, 2014 [5 favorites]

The Wikileaks Twitter account is just full on ranting about SJWs now.
posted by Artw at 11:24 PM on October 19, 2014 [2 favorites]

>If Anil Dash is a target, I'm a bit surprised they haven't stormed the $5 gates of this place by now in droves...

Followed the link to reddit to see the Boston Globe take down and its getting lots of attention, so much so that the entire group/sub/whatever is taking notice. Mefi and this thread gets a mention if you scroll down a bit, and my favorite part just after that - there's mrlint mentioning he's going to close his account here and someone noticing that rtha noticed his account is closed. so, so meta.
posted by anti social order at 11:37 PM on October 19, 2014 [7 favorites]

I'm very active on both Twitter (about a thousand followers) and Reddit, though in football-related circles that don't overlap with gamergate much. A very reasonable guy who follows me posted an open question about GG, with the hashtag, and I responded. I also engaged in the Boston Globe reddit topic, again with some but not much response.

As a data point, I did NOT get flooded with responses. One Brazilian guy responded with a tweet that listed a URL. I followed it, full of some pretty crass analysis in broken English. (Of course men like the ass! Anita can't understand this! etc.)

I was particularly amused that he said she didn't understand the difference between sexist and sexy, cluelessly quoting Spinal Tap.

Then another person I didn't know responded that accounts liked to this Brazilian tweeter had been involved in sending threats to Anita, and was kind of a click-seeking troll who had doxxed people on both sides of GG.

a quick look at his account revealed some conspiratorial and concerning tweets right away. So I deleted my responses to him and didn't look back.
posted by msalt at 12:00 AM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Gaters try and get a guy fired from the company he owns. Hilarious contact form submissions ensue.
posted by PenDevil at 12:02 AM on October 20, 2014 [10 favorites]

I don't, I think. I mean, what reasonable person could believe that sucking the terror of feminist thought out of toy reviews could be worth death threats?

I guess it's because there are so many of them that I'd like to hope they aren't all terrible people. But I agree, I can't think of any good reasons to support it this point.

If they were defending the term "Gamer" I could understand, because that encompasses a lot of shared experiences and means a lot to people. If they actually cared about ethics in journalism then you think they would spend more time actually discussing it. But at this point the main activity of GG seems to be defending GG and deciding who is with them or against them.

or astonishingly gullible

If they honestly think John Oliver would be on their side, even after Ayn Rand - How Is This Still A Thing?, then I wouldn't rule this out.
posted by Gary at 12:03 AM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

MrLint commented only once in this thread. His sole post is nonsensical. He then quit Mefi.

Weird.
posted by five fresh fish at 12:21 AM on October 20, 2014

That Anil Dash storify is absolutely horrifying and needs to be forwarded to the California bar association posthaste.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:33 AM on October 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

One Fell Swoop is right on. what we are witnessing is the birth of a young republican movement. If I were a republican strategist I would be all over gamergate

Over the past few years, /pol/ has been incubating a reactionary wing, and they sure do like seeding themselves over other boards. It's curious to me that they hate Jews so much, and yet they act so much exactly like the archetypical, anti-Semitic figure of the Jew: they're literally plotting ways to bully and boycott their way to a society of their own liking.
posted by Sticherbeast at 4:47 AM on October 20, 2014

sequence: .... they can really get their hand out of that box again if they just stop making a fist...

Well, strictly speaking, they could get their hand out of the box without relaxing their fist, if they chew the hand off first and then cut it up inside the box before removing it. Which is what it seems to me that they're trying to do.
posted by lodurr at 5:53 AM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Gaters try and get a guy fired from the company he owns. Hilarious contact form submissions ensue.

"YOU HAVE A KNOWN SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR ON YOUR STAFF"

my sides
posted by zombieflanders at 6:56 AM on October 20, 2014 [20 favorites]

I am boycotting you! This is your only warning!

Which implies... the threat of something worse than boycotting to come, if I'm not mistaken.

(Not that the Gators have that capacity, just the delusions of grandeur, you see)
posted by Navelgazer at 7:00 AM on October 20, 2014

reddit is actually discussing us directly. i encourage everyone to just read and don't respond. it is hilarious they think we're part of the conspiracy.

five fresh fish - he found the thread through reddit and then came back to close his account. he had been inactive for a while but had been a member since the early days of the site (so, no $5).
posted by nadawi at 7:00 AM on October 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

"Oh, great, now I've got to increase their bonus. Thanks for nothing, dude."
posted by lodurr at 7:01 AM on October 20, 2014

Gaters try and get a guy fired from the company he owns

and then someone accuses him of making it up, pokes at him, and then asks for coding help.
posted by nadawi at 7:06 AM on October 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

I'm just getting around to reading some of the comments on that reddit thread that honestcoyote linked to yesterday... I'm loving the response that starts out explaining that the leaderless aspect of GG is a good decision for integrity, as is the anonymity. Because of course reasonable people would flock to support a movement that is too cowardly to be honest about itself. Golly, you guys, I just don't understand why you aren't getting the support you feel you're entitled to...
posted by palomar at 7:39 AM on October 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Good work guys, you bought it hook, line, and sinker. Equivalency of anyone who posts up a hash tag is guilty by association.
posted by MrLint at 11:05 PM on October 19 [+] [!]


She doesn't even go here!
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:40 AM on October 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

homunculus: "gators turned their roving eye towards anil dash last night - attempting to bully him into donating to charity so they could say he was on their side and then when he refused to play along, "exposing" his "deep involvement" with gawker.

FFS. This shit just keep getting more and more unhinged."

Eternal September, man... Remember Netiquette? I swear to fucking god, if we had the same net culture that we used to have this wouldn't happen to this degree. Or then again, maybe I'm a fool and just want the kids to get off my lawn babbies to get off my internet.

(Love the babby term upthread, I thin it fits perfectly).
posted by symbioid at 7:42 AM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

reddit is actually discussing us directly. i encourage everyone to just read and don't respond. it is hilarious they think we're part of the conspiracy.

At this point, there's like 12 people circle-jerking over nothing. The 'movement' is laughable.
posted by empath at 7:46 AM on October 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

I would really love to see some real network research on this.
posted by lodurr at 7:53 AM on October 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

At this point, there's like 12 people circle-jerking over nothing. The 'movement' is laughable.

Well yeah, they look like tools. On the other hand, pretty much every woman I know in gaming production has either been targeted, for harassment, or is afraid that is they become visible they will be targeted. People I know are leaving the industry or dropping out of social media because of this.

So yeah, maybe ostensibly gamergate has just made gamers look bad. However, until some way is found to deal with the harrassment, the primary goal of the gaters- to silence women- is being met.
posted by happyroach at 8:40 AM on October 20, 2014 [12 favorites]

Gaters try and get a guy fired from the company he owns. Hilarious contact form submissions ensue

Super heartwarming moment in the subsequent discussion - a dude who comes in claiming that the emails are faked ends up asking for and getting Objective C tips from Paris B-A. Whether this will make him less likely to storm in on the next perceived slight, who knows? But it's nice that he got the help he needed.
posted by running order squabble fest at 8:45 AM on October 20, 2014

*waves at KiA members snooping on us*
posted by Theta States at 9:08 AM on October 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

From Reddit:

I can forgive the MSM for believing the harassment narrative... but these small-time outlets who specialize in gaming and tech -- they don't really have an excuse and it makes me question just how involved they are with all the corruption.

HOW DEEP DOES THIS MEFI RABBITHOLE GO?
posted by Theta States at 9:11 AM on October 20, 2014 [9 favorites]

HOW DEEP DOES THIS MEFI RABBITHOLE GO?

It's hard to measure with all these stupid rabbits in the way

Why do we even have these?
posted by aubilenon at 9:14 AM on October 20, 2014 [17 favorites]

Sorry guys, I just got back from paying off shiftless game reviewers to push forward an insincere liberal agenda, but I guess I don't need to tell y'all about any of that. Is this still a safe place to talk?
posted by Navelgazer at 9:15 AM on October 20, 2014 [11 favorites]

Fidelio.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:19 AM on October 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

Metafilter: A small-time outlet that specializes in gaming and tech.
posted by boo_radley at 9:25 AM on October 20, 2014 [12 favorites]

/Off to photoshop modest clothing on to female videogame characters.
posted by Artw at 9:27 AM on October 20, 2014 [9 favorites]

Artw: "/Off to photoshop modest clothing on to female videogame characters."

*points* SJW!!!!!

...I have lost a hero this day.

oh well, back to screenshotting this thread and circling things in mspaint
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 9:30 AM on October 20, 2014 [14 favorites]

I'm confused. I thought he GOT points for that. We are SJWs, right? Or are we still hiding that?
posted by lodurr at 9:33 AM on October 20, 2014

Listen man just because some of us are SJWs doesn't mean that you can paint all of us with that brush. Some of us are also horrible people!
posted by murphy slaw at 9:36 AM on October 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

I thought we were skeletons.
posted by emmtee at 9:36 AM on October 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

....some of us are SJWs [but] Some of us are also horrible people!

OK, now I'm REALLY confused.
posted by lodurr at 9:38 AM on October 20, 2014

I contain a skeleton
posted by aubilenon at 9:38 AM on October 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

I thought we were skeletons.
posted by lodurr at 9:39 AM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Hey guys do you think "My Immortal" works for the soundtrack to my red pill video or is Evanescence corrupt?
posted by Navelgazer at 9:39 AM on October 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

Maybe I'm being naive now, but you have to hope that many of these gators are boys like my son, rather than hard core mysoginists. He seems to be truly caught up in the excitement of a movement, without the critical thinking skills to evaluate the value or necessity of the movement. I sent him a list of at least 20 issues he could devote his time to instead and he said he doesn't need my approval, so, right on target for 19, I guess. Lord knows I gave my parents gray hair when I was 19, but nobody was threatening mass shootings when I put a pink triangle on my backpack and gave up meat.
I actually count myself lucky that I have any idea what he's up to online. I'm sure there are a plenty of parents who have no clue what their sons are engaged in. At least I can continue to challenge him.
posted by Biblio at 9:39 AM on October 20, 2014 [11 favorites]

#NotYourSkeleton
posted by murphy slaw at 9:40 AM on October 20, 2014 [10 favorites]

Biblio, I do think that. That's what I mean (& I think others) when they argue that the movement has at least 3 layers to it: a hard core of trolls who are misogynists, probably mostly MRAs, PUAs, or their fellow-travellers (the 'older men'); a next layer of guys who may or may not even understand that they're misogyinists; and the largest group, guys [mostly guys] like your son.

The inner core I view as hardened criminals, unlikely to change. But still, as with a hardened gang member, sometimes you get surprised. Kids like your son I think mostly grow up & out. Just keep trying to communicate with him, it sounds like you do that.
posted by lodurr at 9:43 AM on October 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Every time I see a post like this, where they say something about how GG is a hate group or some other crap, I imagine Leigh Alexander or Anita's boytoy pointing at themselves in a mirror while shrieking.

wat
posted by murphy slaw at 9:44 AM on October 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

How is there no discussion over in KiA about the tweets showing just how horrible of a bully Mike Cernovich is, even at least trying to find out any truth to it? Do they not even acknowledge it or just simply dismiss it because the storify post was by someone who is anti-GG?
posted by edZio at 9:44 AM on October 20, 2014

just simply dismiss it because the storify post was by someone who is anti-GG?

dingdingding
posted by Navelgazer at 9:45 AM on October 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

edZio -- I dunno -- because they admire that kind of thing, maybe?
posted by lodurr at 9:45 AM on October 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

they think we're part of the conspiracy.
I have always wanted to be part of a conspiracy. I just hope that the servers can handle the massive load from Gators checking in on us... that is, it would be a problem if there were more of them than MeFites participating here. Still, opening up a MeTa to discuss the Reddit thread discussing this thread would be SO Meta AND give us a fresh start. (Reddit's Media Masters at Conde Nash can afford maintaining epic threads better than this Genuine Internet Small Business)

I thought we were skeletons.
My doctor would refute that - he says I still have at least 50 pounds to lose.
I contain a skeleton
We contain multitudes, at least those of us with dissociative disorders do.

How is there no discussion over in KiA about Mike Cernovich past tweets and just how horrible of a bully he is, even at least trying to find out any truth to it?
because they admire that kind of thing, maybe?
We have a winner!
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:47 AM on October 20, 2014

Biblio - i'm sorry about your son and i hope he finds his way - but 19 year old men are very capable of being misogynists - they are still developing and hopefully they grow out of it - but they aren't little boys. to say someone is sexist isn't to say they're a bad person or without hope - it's really no more damning than pointing out that they accepted the programing of our white male supremacist culture. i do think a lot of the "movement" are men under 25, but that doesn't really speak to how many of them are sexists and how many of them are duped (and how many are both).
posted by nadawi at 9:48 AM on October 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

I Thought We Were Skeletons sounds like a Decemberists album.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:48 AM on October 20, 2014 [14 favorites]

because they admire that kind of thing, maybe?

That's too neat a judgement. It's the claim to inclusivity and broad support, of non-hierarchical structure, the deep engagement with the grand conspiracy of The Other Side, the cult of the false flag. All of that means they won't exclude obviously terrible people but also retain plausible deniability about those people's role in driving things forward. No accountability, no critique.
posted by holgate at 9:51 AM on October 20, 2014

there's no real discussion about based lawyer's past for the same reason that it doesn't matter that adam baldwin and gjoni aren't gamers - because it has nothing to do with bullying or ethics or if it's ok for not-real-gamers to influence the industry.
posted by nadawi at 9:52 AM on October 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Every time I see a post like this, where they say something about how GG is a hate group or some other crap, I imagine Leigh Alexander or Anita's boytoy pointing at themselves in a mirror while shrieking.

They just realised there's a skeleton inside them.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 9:54 AM on October 20, 2014 [7 favorites]

How is there no discussion over in KiA about the tweets showing just how horrible of a bully Mike Cernovich is, even at least trying to find out any truth to it?

It's really not surprising that there is little to no examination by the GG crew. This is really just another manifestation of their fundamental misunderstanding of how discussion and debate function.

The GG crowd has shown repeatedly that they view debate as something that is won by simply uttering a magic phrase ("corruption!", "conflict of interest!", "ad hominem!") or magic "red-pill" link, without any thought put behind the deployment of their words. To them, arguments have nothing to do with rationality, or self reflection. Instead, arguments are simply a collection of trump cards that one trots out at the right moment for an incisive victory, but otherwise bear no real consideration.

Consequently, it is unsurprising that they choose their heroes in the same way. There's no real thought being put into who a potential hero is, what their views are, whether they're a nutjob, etc. The only criteria is: does this person appear (to a GGer's feeble argumentative skills) to be a trump card? Can this person be trotted out as a presumed knockout punch against the terrible SJWs? If so, they will be used and re-used as such, until they win, or until the backlash grows so great that they have to find a new hero in order to retain their self-proclaimed status as a "moderate".
posted by tocts at 9:56 AM on October 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

They're not coming out against Cernovich because he's basically a god to them. He's what they want to be.
posted by palomar at 9:58 AM on October 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

from the Reddit thread about us:

"Archive link

https://archive.today/M946r

They want traffic."

How adorably clueless. I'm disappointed it's such a short thread, but we really don't matter to them. So we can continue pointing and laughing at the babbies playing with their own poop (because I'm certainly not going to try to change their diapers).
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:58 AM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

I wonder if Cernovich gives money to the SPCA and then goes out kicking puppies on the street. Because he's all for being nice to animals everyone!!

How do people even present that as an argument of belief? Insane.
posted by GuyZero at 9:59 AM on October 20, 2014

arguments are simply a collection of trump cards that one trots out at the right moment for an incisive victory, but otherwise bear no real consideration.
Maybe their only exposure to non-video-based games is Magic the Gathering?
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:59 AM on October 20, 2014

> How is there no discussion over in KiA about the tweets showing just how horrible of a bully Mike Cernovich is, even at least trying to find out any truth to it? Do they not even acknowledge it or just simply dismiss it because the storify post was by someone who is anti-GG?

If you copy the URL into the search bar of reddit it will take you to the discussion on KiA about that storify. Top comment is a link to a couple of tweets where he apologizes for what he said and says he's trying to be a better person. Seems like that has appeased most of them.
posted by papercrane at 10:00 AM on October 20, 2014

Their spin on Mike Cernovich's past.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:04 AM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm disappointed that anti-Gamergate (inasmuch as there's any coherent such thing) and 'SJWs' haven't really embraced the skeleton identity all that much. It'd lend innocuous Halloween decorations an air of FEMINISTS ALL AROUND ME and CHEAP HOLIDAY TAT CONSPIRACY. BOYCOTT TRICK OR TREAT. EXPOSE PUMPKIN CORRUPTION. Red MS Paint lines connecting candy corn to witches' hats to Leigh Alexander etc.
posted by emmtee at 10:06 AM on October 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

I love the idea of Cernovich buying bullying offsets. BRB, going to buy some laziness credits!
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:07 AM on October 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

Maybe their only exposure to non-video-based games is Magic the Gathering?

Appropriately, their shitty debate skills are more or less the discussion equivalent of netdecking.
posted by tocts at 10:09 AM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

tocts: "To them, arguments have nothing to do with rationality, or self reflection. Instead, arguments are simply a collection of trump cards that one trots out at the right moment for an incisive victory, but otherwise bear no real consideration."

It reminds me of arguing with MRAs, who have a tendency to pull out a prepared list of about eighty links covering every possible eventuality, and then declare victory when you don't have time to read through and debunk 60 lengthy and disgusting blogposts and watch and ridicule 20 lengthy youtube whinges.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 10:12 AM on October 20, 2014 [12 favorites]

which makes sense as there is great overlap between gators and the mra types.
posted by nadawi at 10:14 AM on October 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

That's the problem with debating all kinds of fringe ideologues and conspiracy theorists. "A footnote protects you from folks who doubt what you say."
posted by Apocryphon at 10:15 AM on October 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

There's a similar resistance to linkdumps from the "other" side: I remember seeing Creationists get flummoxed, annoyed, and dismissive when redirected to talk.origins' site, just as I also see Holocaust deniers throw up their hands when directed to Nizkor.org or something similar.

In general, people don't like information dumps, whether those people are right or wrong: whether it's people like us not wanting to sift through MRA linkdumps, or Holocaust deniers not wanting to sift through linkdumps of correct things.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:19 AM on October 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

I'm on mobile now so this thread isn't rendered totally incoherent, but I've been using a SJW to skeleton extension on my computer and it's the best thing since cloud to butt.

Regarding 19 year olds without critical thinking skills, I'm in the camp that really doesn't care if they're misogynists deep down, because they're choosing to support and shelter a movement explicitly harming women. If their viewpoints are more malleable, that's good in the long run because maybe they'll stop, but theoretical discussions about what kind of people they are stop mattering when they choose to help drive women from their homes. Willingness to accept the silencing, harassment and violent threats as collateral damage is a misogynistic thing to do regardless of the roots of one's character.
posted by NoraReed at 10:20 AM on October 20, 2014 [14 favorites]

Their spin on Mike Cernovich's past.

Fool me once, fool me twice, fool me chicken soup with rice.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:20 AM on October 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

it makes me question just how involved they are with all the corruption.

Dammit, I was repeatedly told there was no cabal!
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:24 AM on October 20, 2014

I Thought We Were Skeletons sounds like a Decemberists album.

I Thought We Were Skeletons, But It Turns Out We're Alive And Not At All Dead
posted by Cash4Lead at 10:27 AM on October 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

In general, people don't like information dumps, whether those people are right or wrong

And ultimately that's one of the biggest problems with discourse in the modern age- people are able to easily curate their information sources and live in their own knowledge bubbles their entire lives. Completely self-sheltered viewpoints. Clashing worldviews and never the twain shall meet, except in linkdumps that neither sides will look at.

One possible solution to this is to make information universal, to put people on even footings. To do that you need neutral and independent sources that are able to operate unbiased in arguments. But what happens when you have one (or both) sides insist that journalism itself is corrupt? Every argument then becomes an ad hominem.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:34 AM on October 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Apocryphon: And what you said is why I really don't like "just Google it" as some sort of rejoinder. Information literacy - being able to discern a source's reliability and bias, finding out whether you and the other person are working off similar information, finding legit sources and understanding them - is a tricky beast.
posted by divabat at 10:39 AM on October 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

HOW DEEP DOES THIS MEFI RABBITHOLE GO?

It's hard to measure with all these stupid rabbits in the way

Why do we even have these?

Video from recent MeFi meetup in Japan.
posted by homunculus at 11:02 AM on October 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

People were referencing the Chrome extension to automatically convert SJW to skeleton, but I don't think anyone posted a link.
posted by larrybob at 11:02 AM on October 20, 2014

based is a lil' b thing. And really dates these guys as being around 18 or 19, maybe in their early 20s. Lil B was a thing with teenagers like 5 years ago and I don't think anybody cares about him now.
posted by empath at 11:10 AM on October 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Urban Dictionary's entry for "Based". I believe we can think Lil B for this, when he dubbed himself "Based God" some time ago, but I'm not sure of the complete history of the term.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:11 AM on October 20, 2014

I think in this case it's actually a reference to a misspelled wikipedia edit that described Adam Baldwin as "based" (i.e. biased). But yeah - one problem Gamergate has is that its discussions are incomprehensible without some familiarity with both its own specialized vocabulary and the general language of chans. Which is also a plus, in the sense that it's a whole bunch of shibboleths (shibboleths within shibboleths!) designed to foster closeness, but it's one of several reasons why it's taken such a pounding outside its own cultural strongholds.
posted by running order squabble fest at 11:12 AM on October 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

plenty of people still care about lil b.
posted by nadawi at 11:13 AM on October 20, 2014

Lil B put a curse on the OKC Thunder. Like I needed one more reason to be against these motherfuckers.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:15 AM on October 20, 2014

hades: "The more I see of these folks, the more they remind me of scientology"

Don't forget: 1) avoiding any contradictory media for fear of mental contamination, 2) alleging wide-spread conspiracies leading to an all-encompassing feeling of persecution, 3) hiding behind a thin veneer of plausible deniability ("Dianetics is just a self-help guide"), 4) labelling enemies with jargon (Social Justice Warrior = Suppressive Person) that marks them as fair game for all harassment tactics. Probably others, as well.

The irony, of course, is that the Church of Scientology was one of the first (the very first?) targets of Anonymous, another leaderless, 4chan-incubated movement.
posted by mhum at 11:15 AM on October 20, 2014 [9 favorites]

Well, we can all see how Anonymous turned out.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:24 AM on October 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

andy baio - So far, 100 people are posting 24% of the total traffic to the Gamergate hashtag. Half those accounts were created in the last three months.
posted by nadawi at 11:26 AM on October 20, 2014 [11 favorites]

Yep, that's a mass movement. We've had more people posting in this thread.

Grassroots? More like the dictionary definition of Astroturf.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:31 AM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm disappointed that anti-Gamergate (inasmuch as there's any coherent such thing) and 'SJWs' haven't really embraced the skeleton identity all that much.

#SpoopyGate
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 11:31 AM on October 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

nadawi, that's a great start -- maybe some network researcher can take Baio's Twitter methodology & run with it.
posted by lodurr at 11:34 AM on October 20, 2014

Yep, looks like Waxy is starting to do some API research:

Anecdotally, seems like 90% of Gamergate tweets are posted by a tiny fraction of people. Thinking of using the streaming API to prove it.

Grabbing every Gamergate tweet for the last hour, the top 5% most active users account for 27% of the total tweets.

Looking only at the top 5% most active Gamergaters, the median user joined Twitter in May 2013 and has 86 followers.

So far, 100 people are posting 24% of the total traffic to the Gamergate hashtag. Half those accounts were created in the last three months.

posted by naju at 11:36 AM on October 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Sam Biddle's latest article is guaranteed to anger the bejesus out of these kids with the headline alone.
posted by palomar at 11:40 AM on October 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

Gamergate is substantively about nothing; ask athe hundred of its angry, anonymous backers what it's fighting for, and you'll get a hundred different, zany answers.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:47 AM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Brianna Wu at the Washington Post: Rape and death threats are terrorizing female gamers. Why haven’t men in tech spoken out?

First, major institutions in video games, which happen to be dominated by men, need to speak up immediately and denounce Gamergate. The dam started to break this week as Patrick Klepek of Giant Bomb broke the silence at their publication on Monday. Last week, the industry’s top trade group, the Electronic Software Association spoke out against Gamergate, saying “Threats of violence and harassment have to stop. There is no place in the video game community for personal attacks and threats.”

Secondly, I call upon the entire industry to examine its hiring practices at all levels. Women make up half of all gamers, yet we make up only a fraction of this industry. While it’s possible to point to high profile women in the field, the fact remains. Women hold a shockingly disproportionate number of high level positions in game studios, game publishers and particularly in leadership roles. There are just 11 percent of game designers and 3 percent of programmers, according to The Boston Globe.

Game journalism also plays a critical role. It doesn’t matter how many women we get into game production. If the only people evaluating the work we do continue to be men, women’s voices will never be heard.

My friend Quinn told me about a folder on her computer called, “The Ones We’ve Lost.” They are the letters she’s gotten from young girls who dream of being game developers, but are terrified of the environment they see. I nearly broke into tears as I told her I had a folder filled with the same. The truth is, even if we stopped Gamergate tomorrow, it will have already come at too high a cost.

posted by zombieflanders at 12:39 PM on October 20, 2014 [20 favorites]

Sam Biddle's latest article is guaranteed to anger the bejesus out of these kids with the headline alone.

Biddle mentions Christina Hoff Sommers and GG, here's a related post about that.
posted by homunculus at 12:44 PM on October 20, 2014

here is a comic
posted by Corinth at 1:14 PM on October 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

I wonder if there is a way to read the letters from the Lost Ones folders. Anonymised for privacy.
posted by divabat at 1:21 PM on October 20, 2014

related and NOT good news: "Although only 45% of adults have heard of the term troll, 28% of Americans admitted malicious online activity directed at somebody they didn’t know."
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:41 PM on October 20, 2014

Democracy Now had a great segment on this today.
posted by humanfont at 1:42 PM on October 20, 2014

Despite shitting on gamers for years, Milo Yiannopoulos is totally a gamer now guys!
posted by PenDevil at 2:10 PM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

milo yiannopoulos gets the high score on nintendo box

everyone knows that
posted by postcommunism at 2:19 PM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

is the milo yiannopoulos thing a thing where I'd have to know who milo yiannopoulos is to understand what the thing is?
posted by lodurr at 2:22 PM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Matt Binder @ Boing Boing: Vultures circle GamerGate. It's mostly about Cernovich, same material as the Storify link.
posted by palomar at 2:25 PM on October 20, 2014

lodurr: He's a Breitbart writer who has been crapping on gamers and nerds for years (claiming violent games were responsible for the Eliot Rodgers shooting). Then GamerGate happened, he saw a bunch of manbabies he could co-opt into his right wing rants, went out and bought a PS4 and now he's honorary member of the G.R.O.S.S. Club.
posted by PenDevil at 2:27 PM on October 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

>Milo Yiannopoulos is an Associate Editor at Breitbart London

Says google. so, scumbag rightwing media junior auxiliary.
posted by anti social order at 2:31 PM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Milo was a shitstain on the carpet of humanity in all of his previous incarnations, and is no less of one now.
posted by holgate at 2:38 PM on October 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Charlie Brooker in The Guardian: Gamergate: the internet is the toughest game in town – if you’re playing as a woman
posted by Wordshore at 2:43 PM on October 20, 2014 [7 favorites]

Milo is the highest profile non-gaming journalist to positively cover gamergate. Really says it all. And even he might be jumping ship.
posted by honestcoyote at 2:48 PM on October 20, 2014

Cernovich released a "statement" of sorts. It's... interesting.
posted by palomar at 2:55 PM on October 20, 2014

He will never jump ship from being an unrepentant shitlord. Such a thing is just not possible.
posted by Artw at 2:55 PM on October 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Milo is the highest profile non-gaming journalist to positively cover gamergate. Really says it all. And even he might be jumping ship.
posted by honestcoyote at 5:48 PM on October 20
[+] [!]

There was that Cathy Young article in Reason. She claimed there would be a part 2. Did that ever happen?
posted by Elementary Penguin at 3:12 PM on October 20, 2014

That article was sourced from some right wing blog, part 2 might be there?
posted by Artw at 3:21 PM on October 20, 2014

Democracy Now had a great segment on this today.

Link.
posted by homunculus at 3:21 PM on October 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

#Gamergate Shows Tech Needs Far Better Algorithms - "If #Gamergate teaches us anything — beyond, of course, vastly obvious observations about the toxicity of certain Internet demographics (which is hardly new news) — it’s that algorithms and formulaic behaviour can and are being gamed."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:55 PM on October 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Well, gamergate has driven me to write an Angry Email to Andrew Sullivan. Sigh.
posted by bitterpants at 4:13 PM on October 20, 2014

Aw, man. I had stopped reading the Dish because of laziness, but now I feel rather less bad about that.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:18 PM on October 20, 2014

Ah, he was just quoting people. VERY WRONG PEOPLE.
posted by bitterpants at 4:20 PM on October 20, 2014

Andrew Sullivan published the only angry email I ever actually pressed send on, which vindicated all the others I sighed at and deleted. I appreciate some of his writing, but rarely when it deals with women, DC, or communities-he-clearly-hasn't-researched-but-wants-to-"present all sides"-on.
posted by jetlagaddict at 4:22 PM on October 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Yeah I have to say I'm really disappointed in Sullivan. At least his pro-gg quotes don't have editorial content attached (not that his anti did either).
posted by Strass at 4:29 PM on October 20, 2014

If he takes my advice and visits 8chan I would not be surprised if there was some editorial content.
posted by bitterpants at 4:35 PM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Cernovich released a "statement" of sorts. It's... interesting.

if an infinite number of monkeys fling an infinite amount of shit at one another, will they eventually create a shit replica of rodin's "the thinker"?
posted by pyramid termite at 4:41 PM on October 20, 2014 [8 favorites]

Well, BMW has pulled out of Gawker, possibly because of a slew of "Gawker bullies people" emails. It's a bit funny to me that what is ostensibly a campaign about ethics in journalism is instead campaigning on the notion that "Gawker supports bullying", but given that it's anti-bullying month right now, those dumb tweets seem to be having some legs. (Of course, I'd love to know what the actual conversations at BMW were before they started to make their move. Maybe they haven't been keeping up with this whole internet brouhaha and don't know what's what, or maybe there is something more calculated happening.)
posted by Going To Maine at 5:16 PM on October 20, 2014

palomar: "Cernovich released a "statement" of sorts. It's... interesting."

Do not miss Cernovich's mini-bio on his site. Includes such hits as "I had to learn how to downplay my intelligence, as it made peers resentful of me.", "I have been a guest at Sheryl Sandberg’s house and ate dinner with Mark Zuckerberg. Sheryl Sandberg overtly flirted with me and Mark Zuckerberg and his flunkie [...] were insecure around me.", and very interestingly "I don’t believe in giving people second chances."
posted by mhum at 5:24 PM on October 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

Professional shitheel Vox Day [donotlink.com] has weighed in on the GamerGater's side.

I think when that happens you lose by default? Isn't that one of the Internet Rules?
posted by murphy slaw at 5:26 PM on October 20, 2014 [10 favorites]

Is this like The Avengers but creeps?
posted by Artw at 5:31 PM on October 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Artw: More like The Aristocrats.
posted by murphy slaw at 5:33 PM on October 20, 2014 [5 favorites]

Of course, I'd love to know what the actual conversations at BMW were before they started to make their move.

Judging from advertiser boycotts of all kinds -- including, say, people who contact local advertisers on the worst syndicated talk show hosts -- the default reaction is flight. They can always come back later, and in this case, Nick Denton can always bump up the Gawker ad card 10% as a non-bonus.
posted by holgate at 5:34 PM on October 20, 2014

That Vox Day, he's a class act... insinuating that Brianna Wu is trans is surely not going to increase the level of hate she's getting, golly no, that's not even possible.
posted by palomar at 5:55 PM on October 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

(That also looks really unlikely, as the incident took place in Maine, but she's from Mississippi by what I can find. I assume it's because Google brought up that page since the attorney in the case is, like her husband, named Wu -- but the NYT shows that the Maine Wu is married to a man. More terrific doxxing powers by the smartest twits in the room!)
posted by dhartung at 6:04 PM on October 20, 2014

Yeah, it's not true, it's just shitty research that took me like ten seconds to debunk. But that probably won't matter to the most unhinged of the GG creeps.

Oh, and Jesse Singal's latest article is up -- this is the one written after he visited KiA at their request and posted that screed there that's been linked a few times in this thread. They're not gonna like it.
posted by palomar at 6:07 PM on October 20, 2014 [6 favorites]

Right, it isn't important whether it's true, false, debunkable, or not, it really only matters that Day fed them some chum.

Rather amusingly, even as Singal writes that the gators he encounters strenuously deny that it has "a lot to do with discomfort with change in the gaming industry," that's precisely what Day argues:

No, #GamerGate is a broad spectrum of gamers who have no intention of permitting a small group of pinkshirted SJWs do to games what the pinkshirts have done to SF/F literature, namely, destroy it through hyperpoliticization.

Well, so much for consensus on that point, then.
posted by dhartung at 6:28 PM on October 20, 2014

Just when we didn't think it was possible, the ever-tactful Vox Day took gamergate rhetoric to a new low.

Can someone explain to me why anyone in SF defended that guy? I mean, aside from Pournelle, we all know about Pournelle. (speaking of which, hmm...I wonder why they haven't put him on their "heroes" list? He probably would support them.)
posted by lodurr at 6:29 PM on October 20, 2014

also, palomar: whadya mean "insinuated"? Day straight up used the masculine pronoun to refer to Brianna Wu through the whole article.

Also, I'm occasionally & weirdly disconcerted to discover what a knee-jerk negative it is to identify someone as trans. It's 2014, Vox, and you're not in the schoolyard anymore. Is your sense of reality so fragile that the insinuation of the existence of one trans-woman freaks you out that much?
posted by lodurr at 6:33 PM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

also, thanks to everyone who humored me in my ignorance about milo. I'm sure it wasn't pleasant to have to remember all that stuff.
posted by lodurr at 6:35 PM on October 20, 2014

I missed that, I quit reading after the first few lines. Gross. That guy is gross. (And I sure hope that that particular Brianna doesn't get a wave of bullshit coming her way... how much would it suck as a completely uninvolved person to suddenly have an army of idiot douchebags after you?)
posted by palomar at 6:41 PM on October 20, 2014

PSA: when linking to crap like Vox Day or other things you don't want to give a boost to, consider that you want archive.today if you don't want them to have clicks, donotlink just prevents their search ranking from rising.

Explanation: "Donotlink prevents search engines from assigning value to a link, so that linking to a site via donotlink does not increase its search engine position. When you visit a site through donotlink, you're still visiting the actual site. So they will still count you as a visitor, they will still show their ads and content and everything else that comes with normally visiting the site."
posted by Lexica at 6:42 PM on October 20, 2014 [13 favorites]

"what the pinkshirts have done to SF/F literature, namely, destroy it through hyperpoliticization."
...a leader of which is MeFi's Own Scalzi who killed SF/F when he won the Hugo. Day could only get nominated through a very intense AND VERY POLITICAL promotion campaign. But for him, the only non-hyperpoliticized Speculative Fiction is Fascist Propaganda.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:42 PM on October 20, 2014

I'm guessing people defended Vox Day because they are racist. IIRC, Shetterly was the one who wanted to give him a chance to defend his claims or whatever and was trying to get NK Jemisin to weigh in and explain that, like, racism is real and Black people are human or some shit. Same "both sides" false equivilance bullshit we're seeing here.

Also I'm betting people in SF supported him because he was against Jemisin, who they were threatened by because she is Black and both a clearer and smarter writer about issues of social justice and an all around better fiction writer than most of them, which is always a hard thing for asshole white men of mediocre skill and talent to deal with.
posted by NoraReed at 6:43 PM on October 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Of course that was deliberate and part of a cunning trap where us SJWs are revealed as totes transphobic for caring and yadda yadda yadda...
posted by Artw at 6:47 PM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

OMG The People's History of Gamergate is online!
posted by Biblio at 6:51 PM on October 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

I don't know whether it's that I'm naive or that the writers I know are honest about why they resent someone. I know people who resent Jemison because she's an excellent writer, but at least they admit that and keep buying her stuff.
posted by lodurr at 7:04 PM on October 20, 2014

(Ian Bogost, who's an academic but also engages with more popular media, asked today whether her work would have provoked the same response had it been in a different format.)
Many responses to that question suggested that YouTube -- the space of gamer playthroughs and fan reviews and so on -- was a space that gamers considered their own.

I was doing some research on fame a few years ago and I came to the conclusion that what really ups the crazy with people is seeing someone's face on a regular basis. This is why fans tend to be more nutterpants about people on film or television than say, authors. Our brains are designed to regard people we see on a regular basis as people we know--and they aren't as well equipped to deal with the fact that we think we know a lot about someone we see on TV or YouTube more often than we see or know what our neighbors are up to. We don't deal well with the fact that the famous person doesn't know us back.

Now combine that with crazy over the Internet, where you can contact/harass the person that you think you know....
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:13 PM on October 20, 2014 [9 favorites]

OMG The People's History of Gamergate is online!

I'd love to see GG get the same mockumentary treatment that the 101st Fighting Keyboarders did.
posted by homunculus at 7:15 PM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

I should say that in my limited twitter skirmishes with the Babbys, I mostly got 3 things from them:

1.) There are three (3) women who went on HuffPo in support of #GG. How can #GG be misogynist?

More specifically, I was asked at some point if I wanted to call those three women misogynist to their faces, I responded that I would have no problem doing that. I might have been untactful as far as that goes. (I said something like, "Sure, just show me where you've got them chained up." I'm not very tactful with them.) I also made a joke calling #GG, "hey guys, Girl !, Girl 2, Girl 3" in order to lampoon their using these three (3) women as a shield against charges of misogyny, but I didn't know they were referring to Quinn, Wu and Sarkeesian in similar terms at the time, so I feel conflicted about that now. Mea Culpa.

2.) #GG is about stopping censorship.

I mean, it's not, obviously, though I got a kick out of the dude giving me Merriam-Webster to prove that he undestands what censorship means. I mean, I guess if being shouted off of 4Chan counts, but thats a bar that puts you barely among the likes of kiddie-porn, so I'm not sure that's your best argument.

Also, not to be a prick about it, but #GG's entire MO has been threats and other activism to suppress people's speech. Just sayin'. Maybe "anti-censorship" isn't the spot to plant your flag.

3.) I'm moving the goalposts.

Well, I don't really know what to say there. Maybe they're right. I point to the doxxing, death threats, rape threats, school shooting threats, they say that's not them. That's not what they're about. They don't condone that.

Fine. I don't believe you for a second, but fine.

First: I'm clearly not the one moving the goalposts, but whatever.

Second: If #GG were actually, purely about what it claims to be about, you know what would happen?

Nothing.

Because nobody fucking cares about ethics in games journalism, at least not to the degree that this has frothed up.

Nobody cares.

You know what people care about? The threats. The Doxxing. The possible shootings. The people being driven from their homes. The misogyny.

Let's put it in a game form. A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Form

1. You wake up. Are you in favor of corruption in games journalism? If YES go to 2. If NO go to 3.

2. You are a figment of #GG Fantasy. Congratulations. Sadly, you don't exist.

3. Are you interested in social criticism about games? If YES go to 4. If WHAT? GIMME COUNTER-STRIKE! go to 5.

4. You are a corrupt liberal lesbian commie hippie fag hater who is NOT a gamer and is NOT on the right side of this war.

5. Have you seen the red pill video yet?
posted by Navelgazer at 7:22 PM on October 20, 2014 [16 favorites]

"Literally Who" smells a bit off because it's 100% a lie. If you glance at 8chan or KiA you'll see that Literally Who #1 is Quinn, #2 is Sarkeesian, and #3 is Wu. Literally Who means they literally know exactly who.
posted by chrchr at 8:07 PM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Literally Who is a Ctrl+F dodge. Not a very good one, but you can see the little rusty cogs moving.

(Some gator numpty wanted Brianna to be 'Literally Wu' when she was added to the list, because ha de ha ha Asian surname, but that apparently didn't last long because it's not a Ctrl+F dodge. )
posted by holgate at 8:16 PM on October 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

i think the literally who thing started right after zoe quinn posted the irc logs. it was absolutely a search dodge.
posted by nadawi at 8:29 PM on October 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

It's like they don't realize it's actual humans reading along, not just bots preprogrammed with search strings.
posted by Lexica at 8:32 PM on October 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

Something I read today from Fred Scharmen: social media encourages bots to behave like humans, and humans to behave like bots. Which taps into Natasha Lomas's piece linked upthread.
posted by holgate at 8:50 PM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

Biblio: "OMG The People's History of Gamergate is online!"

I got as far as halfway through the first paragraph, and then:

Gamers, after all, have been stigmatized their entire lives.

Guys, guys, guys; stuff like this is why no-one can take you seriously.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 8:56 PM on October 20, 2014 [10 favorites]

Gamers, after all, have been stigmatized their entire lives.

You know what I think ?

I don't think these guys are actually gamers. I'm a gamer. Been playing video games since Atari 2600 was The Hot New Shit. Bought the ET game when it was new. I can still quote the Yars Revenge and Zelda commercials. I've worked in video games. I've lead a top WoW guild.

These guys are not gamers. Gamers actually play videogames - the amount of free time everyone of these wastoids has spent on "Dude! it's about ETHICS, Bro!" nonsense is time they haven't spent playing games.

As a gamer, why would I waste precious game time on things that are not gaming ? I work, to support my gaming habit. I eat, to support my gaming habit. I sleep, to support my gaming habit. I drink - well, I drink to get drunk.

Anyway, point is, none of these losers are actually gamers. From The Originating Baldwin, to the most recent Cox Day*, I haven't seen an actual gaming gamer talk about an actual game.

These guys are asshats. And nincompoops. Whatever you may call them. But one thing they aint - gamers. Gamers actually game. These shitbrains are all talk and no play.

* way to show up late to the party. Games over. GG is done.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 9:28 PM on October 20, 2014 [19 favorites]

They mostly play that particular type of visual novel that is basically the digital equivalent of an anime fuckpillow.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 9:40 PM on October 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

Rami Ismail's brief opinion on Gamergate is, I think, quite sufficient.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:45 PM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

These guys are not gamers.

I don't spend all my waking time playing now that I'm older, although still more than I should for everything else I have to get done, you know? But even I look at this and think--this is a crowd of 18-year-old boys who never even LIVED in the culture where being a nerd was actually seriously shameful, who think that one small subset of shooty-fighty games is literally the entirety of "gaming". I realize it's a loaded phrase, but this comes seriously close to cultural appropriation.
posted by Sequence at 10:21 PM on October 20, 2014 [10 favorites]

As a gamer, why would I waste precious game time on things that are not gaming ?

It's pretty clear that Gawker is not part of games journalism and in no way are they at all implicated in any of the penny-ante "corruption" charges. The only reason that gators are going after them is because Gawker is pro-SJW.

Not enough to have heard of Brianna Wu before this

Exactamundo. Again, they didn't know of her either. All they know is that she posted a "pro-SJW" thing and that's why they're spending effort attacking her.

This contacting Intel and BMW bullshit is literally a derail if they are truly interested in ethics in game journalism and anybody with two brain cells should be able to see that.

It's almost like ... like a videogame where you're forgetting the primary goal in a segment, and all you're doing is reacting to movement in twitch mode.
posted by dhartung at 10:26 PM on October 20, 2014

Literally Who is a Ctrl+F dodge.

Not just Ctrl + F, but also for word clouds and other textual analysis. A key talking point is that this is about ethics and corruption, not the three female antagonists, so they are conciously aiming to cheat automated text analysis so that it appears they aren't obsessed with those women.

Another such dodge is throwing dozens of "Meow"s into conversations, so that word will be the top hit in a word cloud. Yes, they discuss this directly in KiA here and here too.

It's like a 5 year old who covers his own eyes and thinks you can't see him.
posted by msalt at 10:45 PM on October 20, 2014 [16 favorites]

Ctrl-F "Regex"
posted by Going To Maine at 10:48 PM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

KiA is "investigating" Jason Singal (Boston Globe). Jason Singal shows up in the thread to help them out.

(previously)
posted by honestcoyote at 10:49 PM on October 20, 2014 [4 favorites]

ArmyOfKittens: Biblio: "OMG The People's History of Gamergate is online!"

I got as far as halfway through the first paragraph, and then:

Gamers, after all, have been stigmatized their entire lives.

Guys, guys, guys; stuff like this is why no-one can take you seriously.

I actually went through the whole thing. I came away with two conclusions. First, never have I been more sure that most people really need an editor. Second, and more importantly, far too many people apparently have no idea what post hoc ergo propter hoc means.
posted by ob1quixote at 10:54 PM on October 20, 2014 [1 favorite]

I hesitate to say this because it sounds almost ridiculous as a criticism, but I think that part of the problem legitimately stems from the evolution of gaming to a medium which coddles its player, and which focuses most of its efforts on “immersion” and “cinematic storytelling” rather than on challenges and fundamental mechanics. I add as a disclaimer that I’m coming at this in part as somebody who has studied games as an artform academically for years, and it’s possible that my own biases here are warping my worldview.

I think that there’s a fundamental difference between games in which victory is achieved after grueling confrontation and duress, and games in which the play exists to keep you stimulated and paying attention despite the lackluster story being told. I include Final Fantasy/Grand Theft Auto in the latter category of games, so this is not a new problem, but definitely we’ve seen a shift towards even “hardcore” games being relatively easy to play and beat, as evidenced by the definitely-problematic BioShock series. The difference is in how players relate to their worlds: the feeling you get when you survive within a world is different from the feeling that you get by inheriting that world as a virtual god.

I say this from observing the communities which form around games like Skyrim, in which the gameplay is basically a prop used to hold up a lackluster power fantasy. I’m also going to indict online multiplayer gaming here, because I think that games where the competitive lineup is “pros” who simply know how to play the game well and “noobs” who haven’t put any thought into how the game is played don’t encourage mastery so much as they encourage learning which tricks will cause other players the most suffering and then lording it over the people who haven’t dedicated themselves to your chosen game so fully. In games like this, whether singleplayer or multiplayer power fantasy, the surrounding communities often evolve feelings of lordliness or of absolute power, at which point players feel comfortable insisting that the world around them be subject to their personal opinions, immature and awful as they might be.

If you spend any time modding Skyrim — and you have to if you want to make that game any degree of non-wretched — you quickly learn that even the most innocuous mods might have ridiculously sexist shit packed into them. One mod that’s ostensibly about rebuilding a town after a dragon attack includes a “romance” with a woman who’s given a unique “change to default clothes” command in case you feel her armor is not revealing enough. Another mod, which extends the Dark Brotherhood assassin campaign, has one character who demands you kill “sluts” for her and another character who is explicitly a “spoiled teenage princess” that exists for the satisfaction of you murdering her. Playing new role-playing Skyrim mods is like a shitty Russian roulette, in which you might encounter ridiculous objectification women at any point without warning.

Oftentimes this is baked into the games themselves, which understand that a part of your fantasy ought to involve your having a measure of sexual control over various characters in-game. Grand Theft Auto, infamously. Mass Effect had some really tone-deaf sexual storytelling. God of… hey, wait a minute, didn’t Anita Sarkeesian make a whole series of YouTube videos explaining this? Thank goodness we have her.

If you want to understand games as art, an important thing to note is that play involves players learning something about the world around them, so that they can function better within it by their acting. Increased difficulty is not merely a matter of individual preference; to some extent, it’s what gives value to the world, and forces you to care about it. Games like Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress and Dark Souls understand this, and it’s why they’re some of the best games that’ve been made in recent years. Older games might have simpler worlds, but those worlds were still difficult and forced you to understand things about them, and that gave them meaning. Games are not entirely about fun. They’re just as much about suffering until you learn your place, and it’s in the process of “learning your place” that games can impart genuine moral lessons, even though very very few games even bother to try these days. (I could count the ones that mean a damn to me on one hand.)

It’s the difference between cinema and porn. A lot of games these days are purely pornographic. Even as they claim to tell “morally complicated stories”, a la Modern Warfare and Red Dead Redemption and fucking BioShock Infinity (I hate BioShock Infinity), the gameplay they tell teaches another story, and it’s a story of personal power, absolute control, and choices which mean essentially nothing because you, the player, will never suffer for your choices; all your decisions do is teach the world what to think about you, and never the other way around.

(One of my favorite subtle details about Pathologic, the game which I’ve spent the last 3.5 years writing about, is that men in this game are programmed to occasionally chase women down in the street as a mob and beat them to death. The nasty thing about this is, the game does not consider you a hero if you attack these men; in fact, it will treat an attack on these men as if you’ve attacked innocent civilians, and your reputation in the town will suffer. It’s a case of programmed misogyny that exists beyond your character, not as a power fantasy but as a depiction of something horrible which doesn’t happen just so you get to step in and fancy yourself the good guy. Pathologic is generally a case study in how to give player complete control over their actions without rewarding their escapist fantasies in the least, but that detail always struck me as particularly disturbing, and may have singlehandedly prevented me from enjoying all but 2-3 video games over the course of the last decade. Brilliant and haunting stuff.)
posted by rorgy at 11:10 PM on October 20, 2014 [38 favorites]

It's pretty clear that Gawker is not part of games journalism and in no way are they at all implicated in any of the penny-ante "corruption" charges. The only reason that gators are going after them is because Gawker is pro-SJW.

My guess would be that a lot of these people are folks who are still mad at Gawker for outing violentacrez.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:11 PM on October 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

"OMG The People's History of Gamergate is online!"

I don't know what y'all are talking about, the dude is clearly just trying to get people to think critically about the majority consens-ahfuck I already feel unclean pretending to go along with it for mockery.

The best part of course is that the real People's History has at least a chapter devoted to women's struggles for equality - I think I'm safe in saying Zinn would clearly be anti-gator. And it's not a book about the stigmatized, really, but the oppressed, often by threats of violence (or the actuality thereof). But they just gotta cast themselves as the victims.
posted by Lemurrhea at 11:17 PM on October 20, 2014 [3 favorites]

rorgy -- very interesting stuff. Curious what you think about Civilization V (which I enjoy playing with my daughters.) I'm guessing that would earn me no GG cred.
posted by msalt at 11:20 PM on October 20, 2014

rorgy, I'm sympathetic to your description of the difference between things that require labor to accomplish and things that are spoon-fed. Back when I read more game academic stuff, I felt like that many folks had that axe to grind & looking at the uniformity of the games out there it's not hard to see why. However, I find your comparison of cinema & porn in this context very harsh, since you are telling me that many of the games that I enjoy consuming best are basically terrible. (While I understand the joys of Minecraft and Terraria on paper, I can't stand to play either for more than five minutes.) Please tread a mite carefully here. This deserves more discussion but this hour is not the time.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:28 PM on October 20, 2014 [2 favorites]

Rorgy's thoughts on games are interesting. Reminds me of how I still think that Starflight is one of the greatest games of all time: you explored this world, and you had to figure out your limited (but exciting!) place in it.
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:35 PM on October 20, 2014

Speaking of Grand Theft Auto, I saw in a Sunday Ad that pre-orders have started for GTA V, set for release in November. Waitaminute, you say, didn't it come out last year? Well, this release is the same game for the new platforms that came out since the initial release. Sounds like it'll be a challenge for marketing... BUT if Rockstar Games can rally the Gamergators around them from some alleged attack from SJWs... then any publicity is good publicity and this would be aimed straight toward a receptive (and gullible) audience who might be moved to buy a second copy just to "Save GTA!" Yes, it's my cynical side coming out... I wish I could come up with strategies like this for something I didn't consider crappy.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:45 PM on October 20, 2014

Going to Maine: I’ll be honest, I think in a couple decades we’re going to look back upon this era of gaming very unfavorably. Games these days are dedicated to stimulating players and making them feel satisfied with themselves for accomplishing that which has been made incredibly easy to accomplish. It’s not just games, it’s also sites like Facebook and Tumblr, but it’s just as much your Farmvilles and Cookie Clickers and, yes, a lot of your AAA titles as well. It’s most gaming. Even Minecraft falls into this category, because past a relatively early point, players master its (fairly meager) obstacles and are free to create whatever they want to create without any inherent challenge in the world. (One of my closest friends is currently trying to sell me on Terraria, so for now I’ll withhold judgment.)

We are witnessing a medium in its early infancy, and much of what’s been made to date is going to be seen as pure historical curiosity. There’s a reason that people don’t give much of a shit about cinema’s earliest days, except for a couple pieces which are only interesting historically; by the time you hit the early films which people today still claim to like, a couple decades have passed, and then you get maybe a handful a decade, and even those are obscure to all but a sliver of today’s population. For all their craft and ingenuity, and for all the occasional emergence of a truly brilliant voice, much of what was created back then has lost its value for modern audiences, because what was being created was so simplistic despite its makers’ ambitions that today it’s hard to appreciate them outside of certain contexts.

Even over the course of my writing a book about the potential of games as an artform, it has been astonishing how much games have grown in their complex ambitions and aims. Four years ago, I started writing because I was incredibly frustrated with the stagnant gaming environment; today, although I still find it hard to enjoy most of what comes out thanks to an obsessive study of one particularly ambitious title, I’m genuinely enthused by a lot of what’s being made, and by the progress we’ve seen particularly among indie “arthouse” developers. The youth of the indie scene see gaming as far more of a personal expression than older developers ever did, and some truly vulnerable and affecting stuff is being made along the fringes.

The thing is, games are a legitimately exciting medium. What’s more, they’re an evolution of what artistic mediums are even capable of that literally could not have happened before the computer was invented and made mainstream; only in the last decade or so has gaming become a true cultural constant. There is nothing wrong with finding them exciting and fascinating, or with thinking that they’re fun in a way that few other things are. Research of even simplistic, throwaway games suggest that they have an impact on our mental state that often takes years of practice to attain via other methods. I would argue that that potential is currently being abused by developers and misunderstood even by the ones trying their damnedest to make it mean something, but nonetheless that potential is seriously exciting.

Nonetheless, my point still stands. I think there’s a correlation to be made between the nature of these games and the nature of the gaming culture which has evolved around them, just as how in Arthur Chu’s article about Disco Demolition Night, I think that a part of what you’re seeing is a mass cultural illiteracy as pertains to a certain kind of music, which allows for bigotry and ignorance to more readily seep in. To some extent this illiteracy can’t be avoided. It’s impossible to read until you’ve developed a language, and we’ve had a busy couple decades of language invention in our culture.

For what it’s worth, I love reading, yet rarely can stomach really ambitious works of “great literature” and most enjoy material which is classified as young adult. I also prefer pop-leaning music to music which eschews all kinds of fun entirely. My take is that the divide between entertainment and “challenging but rewarding” is one which can be straddled with effort, and that the best art manages to be both at once; games have made a notable impact on film and literature for the better, in that they’ve inspired artists to devise new playful methods of inserting complexity into their material. Fun is important. But fun and deeper artistry can coexist, and games are still struggling to even discover the ways in which interactivity can be used for artistic purposes. We have a long ways to go.
posted by rorgy at 12:01 AM on October 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

Isn't the whole notion of "these are not real games" part of the reason GamerGate blew up as it is? Because Depression Quest wasn't a "Real" game and all these SJWs are ruining games for everyone?
posted by divabat at 12:05 AM on October 21, 2014 [6 favorites]

Before electronica, games were either athletic or non-athletic with the non-athletic working with cards, a board, paper-and-pencil, dice or a combination thereof. Once the capabilities of video and computers opened up, the possibilities exploded, but certain elements of human nature (and the marketing thereof) made some types more successful, and don't forget Sturgeon's Law: 90% of Everything is Crap (and Wendell's Extension, stating that when you add the power of computers, raise that to 99%). So Gaming is a big chaotic mess, and the chances that any campaign, especially one made up of enthusiasts of certain types of game, to 'reform' it all had near zero chance of working out well. So Gamergate turns into an internet riot of bad little boys with unhealthy attitudes toward women, kind of like that Pumpkin Festival last weekend, but with fewer cars overturned and more lives overturned. Most of the media that came before (Books, Film, Recorded Music, etc.) only reached a minimal level of "maturity" due to a scarcity of resources and often with top-down restrictions (yes, censorship). You got none of that with Modern Gaming, therefore it should all start getting reasonable and orderly about the time that the rising sea levels engulf Kansas City...
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:00 AM on October 21, 2014

The first TV interview with the woman, Zoe Quinn, who ignited Gamergate [MSNBC]

The thing is, divabat, the game came out in February 2013, but this only blew up when Quinn's ex-boyfriend went scorched earth on her. Now, to be sure, the nature of her game is somewhat germane in that they probably wouldn't care nearly as much if she was a woman who'd created an FPS, and that the praise DQ received was from the beginning an implicit critique of mainstream gaming even if DQ itself had much more modest aims. There are, however, some claims that the intensity ramped up dramatically after she DMCA'ed a MundaneMatt video for using screenshots of her game, although it appears that the video was very critical of her in terms of the claims about "incestuous" promotion of her game. So although the stuff that had been posted about her relationship galvanized a lot of opinion against her, it was when she began to fight back that they really got mad, I suspect. According to this post here the "social justice warrior" twist was actually introduced at this point by InternetAristocrat (YT, other sites) who has a whole crank angle of his own that was then picked up by the community.

So, again, while the game provides a clear demarcation in style, it doesn't ever seem to have been the case that they were really mad about the game, which had been out there for over a year.
posted by dhartung at 1:01 AM on October 21, 2014

I think it's a stretch to say that a particular type of gameplay such as that in Skyrim or other 'easy', non-systems-based games are even partly responsible for the culture and people of Gamergate, rorgy. It's certainly possible but we have little evidence. What I object to more, however, is how you cite sexist scenes from Skyrim, GTA, and Mass Effect as encouraging sexist behaviour, and then use those scenes as an indictment against all narrative based gaming.

As divabat says, what about Depression Quest? What about Gone Home? What about The Longest Journey? Those are easy to play and beat, they're immersive. Remind me how they're responsible for generating the idiots behind Gamergate? From everything you've written about games, I think you see these as second class games - ones that ought to be consigned to the dustbin of history in favour of more Dark Souls and Shadow of Mordor; and that we should look down upon those games that "coddle" players with "immersion" and "cinematic storytelling".

I appreciate you acknowledging that your biases may be warping your worldview, because in this case I think they have.
posted by adrianhon at 1:46 AM on October 21, 2014 [6 favorites]

I'm not sure Shadow of Mordor is a good example of a difficult game. I watched an awesome youtube video yesterday of a guy proving the entire combat system was easy garbage. How? He went to one of the most theoretically challening fights in the game and killed everyone by literally banging his chin into his keyboard. Oh, then he shut off his monitor and killed a bunch more while the monitor was turned off by mashing keys.
posted by Justinian at 1:55 AM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

I don't see how competitive multiplayer games fit into Rorgy's argument. They are focused on challenge and mechanics but are often a cesspool of human interaction. I've heard plenty of stories of women who have had to mute their microphones or get found out and be the target of harassment.

Not to mention that the bend in the computer science graph starts in the 80s when your choices for games were Arcade or NES hard.
posted by Gary at 1:57 AM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm enjoying this thread so much, guys, thank you. I haven't commented so far because it's been moving so fast, and because I'm no kind of gamer, just a Minecraft obsessive. My partner is an indie gamedev, though, and through him I've made friends in our local indie dev scene -- lots of them women. I've been following #gamergate throughout, with revulsion, bemusement and anger, and it's so much nicer to feel like I'm watching it with you all. Better than Twitter, anyway, where I tweeted once with the hashtag and got the expected shower of incoherent responses.

Slightly off-topic, if you feel (justifiably) that Minecraft is too easy, I recommend the mod Minecraft Is Too Easy. My partner and I just started playing it together over LAN, and the nice thing so far is that it makes the game so hard that you really have to play cooperatively.
posted by daisyk at 2:03 AM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Justinian: I suspect that's an awful lot easier when you have an upgraded character. Most people I've seen talking about the game say that the first couple of hours are very unforgiving; certainly that was my experience. In any case, while it's no Dark Souls, the reason why I mentioned it is because of the nemesis system, which is super neat and I imagine the sort of thing rorgy likes (I like it too, but I also like stories!)

Anyway, this is turning into a derail, sorry!
posted by adrianhon at 2:20 AM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Oh, probably he did adrianhon; I couldn't stop laughing at a guy wiping out all the huge enemies by mashing his chin into his keyboard, that's all.
posted by Justinian at 2:28 AM on October 21, 2014

Another such dodge is throwing dozens of "Meow"s into conversations, so that word will be the top hit in a word cloud.

nothing like taking a piece of usenet history and twisting it for your own nefarious purposes
posted by pyramid termite at 2:49 AM on October 21, 2014

Shadow of Mordor has that strange kind of optional complexity you seem to get a lot in modern games: you can basically button-mash your way through and succeed in many situations, or you can play with more care and finesse and pull off more interesting feats. Granted, given the choice I would take the combat system of a Dark Souls or a Monster Hunter or a Platinum game like Bayonetta, but it's not so bad if you're willing to meet it halfway.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 2:52 AM on October 21, 2014

People who choose to consume media that is difficult have a lot invested in that being better than media that's easy, but that doesn't mean that they're right. Complaining about Minecraft being too easy seems absurd to me in the same way that complaining that art is lessened by painters not having to grind their own pigment: obviously some art is improved by imposing limitations, technical (such as requirements about having to gather one's own blocks in Minecraft, making your architectural project an actual comfortable place to live, or not having enough bronze available to make a sculpture the size of a house) or chosen (school requirements, working in unusual or challenging mediums, etc), but that doesn't mean all of it should be limiting.

Games can manage things that no other mediums can and they can do it without being inaccessible. Depression Quest conveys more by using the language of games and technology to grey out certain options that are available to read but unclickable than most actual explanations about what it is like to have depression. Glitch managed to create a community of mutual support and whimsy that would never have developed without it. MMOs have managed to run what are basically large-scale economics experiments since before Neopets and Everquest. Artistic mediums have developed for games and then flowered into forms of their own, with people making sprite comics and isometric art and 8bit music without a game to plug them into because they're totally valid on their own.
posted by NoraReed at 3:14 AM on October 21, 2014 [9 favorites]

For reasons I don't really understand, every thread on r/gamergate has been replaced with My Little Pony fanart. No idea how long this will go on, but it's hilarious.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 3:23 AM on October 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

It's not a replacement; /r/gamergate is run by the good guys and they only let approved submitters post, so the only posts they allow are Sonic The Hedgehog/MLP crossover fanart. Moderator RobotAnna is one of the folks behind the brilliant /r/allies.
posted by NoraReed at 3:37 AM on October 21, 2014 [12 favorites]

That is even better. Thanks, NoraReed.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 3:43 AM on October 21, 2014

KiA is "investigating" Jason Singal (Boston Globe). Jason Singal shows up in the thread to help them out.

What I love about that thread is the predictable deployment of the "cherry picking*" claim against Sarkeesian which, as always, only references a single game she supposedly "cherry picked" (Hitman: Absolution), which constitutes a couple minutes of discussion within her multiple hours of videos. Yet again, #GamerGate proponents can't even detect the irony in the fact that the accusation they feel is the most damning thing they can say about someone is to claim they are cherry picking, and support that claim by cherry picking a single example out of hundreds.

* Hilariously, typo'd as "cheery picking", which sounds a lot more fun
posted by tocts at 3:49 AM on October 21, 2014 [18 favorites]

rorgy, I really appreciate what you have to say about this. That having been said, I'm not sure that this dichotomy of hard-to-beat versus keeps-you-hooked is working for me.

The reason I say that is that the fandom I'm seeing in gamergaters seems to cross that boundary pretty fluidly, given the games you're including.

If I were doing that research, I'd look instead at the kind of performativeness that leads to success. Not just questing versus missions, but what are the quests like, what cultural tropes are invoked and what kind of categories could we put them into.

Minecraft can be mind-bogglingly absorbing and difficult, but I don't recall seeing it mentioned by gaters. GTA by contrast has been the locus of proto-gater fury in the BG [Before Gamergate] era [sic].
posted by lodurr at 4:05 AM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

For reasons I don't really understand, every thread on r/gamergate has been replaced with My Little Pony fanart.

That is making me happy.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:40 AM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

My personal gamergoober is not someone I ever would have described as a "gamer" before #gg. He plays the average amount of video games I imagine most young Millenials with a 3ds and a Minecraft account play. Scribblenauts never struck me as something people were building an identity around.
Last year the channer zeitgeist was very anti-NSA. I encouraged my kid to do something with that anger, but they couldn't get it together. THIS they rally for.
posted by Biblio at 5:13 AM on October 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

The NSA is more capable of fighting back than the experimental games. See, for example, when Anonymous tried to fight back against the Mexican cartels.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 5:17 AM on October 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

New articles:
Jesse Singal: Gamergate Should Stop Lying to Journalists — and Itself (an adaptation of his reddit post
Jessica Valenti: Gamergate is loud, dangerous and a last grasp at cultural dominance by angry white men

GUESS WHICH ONE GOT MORE VITRIOLIC RESPONSE?
GUESS.
I DARE YOU.
posted by Theta States at 6:52 AM on October 21, 2014 [18 favorites]

Wired: GamerGate Goons Can Scream All They Want, But They Can’t Stop Progress
Re/Code: Debunking the Idea That Gamergate Isn’t About Sexism. Featuring quotes from male journalists who have reported on GG and received little to no blowback, talking about their female colleagues who are getting death threats for writing articles milder than their own.

And I won't click it or post it here, because gross, but Breitbart has an article up today with a headline claiming that GamerGate is winning, but you won't read that in the "terrified liberal media". I literally laughed out loud.
posted by palomar at 7:00 AM on October 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

It's interesting that Leigh Alexander doesn't get a Literally Who distinction and hasn't had to leave her home, when she's the one of those four women who is a straight up journalist. My best guess is that this is largely a US thing, and being in the UK insulates her from credible threats.
posted by almostmanda at 7:11 AM on October 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

Dale North, the Editor-in-Chief at Destructoid, just resigned under Mysterious Circumstances.
posted by Justinian at 7:17 AM on October 21, 2014

Early on Leigh Alexander was LW3, but it seems she's dropped off their radar a bit.
posted by papercrane at 7:18 AM on October 21, 2014

In their own minds, these soldiers in the war against diversity are the Space Marine Todds of video games

Ultramarine Todd was contemplating the Codex Astartes at the Fortress of Hera between deployments. As he was praying, the librarian seated next to him suddenly arose, stood on a table, and cried out "Brethren! If the Emperor is truly divine, then surely he should be able to knock me off this table within the next hour! If he does not, he is a false diety and we should turn to the forces of Chaos!" Ultramarine Todd ceased contemplating, stood, and beat the librarian to death. ALL HAIL THE GOD-EMPEROR OF MANKIND.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:30 AM on October 21, 2014 [13 favorites]

the gators seem to think dale north leaving is related to "collusion to blacklist" someone, but everything i can find on it is tied up in their other weird falsehoods and half-truths so it's difficult to suss out what role they think he actually played, or what opinion caused him to leave.
posted by nadawi at 7:31 AM on October 21, 2014

Gary: " But at this point the main activity of GG seems to be defending GG and deciding who is with them or against them."

If I were going by the volume in my Twitter feed, yeah. Of course, the observation bias is I follow a lot of indie game devs, so I typically only hear from Gaters when a dev makes a disparaging comment about GamerGate and a bunch of sea lions show up to insist all harassment was faked and if it wasn't faked then it wasn't really that bad, both sides do it, and anyways it doesn't represent the true deep meaning of GamerGate.

With the fixation on Leigh Alexander, (I've seen some pro-GamerGate summaries that claim her article as the instigating event for the movement. No mention of Zoe Quinn, because "angry ex-boyfriend" is a really embarrassing origin story. If Alexander writes something like "These obtuse shitslingers ... are not my audience," that was just out of the blue, no reason to consider what shit was being slung before her article. ) and some other writings I've seen, there are a lot that seem to think the primary drive is "people said mean things about us!" where "us" gets to be either gamers or GamerGaters as is convenient. (Because no true gamer would ever be against GamerGate.)

And see mhum's summary. Lots of talk about how insulted they are, but pretty thin when it comes to specific instances of corruption and bias.

I saw this image going around. Admittedly my first thought was Jose Chung's From Outer Space, "I didn't spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and not learn a little something about courage." But note also the implication of how it uses "gamer." This is all about criticizing the "gamer" and whoever is doing the criticizing must not be gamers. People who decided to make games for a living, or who decided to write about games, none of them are gamers. Because those are likely career paths for people with no interest in games.



NoraReed: "Willingness to accept the silencing, harassment and violent threats as collateral damage is a misogynistic thing to do regardless of the roots of one's character."

I think they're going with a fallacy of intention. If they don't personally intend to support harassment then they aren't.
posted by RobotHero at 7:31 AM on October 21, 2014 [8 favorites]

That KiA thread where they're sort of trying to investigate Jesse Singal is kind of hilarious... there's this one exchange that's just killing me. Someone tells Jesse to look at some anti-Sarkeesian video and he responds:

"I watched a little bit of it, but to be honest I think this is one of those areas where I'm always going to deeply and fundamentally disagree with GG (whereas the debate I'm having elsewhere in here about what should go into reviews is, as far as I'm concerned, a perfectly valid one).
I like her stuff. I do. I think she's very careful and thoughtful -- almost academic -- and that you guys don't have much of a leg to stand on in complaining that she raised so much money. The attempts to somehow snare her in some kind of conspiracy or scandal have failed completely, and even from a purely political/PR perspective you guys should make a collective decision to just not watch her if you're not into her message."

Response from GG is basically "NUH-UH!!!!" with a side of "YOU'RE DUMB!!!!1!!", in the form of telling him that he must not understand academic work. Jesse's like, "I know you think you have a gotcha moment here, but this doesn't sound nearly as clever to other people as it obviously does to you", and the best they can do is tell him that he's too dumb to understand their cleverness.

I hope those silly creatures are still half-assedly "spying" on us over here, so that they know we're laughing at them. Because oh god, I am laughing so hard. These people are flat-out pathetic, no two ways around it.
posted by palomar at 7:48 AM on October 21, 2014 [11 favorites]

> I saw this image going around.

That image (and plenty of similar macros and posts I've seen come from #GG) gives me sympathetic embarrassment in part because it feeds into what rorgy was saying:

> Games these days are dedicated to stimulating players and making them feel satisfied with themselves for accomplishing that which has been made incredibly easy to accomplish.
posted by postcommunism at 7:50 AM on October 21, 2014 [9 favorites]

I love that they are dumb enough to try to fight Jessica Valenti.
posted by Navelgazer at 7:52 AM on October 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

The problem is most of them are being used as cannon fodder by people who have been fighting Jessica Valenti for over a decade. I mean, Erik Erikson, Vox Day, Christina Hoff Summers, Breitbart? It's so predictable.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 7:55 AM on October 21, 2014 [7 favorites]

From the comments to the Re/Code article palomar linked to:

I mean, what movements have Adam Baldwin started? He wasn't even a leader in losing his house and going bankrupt. He's a beta male who fancies himself an alpha. Any of his "followers" are gammas, deltas and even lower in status.

Too much buzz words are flying about. On both sides.

"Too much buzz words". From someone who uses "alpha male", "beta male", and "gamma male" unironically just one paragraph earlier.

Pffft.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:58 AM on October 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

I assumed that was the author demonstrating the way people like Baldwin view and describe their followers, not how the author views or would otherwise describe them.
posted by palomar at 7:59 AM on October 21, 2014

postcommunism: yeah that was one of the things I really appreciated in what rorgy had to say, and I wish we could have a real large-scale conversation about THAT. Because it looks to me like what the gaters mostly like in a game is the creative equivalent of junk food.

It's sort of like seeing Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives as the pinnacle of food journalism. There's some wonderful stuff on there, but it's almost always stuff that's designed to appeal to our store-fat-for-the-winter, feed-up-to-fight-lions animal selves. It's not really about, say, making a really good steak -- it's about making a really good steak and then burying it in garlic-worcester-aioli with a side of caramelized onions made with real caramel and roquefort melted on top, chased with an irish whiskey.

The new games that these kids are so offended by are ones that actually make you think, or that you have to engage with. Some of those are easy for them to fixate on because they involve "skeleton" messages; meanwhile there's Minecraft, cranking away, just as dangerous to their sandbox as anything the skeleton corps is "pushing", but more insidious.

IOW: They have already lost; they just don't know it. The fight here is over how much earth they scorch on the way down.
posted by lodurr at 8:04 AM on October 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

yeh, i read those as ironic uses of 'beta', 'gamma', etc.

(Funny to me in the context of who uses these terms that their modern origin is in Brave New World. But then, I think a creative teenager could get a lot of sex-and-power fantasy material out of that book.)
posted by lodurr at 8:06 AM on October 21, 2014

I hesitate to say this because it sounds almost ridiculous as a criticism, but I think that part of the problem legitimately stems from the evolution of gaming to a medium which coddles its player, and which focuses most of its efforts on “immersion” and “cinematic storytelling” rather than on challenges and fundamental mechanics.

"Oh, you wanna leave me death threats? Go for it! Games are about feeling powerful and getting your way."
posted by running order squabble fest at 8:31 AM on October 21, 2014 [6 favorites]

I think the modern origins of the "alpha male" etc bullshit is mostly from studies of wolf packs and primate group dynamics, many of which have now been disproven.
posted by NoraReed at 8:52 AM on October 21, 2014 [9 favorites]

you're probably right. The Hunting Hypothesis sounds like more plausible gater reading matter than Brave New World.

(I'd quibble that "disproven" might be a little strong. "Maniacally simplistic" I'd accept, or if you could find something more strenuous than that that didn't quite get to "disproven". But hierarchies do exist -- it's just that they aren't anything approaching the be-all/end-all of social relations. I came eventually to view the triumph of those theories about social relations as being intrinsically tied to the triumph of economic theory over other types of social theory in the last quarter of the 20th century. but that's another rant for another time...so maybe I'm talking myself into 'disproven' after all....)
posted by lodurr at 9:04 AM on October 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

running order squabble fest: "
"Oh, you wanna leave me death threats? Go for it! Games are about feeling powerful and getting your way.""

Why is the song-a-day dude knocking this shit out of the park on the regular. How can this be a thing that is happening.
posted by boo_radley at 9:09 AM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Wait, that video is a year old. Ohhhhman.
posted by boo_radley at 9:11 AM on October 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

I think the modern origins of the "alpha male" etc bullshit is mostly from studies of wolf packs and primate group dynamics, many of which have now been disproven.

Well, yeah, but that hasn't stopped the nimrods from siezing that as a status-marker and running it into the ground. Hell, jscalzi has even made t-shirts mocking it.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:13 AM on October 21, 2014

(IMPORTANT NOTE: my intent with the above comment is NOT to lump the fine jscalzi in with the nimrods, only to observe that if something is so much of a meme amongst one's demographic that people are making t-shirts designed to spoof it, your demographic has most likely jumped the memeshark.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:15 AM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm afraid I can't really get into the whole "video games should be difficult" notion, because I don't really play games for the challenge (except for decreasing my time in Katamari Damacy). I think they're are legitimately different modes one can approach games with, that doesn't turn one into a spoiled msn-baby. Like playing "Cliff Hanger" just to see where the plot goes. I eventually went and watched the movie based on the game. ;'/

For instance my favorite thing in Morrowind was to find rare outfits for my Breton sorceress to wear. I trained up my armor Dunhill to wear glass armor, just because it looked awesome. If there had been a mod that was completely nonviolent, and all about questing after new and fancy outfits, I would have been all over it. #doinitwrong
posted by happyroach at 9:24 AM on October 21, 2014 [10 favorites]

which focuses most of its efforts on “immersion” and “cinematic storytelling” rather than on challenges and fundamental mechanics.

Jonathan Blow talked about faux-challenge a few years ago.. He seems to be more concerned with the ethics of the games people are making than most people are.

I wonder if problems with game design that are less noticeable than violence are having a more detrimental impact on young people growing up with games. That creating false senses of achievement are more dangerous than simulated mass murder.
posted by empath at 9:24 AM on October 21, 2014

EmpressCallipygos: I'm pretty sure the division between jscalzi and the babbys is well known by now.
posted by Navelgazer at 9:27 AM on October 21, 2014

I got into an interesting short argument with someone in the xbox subreddit who couldn't understand that having grinded for a better gun or higher stats in Destiny doesn't mean you're a better player. It just means you spent more time playing. He literally did not understand that character stats which are merely a function of time spent playing don't represent actual skill.
posted by empath at 9:27 AM on October 21, 2014

happyroach, you've somewhat described how my wife goes at WoW. She has this one minion she likes to keep around most of the time because it's cuter, but it's way less powerful than some of her others, and outside of one friend she really doesn't like group questing.
posted by lodurr at 9:28 AM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Now I don't mind being challenged, and I certainly appreciate good mechanics, but I do also like games that are "immersive" and "cinematic", as long as the story is good. I didn't buy GTAV, not just for the misogyny, but because the general sense of misanthropy that pervades the whole series leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but damn does it look gorgeous. I think, like happyroach, if there was a version where I could just run around and do cool stuff in that world, without engaging with the story in any significant way, I would totally play it. That doesn't mean I'm opposed to violent games, either- just not that particular one.

Also, Dark Souls is just masochistic. There, I said it.


Perhaps I should have saved that last bit for the MeTa about things we feel uncomfortable about mentioning
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:36 AM on October 21, 2014 [3 favorites]

if there was a version where I could just run around and do cool stuff in that world, without engaging with the story in any significant way, I would totally play it.

I spent about half of my San Andreas playthrough just driving around listening to the radio. The missions in GTA games have always felt forced, and the sense of humor is so puerile it's boring, but the environment is terrific and expansive.

I don't like Dark Souls either. I got your back.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 9:39 AM on October 21, 2014

GTA IS Scottish, misanthropy is going to be baked in. Personally I prefer it when it's done with cartoonish glee rather than crocodile tears and bro-philosophy, so Vice City is the series peak for me.
posted by Artw at 9:53 AM on October 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

I'm afraid I can't really get into the whole "video games should be difficult" notion, because I don't really play games for the challenge (except for decreasing my time in Katamari Damacy). I think they're are legitimately different modes one can approach games with, that doesn't turn one into a spoiled msn-baby. Like playing "Cliff Hanger" just to see where the plot goes. I eventually went and watched the movie based on the game. ;'/

For instance my favorite thing in Morrowind was to find rare outfits for my Breton sorceress to wear. I trained up my armor Dunhill to wear glass armor, just because it looked awesome. If there had been a mod that was completely nonviolent, and all about questing after new and fancy outfits, I would have been all over it. #doinitwrong

Yeah, my enjoyment from Skyrim comes from 1) wandering around as a lizard and exploring the racial politics of the world through things people say to me (Stormcloak = the Confederacy and the other Nords are basically your typical white folks who think they aren't racist but it's better if people stick to their own kind) and 2) wandering the countryside watching the biomes change, finding cool new buildings, and harvesting herbs.
posted by hydropsyche at 9:54 AM on October 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

I'm guessing the whole "mammal social structure" thing is appealing to Red Pill types because they tend to be super into evopsych bullshit and its related fields of bullshit (paleo*, etc). It's a bummer, because both the alternate universe where they got the structures from bad werewolf fiction (aspiring to be a True Alpha, like Scott in Teen Wolf!) and the one where they got them from bonobos are way more fun.

Oh and regarding the "different ways to play games" thing, dang, once I met someone who never played with costumes in Tales of Symphonia because the Titles didn't confer any benefits, thus labeling him as a pretty depressing kind of minmaxer.

*this isn't to say that paleo doesn't work for some people, but the whole "IT IS THE ONE TRUE DIET BECAUSE OUR SAVANNAH ANCESTORS" thing is both bullshit and really tedious, and I think the paleo people are even more annoying than most dietary evangelists, especially since they don't have an ethical justification like your more irritating vegans
posted by NoraReed at 9:56 AM on October 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

TheWhiteSkull: "Also, Dark Souls is just masochistic. There, I said it."

look we live in a culture that has a sun, that praises the sun and sometimes the people who praise the sun come out ahead. i don't understand what's so difficult for hollows to understand about this
posted by boo_radley at 9:56 AM on October 21, 2014 [7 favorites]

The new games that these kids are so offended by are ones that actually make you think, or that you have to engage with.

Last summer (when DQ actually appeared) was an interesting time, before the PS4 and Xbone launches and the arrival of GTA V and some other mega-franchise offerings. It was late in the old console cycle, when even big games and non-console games weren't as much about showing off the underlying tech, and there was a space for Gone Home and The Stanley Parable and Papers, Please and Kentucky Route Zero. (And as Daniel Nye Griffiths notes in the second link, Zoe Quinn was being harassed last year for the audacity of submitting DQ to Steam's Greenlight.)
posted by holgate at 9:58 AM on October 21, 2014

Yeah, my enjoyment from Skyrim comes from [...] wandering the countryside watching the biomes change, finding cool new buildings, and harvesting herbs.

I loved Dark Souls 2. I played it for 300 hours before I burned out, and got the achievement for getting every other achievement.
Tried to play Dark Souls. Hated it. Gave up halfway through.

Why? Too dark. Too brown. Not pretty enough.
posted by rifflesby at 10:01 AM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm afraid I can't really get into the whole "video games should be difficult" notion, because I don't really play games for the challenge (except for decreasing my time in Katamari Damacy). I think they're are legitimately different modes one can approach games with, that doesn't turn one into a spoiled msn-baby. Like playing "Cliff Hanger" just to see where the plot goes. I eventually went and watched the movie based on the game. ;'/

I think the problem isn't the lack of challenge per se, but 'faux challenge' and 'faux achievement', where you're presented with something the purports to be an obstacle that needs to be addressed with skill, but is actually just an experience that's more or less on-rails (Trigger warning: video of a fairly obnoxious streamer making a valid point), or simply based on 'character' progression rather than 'player' progression. It makes you feel good for having achieved something which you did nothing to earn. I think that's different from the appeal of playing games for the simulation and exploration aspects.

There was a french theorist that broke down 'gaming' into several different aspects, of which challenge was only one of them, simulation was another, and virtual reality (in the sense of inhabiting an imaginary world) was another. Games can be perfectly valid with challenge and without it, but I think a game that presents itself as requiring skill while requiring none might be somewhat harmful, as in its more time wasting than normal. A game like 'Portal', while being accessible, and not particularly difficult actually does require the player to learn new concepts, think laterally and execute them. You literally can't beat the game without thinking about it and trying new ideas. A game like Destiny, OTOH is essentially a grind, and requires absolutely no technical execution to finish, beyond a basic knowledge of how to aim and walk around.
posted by empath at 10:11 AM on October 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

Challenge is also kind of a nonsensical concept for a ton of what we call games. Is Mario Kart challenging? What about Basketball? Poker? In anything competitive, the challenge is purely about those playing with you.
posted by Navelgazer at 10:25 AM on October 21, 2014

Any kind of multiplayer game where there is competition is almost by definition challenging (unless it's heavily luck-based like, I dunno, Chutes and Ladders).
posted by empath at 10:28 AM on October 21, 2014

>I'm afraid I can't really get into the whole "video games should be difficult" notion,

I agree with your overall points, but "video game = difficult" is a core tenant of gamer identity. "Hard=good=you'er a better gamer". A gamer stereotype that is widely embraced is of the guy mastering complex systems, ie beating all the 'hard parts' and that goes way way back.

dating myself here as a grandpa of gaming - initially in arcades there was just the simple mechanics and a chase for the high score just like with pinball. if you didn't 'play for the challenge' of defender or zaxxon you didn't play very long. As gaming spread to the masses with the 8-bit home systems, you saw far less difficult games as compared to the first quarter eaters or 2600/colleco/intellivision/trs80s, but even so "nintendo hard" remains a description in gaming to this day.

That's one of the complaints that these 'gaters' goofs make - games need to be 'hard'. that because there's no 'fail-state' it's not a game[1]. That if there's no action or conflict, it's not a game. this ties into what empath says above, that games aren't hard at all, thinking 'pressing continue' is somehow a fail state.

And I absolutely despise how they want to handcuff game design to any one form especially just 'conflict'. As a long time gamer, I've done conflict. I've killed thousands time more nazi's than ever existed with everything from knives to nukes to mind powers. I've committed total genocide against countless oppressive human empires, stopped more orc armies and evil wizards than 20 gandalfs, smashed alien invasion fleets and burned their homeworlds, crushed inter-dimensional armies and smote their very existences. I've 'pressed A to stab guard in throat' so many times I enjoy the 'press A to strangle guard from behind' as a change of pace.

this is why I adored Gone Home. there's no conflict (not even with the game world or environment) and the only change is in your character's perception of their world. really interesting play on game tropes.

[1]Aside - almost no games I've played have failure as an option and not just as a 'retry'. the ok ps1 space-sim colony wars is still memorable to me for that - you got your space missions to complete and if you didn't complete them well it impacted the story. The end result was that depending on how you did in the war, the final battle could be to attack the enemies homeworld or protect your own from them.
posted by anti social order at 10:42 AM on October 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

I really wanted Skyrim to be challenging (since I adore the world-exploring side) but even after trying every combat mod I could find I couldn't make it satisfying, so these days I just play Gay Lady Dressup.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 10:51 AM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

False challenge is absolutely true. I think of World of Warcraft as achievement porn. It's like being a stereotypical bureaucrat -- you gain power and status by just continue to go through the motions of your duties for longer and longer periods of time.
posted by msalt at 10:52 AM on October 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

Probably Unnecessary Disclaimer: I bought Scalzi's "Gamma Rabbit" shirt and wear it proudly, when I'm not wearing Jon Rosenberg's discontinued "Very Macho by Broccoli Standards", shirt.woot's "Mr. Spork", "Dogeball" and "6 out of 7 Dwarves Are Not Happy", or R. Stevens' "Pac-Math" (the only gaming-reference shirt I own, very old school and discontinued when PacMan's masters DCMA'd it). I think the gamma rabbit represents the true ultimate enemy of Gamergators, not the "evil empire" they must conquer (and not even the scary womyn and Social Justice lovers) but the happy, non-alpha male who doesn't want to be part of THEIR evil empire. And I would buy and wear a "Gamergator" t-shirt depicting a cartoon alligator with a mangled, bloody bunny in its evilly-grinning jaws. Maybe with a "Don't let us get out of the swamp" message added.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:10 AM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Former NFL player Chris Kluwe publishes his thoughts on GamerGate.

Some highlights:

You are a blithering collection of wannabe Wikipedia philosophers, drunk on your own buzzwords, incapable of forming an original thought. You display a lack of knowledge stunning in its scope, a fundamental disregard of history and human nature so pronounced that makes me wonder if lead paint is a key component of your diet.

...

There’s enough space now for people to make games that are strange and disturbing and maybe highlight a different perspective of the world, because gaming is no longer a niche activity, it’s something that everybody does. There is room for art in video games. That’s awesome!

The whole thing is pretty quotable, so I'm just going to stop and suggest you go read it.
posted by papercrane at 11:14 AM on October 21, 2014 [29 favorites]

And I would buy and wear a "Gamergator" t-shirt depicting a cartoon alligator with a mangled, bloody bunny in its evilly-grinning jaws.

My mental picture of gators is very much like the crocs of Pearls Before Swine.
posted by sukeban at 11:17 AM on October 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

Games can be perfectly valid with challenge and without it, but I think a game that presents itself as requiring skill while requiring none might be somewhat harmful, as in its more time wasting than normal.

This is really important, because #GG is using the tactics of grinding games to keep the movement going. It's like they believe that if they respond to enough people on Twitter with pre-written, hollow, movement-approved replies, they will level up into more sophisticated arguments. Games that purport to require skill but really require dedicated, endless repetition is a perfect analogy to their tactics, and it's why they think they're gaining ground.
posted by almostmanda at 11:18 AM on October 21, 2014 [12 favorites]

MY mental picture of cartoon gators are more like from when Bill Watterson drew Pearls. But using the general idiocy of Pearls' crocs does reflect on the #GGers fairly accurately. Somebody get Stephen Patsis working on this; he's already used to dealing with angry mobs just for his overuse of bad puns.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:34 AM on October 21, 2014

I picture the Edward Gorey crocodile, but saying things like "#notallgamers" and "It's about journalistic ethics!"
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 11:41 AM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

So apparently Adobe just pulled it's Gawker advertising, saying it was taking a stand against bullying.

Backlash is likely to be a little less cut and dried than the Intel thing, I guess, but "against bullies" is a lethal level of irony.
posted by Artw at 11:48 AM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

With Adobe pulling out gawker, a huge vat of chum has just been dished out to the piranhas.
posted by Theta States at 12:03 PM on October 21, 2014

More about the origins, using 4chan screenshots from August:
#StopGamerGate2014. It has always been a spin. From the very first, the movement that became #GamerGate was never about "ethics". (TW for threats, slurs, homophobia, mention of suicide, and so much misogyny.) Document will likely be updated.

It's quite fascinating how early some realized that the slut-shaming could only take them so far, and they needed another "angle". One anonymous comment in particular, from August 16, seems to sum up the entire next two months:
The messages about this have to convey as if there's a serious discussion to be had while damaging her and her reputation as collateral damage.

Note the revealing language: convey as if there's a serious discussion to be had.
posted by dhartung at 12:24 PM on October 21, 2014 [11 favorites]

From the Kluwe peice:

"You don’t even see the complete idiocy of this idea because you’re too busy wargleblargling your face into your keyboard."

wargleblarging. That is impressive. This Kluwe fellow, I like the cut of his jib.
posted by daq at 12:31 PM on October 21, 2014 [6 favorites]

Funny, I always saw it as WHARRGARBL

/yes, I still do.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:39 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

OK, I can see that Empath. That has interesting parallels to WOTC's survey of tabletop gamers, which broke them down along two tactical/strategic and combat focused/story focused into four groups: Power Gamers, Thinkers. Storytellers, Character Acters. I tend to come at things forum a character actor and storyteller POV, so my interactions with video games tend to be...weird.

I think that quite a few video games, especially the AAA ones, only cater to a start of the offender gaming types, and even then the idea of a faux challenge makes sense.
posted by happyroach at 12:40 PM on October 21, 2014

So apparently Adobe just pulled it's Gawker advertising, saying it was taking a stand against bullying.

Wait, what?

Did Adobe decide that Gawker coverage of this farce was "bullying" or was there something else I missed or just some major misinterpretation going on?

Need to know if I should boycott Adobe or Gawker or neither :P
posted by Foosnark at 12:49 PM on October 21, 2014

the bullying claims are related to tweets.
posted by nadawi at 12:52 PM on October 21, 2014

artw: So apparently Adobe just pulled it's Gawker advertising, saying it was taking a stand against bullying.

Well, who here expected Adobe's marketing department to be staffed by people with a clue, anyway?
posted by lodurr at 12:53 PM on October 21, 2014

Oh. Well, yeah, that is pretty obnoxious.
posted by Foosnark at 12:54 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm not actually sure how any of these companies are "pulling" their ads from Gawker. Most buy their digital advertising through an agency. Unless they have some sort of special promotion going on with the site, that advertising is mostly purchased "programmatically", that is, from one of several different exchange desks, usually through a bidding process. The agency itself is most likely bidding on a number of impressions against a particular target, or a genre of sites, not a specific site list. I mean, they could add Gawker sites to an exclusion list associated with their buys, but that would add a premium to their cost-per-thousand, so it would cost them more to not advertise on Gawker (assuming the profile they are bidding on includes Gawker readers, or people likely to visit Gawker sites).
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:58 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Former NFL player Chris Kluwe publishes his thoughts on GamerGate.

Holy damn, that is a thing of beauty. A fabulous, they-should-have-sent-a-poet level of beauty.
posted by jokeefe at 12:59 PM on October 21, 2014

Well, according to this tweet, Adobe was never an advertiser, but did ask Gawker to remove its logo (?)
posted by bitterpants at 1:01 PM on October 21, 2014

it's a weird and idiotic move that probably seemed smart in yesterday's daily status meeting. "We can bump the AdWords buy by $30K if we pull the Gawker ads, and I think we can buy some PR cred with the misogynistic gamedev demo if we say it's because we oppose bullying."
posted by lodurr at 1:01 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

oh, well, so it makes even less sense than I thought it did. but as I said, we're talking Adobe Marketing Department here, 'making sense' is not something I'd normally expect.
posted by lodurr at 1:02 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

yeah, their wording and the wording by the gators when they were targeting adobe makes it sound like somehow gawker was using the adobe logo, but adobe wasn't officially being advertised. i have adblock on and usually read gawker through rss so i don't really know what the truth is.
posted by nadawi at 1:03 PM on October 21, 2014

It's telling that even the GG "victories" are ambiguous.
posted by bitterpants at 1:10 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

as for chris kluwe...i have no idea what he's doing for a living now, but it really should involve writing. he might well annoy the hell out of me in person, but I always come away from his pieces with a grin on my face.
posted by lodurr at 1:11 PM on October 21, 2014

Apparently update/clarification from Adobe coming soon. Stay tuned.
posted by Theta States at 1:13 PM on October 21, 2014

That Chris Kluwe rant is epic.
posted by pharm at 1:15 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

This Kluwe fellow, I like the cut of his jib.

His Twitter feed is hilarious, too - and should there be any doubts about his gaming cred, it's @ChrisWarcraft.

it's a weird and idiotic move that probably seemed smart in yesterday's daily status meeting. "We can bump the AdWords buy by $30K if we pull the Gawker ads, and I think we can buy some PR cred with the misogynistic gamedev demo if we say it's because we oppose bullying."

It looks like Adobe's Twitter account was all over National Bullying Prevention Month this September, so they may have boxed themselves in if GG manages to paint them as somehow silent on bullying (or at least don't think it's worth the effort to take a stand against, you know, death threats when it doesn't have a hashtag behind it).

Meanwhile, Wired's Laura Hudson has posted an article "Gamergate Goons Can Scream All They Want, But They Can’t Stop Progress" that has a great caveat at the end: "Disclosure: The writer has hung out socially with Anita Sarkeesian and Leigh Alexander on a handful of occasions. Since that will likely be introduced as evidence of the vast feminist gaming conspiracy, we might as well get it out of the way."
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:25 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Any kind of multiplayer game where there is competition is almost by definition challenging (unless it's heavily luck-based like, I dunno, Chutes and Ladders).

There are levels, though: there are some games where a relatively experienced player can still lose against a total noob (the Soul Calibur series is like this), ones that are still fun even if you're a noob and likely to lose (many kid's games are like this), ones where you can apply strategy you know from other places and/or that some people are just naturally good at so new players stand a chance against veterans (resource management games come to mind for this; Waterdeep is gonna work for you if you're okay at Catan and so is Ticket to Ride), ones that are multiplayer but have lots of options for alliances and backstabbing so people tend to underestimate new players and/or go easy on them (Munchkin, Werewolf, Civ, etc), and ones that have a good handicap system so people of different skill or experience levels can still play against each other and be satisfactorily challenged (whether that is an actual "start with less HP" or "play at a different difficulty" handicap, a homebrew "David isn't allowed to do ____" rule, playing as a character you aren't good at, etc); many games contain more than one of these.
posted by NoraReed at 1:31 PM on October 21, 2014

Let me see. The last time I spent any money on anything from Adobe was ... hmm ... 2012. I haven't been scrambling to buy anything else from them because I've found the subscription model limiting-to-infuriating and my older software from them worked well enough for my needs. The kind of corporate cowardice they displayed today doesn't exactly light my purchasing finger on fire, either.
posted by maudlin at 1:35 PM on October 21, 2014

(Even if Brianna Wu slaps some sense into Adobe, they still make shitty, overpriced products.)
posted by maudlin at 1:36 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Wired putting that disclaimer there seems kind of like filling in a coloring book in front of a child. How are gators supposed to keep themselves busy generating MS Paint conspiracy macros if you draw the red lines for them?
posted by Corinth at 1:39 PM on October 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

Corinth: It might have been funnier if she'd made the disclosure and then couched the conspiracy as a 'menu suggestion' or something, but that's just me being hypercritical of someone else's comedy.
posted by lodurr at 1:47 PM on October 21, 2014

maudlin: "(Even if Brianna Wu slaps some sense into Adobe, they still make shitty, overpriced products.)"


from that article:

"Mercedes-Benz has since reinstated their campaign. Hopefully Adobe will soon, having just received a call from Brianna Wu, driven from her home by GamerGate-borne death threats two weeks ago."

ron_paul_its_happening.gif
posted by boo_radley at 1:48 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Let me see. The last time I spent any money on anything from Adobe was ... hmm ... never? Still, I'd morally support an Adobe boycott, and even make a little graphic banner for it... just can't decide whether to use Gimp or Paint.net... As for Mercedes, it was never a serious option even during the 15 minutes of my life I could afford that kind of car. So I am totally outside any of the relevant target markets for any of this.

I think we can officially add to the gruesome aspects of the #Gamergators... #theonepercent, or at least #theonepercentwannabes.

As for Gawker, they've had lots of times they could be accused of Bullying before this. For example, their science-y blog "io9" regularly bullies Climate Change Deniers. I don't disapprove.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:06 PM on October 21, 2014

I don't read io9 religiously but I go there a lot, and often it's for climate change stories, and I don't recall seeing anything there I'd characterize as "bullying." They don't mince words, but calling an idea 'stupid' is rather different from saying 'that climate change denier should go commit suicide.'
posted by lodurr at 2:15 PM on October 21, 2014

I don't read io9 religiously but I go there a lot, and often it's for climate change stories, and I don't recall seeing anything there I'd characterize as "bullying."

The "bullying" claims are based on some very ill-worded and nasty tweets that one single guy at Gawker has made.

Yeah, that one guy at Gawker is a jackbutt. That is not up for debate. But if Gawker needs to be held accountable for what one single one of its employees says, then GG's need to be held accountable for what a small handful of their ilk have done to Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian. And frankly, "he said racist things on Twitter" isn't anywhere near as bad as "he called her house and threatened to chop off her boyfriend's dick and shove it down her throat after raping her".

So I propose that someone with more time than I start a counter-attack - whenever we hear of another advertiser that GamerGate has chased off of Gawker, send that same advertiser a list of the articles about GamerGAte with the adviso that "if you're concerned about not giving in to ACTUAL bullies, have a look at what else the people who just complained to you have also been doing elsewhere, and decide whether you want to trust them."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:25 PM on October 21, 2014 [9 favorites]

Oh hey, and there goes Mike Cernovich with the FIGHT ME RIGHT NOW challenge to Chris Kluwe. Must be Tuesday.
posted by Tknophobia at 2:28 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Seriously? That would not go well for Cernovitch. Especially if it's metaphorical.
posted by lodurr at 2:33 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Man, that guy is just the bag that keeps on douching, isn't he?
posted by almostmanda at 2:33 PM on October 21, 2014 [7 favorites]

%n: "Oh hey, and there goes Mike Cernovich with the FIGHT ME RIGHT NOW challenge to Chris Kluwe. Must be Tuesday."

oh man, I'm anticipating reading Kluwe's disassembly of Cernovich over a Glenfiddich ... or maybe the Laphroaig?
posted by boo_radley at 2:34 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Do not challenge Kluwe to a battle of wits if you are a witless wonder. Better you should challenge him physically, which will hurt less and not leave as much internet evidence of your idiocy.
posted by rtha at 2:34 PM on October 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

Damn, I love Chris Kluwe.

This Cernovich guy... could he look and act more like a stereotypical steroid abuser? He's so desperate to fight anyone who will take him on, I'm sort of embarrassed for him.
posted by palomar at 2:40 PM on October 21, 2014

Cernovich better change his name to Schadenfreude because I could not be anticipating Kluwe's reaction more right now.
posted by Navelgazer at 2:43 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Can't link to Twitter at work, but yeah, Cernovich is a strutting rooster crowing about how "size ain't sheeeeeeeet" because Chris Kluwe is TOTES A BULLY but won't fight him. And I get the impression Kluwe is just retweeting every single word while chewing on a huge bucket of popcorn.
posted by Tknophobia at 2:47 PM on October 21, 2014 [7 favorites]

"I hate bullies now fight me" hmmm yiss ok
posted by boo_radley at 2:51 PM on October 21, 2014 [8 favorites]

So Cernovich and his lackeys are currently harping on Twitter about how violent Chris Kluwe is because he was a football player. But... he was the kicker. Are kickers out there tackling people throughout the game, or am I correct in thinking these guys are just really dumb?
posted by palomar at 3:01 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Corinth

Wired putting that disclaimer there seems kind of like filling in a coloring book in front of a child. How are gators supposed to keep themselves busy generating MS Paint conspiracy macros if you draw the red lines for them?

Laura Hudson's Disclosure:

[Disclosure: The writer has hung out socially with Anita Sarkeesian and Leigh Alexander on a handful of occasions. Since that will likely be introduced as evidence of the vast feminist gaming conspiracy, we might as well get it out of the way.]

I was saying to a friend early today in relation to that article that I kind of hope that 'ironic disclosures at the bottom of opinion pieces and blog posts' becomes the new 'ironic use of the "Thanks Obama!" meme.'
posted by whittaker at 3:02 PM on October 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

Cernovich seems to be operating on the logic that any twitter response whatsoever is accepting his challenge, but after that, any twitter resposne whatsoever is ducking his challenge.
posted by dhartung at 3:05 PM on October 21, 2014

Are kickers out there tackling people throughout the game, or am I correct in thinking these guys are just really dumb?

The NFL doesn't like to talk about this much, and cuts away to commercial on TV broadcasts when it comes up, but there's a rules edge-case where on fourth down a team in their own fifty has the option of calling a "cowboy in the desert" wherein the opposing team's quarterback is buried up to his neck at center field and if the possessing team's kicker can literally kick his head off and through the uprights, that's three points.
posted by cortex at 3:05 PM on October 21, 2014 [32 favorites]

Why do I feel like that would make football even more popular?
posted by palomar at 3:06 PM on October 21, 2014

Oh, now Cernovich is trying to mine Kluwe's Twitter feed for gotchas. It's adorable.
posted by palomar at 3:07 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

From the (satirical) Beaverton: ISIS recruitment campaign targets angry gamers with promise of real life war on women.
posted by Lemurrhea at 3:08 PM on October 21, 2014 [9 favorites]

cortex: "the opposing team's quarterback is buried up to his neck at center field and if the possessing team's kicker can literally kick his head off and through the uprights, that's three points."

In Canadian football, this is called a "rouge" and is worth one point. Jav Out! Jav Out!
posted by mhum at 3:08 PM on October 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

Kickers have had to tackle other players, but it always means things have gone very wrong.
posted by Gygesringtone at 3:11 PM on October 21, 2014

Oh, now Cernovich is trying to mine Kluwe's Twitter feed for gotchas. It's adorable.

Cernovich: "He… he swears!" *fans self, collapses on fainting couch*
posted by Lexica at 3:14 PM on October 21, 2014 [4 favorites]

in fact, if kickers are too good at tackling they get a surprise drug test.
posted by nadawi at 3:26 PM on October 21, 2014

ArmyOfKittens

tocts: "To them, arguments have nothing to do with rationality, or self reflection. Instead, arguments are simply a collection of trump cards that one trots out at the right moment for an incisive victory, but otherwise bear no real consideration."

It reminds me of arguing with MRAs, who have a tendency to pull out a prepared list of about eighty links covering every possible eventuality, and then declare victory when you don't have time to read through and debunk 60 lengthy and disgusting blogposts and watch and ridicule 20 lengthy youtube whinges.

This desperately needs a better and more enlarged essay, but I’ve been thinking of public discourse as a kind of cryptography lately.

Cryptography works on a basic asymmetry: encryption/decryption with the key is computationally trivial to the people within the ring of trust. Decryption without—that is to say, 'brute forcing'—is many many orders of magnitude more computationally expensive.

In the case of a contemporary political movement, you have an advocate with a 'key': a pre-conceived talking point.

This talking point is logically flawed or untrue, or selectively true. It is also trivial for an advocate to repeatedly copy and paste or paraphrase in arguments. Especially since they are on an organized advocacy group (Gamergate with various 'operations' originating from 8chan) and the person they're arguing with is on their own (somebody who criticised Gamergate on twitter and the hashtag attracted advocates).

it is deployed upon somebody speaking out in opposition. Once deployed, it is NON-trivial for that other person to refute this point. Especially if they're arguing in good faith. Even if it's a terrible argument, you're going to 'brute force' your refutation, maybe look at the source they cite and do a modest amount of research to debunk it. It may not seem like a lot, but you've already spent far more of your time and intellectual energy to refute them than they did to paste the talking point into the tweet window. This means that even though an ideology could be disadvantaged by small numbers and being unfactual, it could still level the playing field in public discourse by taking advantage of their opponent's assumption of good faith.

…unless this person has invested the time and is lucky to be able to consult a source that has pre-baked refutations to these talking points (which I guess would be the 'rainbow table' in this analogy.)

This problem of asymmetry works in warfare too—look at Mogadishu and Black Hawk Down: The US vastly outmatches the Somali warlords in terms of resources and wealth, but do they outmatch them at a factor of $21.3 million (per helicopter) to $50 (an RPG bought in a Soviet military surplus firesale)?
posted by whittaker at 3:28 PM on October 21, 2014 [23 favorites]

Remember when Total Xbox gave Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor a review 15 points higher than the next highest review for the game (despite its Kinect interface being so bad the gave was virtually unplayable) and there was massive outrage about the lack of integrity in videogame reviews. Remember the rage about inflated review scores for console exclusive games? Remember the death threats against Steve Ballmer? Remember how the outrage spilled over into the larger charge of Capcom's habit of casual racism?

You don't remember that?

Odd.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 3:47 PM on October 21, 2014 [8 favorites]

≤Forest Gump Voice≥ And that's what I think about GamerGate's claims regarding their higher motives. ≤/Forest Gump Voice≥
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 3:50 PM on October 21, 2014

Behind the meows, LWs, and anonymity, it's still the Babbys who are losing their shit imagining conspiracies. This amuses me greatly.
posted by Navelgazer at 4:00 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Are kickers out there tackling people throughout the game...

Clearly you have not heard of the legend of Carey "Murderleg" Spears. The Eagles cut him in training camp because of the unfortunate detail that he can't kick straight, but boy can he tackle.
posted by msalt at 4:16 PM on October 21, 2014

This problem of asymmetry works in warfare too—look at Mogadishu and Black Hawk Down: The US vastly outmatches the Somali warlords in terms of resources and wealth, but do they outmatch them at a factor of $21.3 million (per helicopter) to $50 (an RPG bought in a Soviet military surplus firesale)?
Well...
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:25 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Never argue with anything that isn't human - a meatbot certainly isn't.
posted by Artw at 4:29 PM on October 21, 2014

Funny thing is, I remember pointing out (along with other people) on this very website back when Jade Raymond had a disgusting comic drawn of her that male game creators of far greater notoriety hadn't suffered similar fates. Gamers gonna game attempt to reinforce male control of the gaming industry.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 4:41 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

Although, sadly, the link in that thread to J Allard dressed as a pirate has rotted.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 4:41 PM on October 21, 2014

So I guess now the roid rager is calling Chris Kluwe a rape apologist and threatening a lawsuit or something? It's hard to tell, that guy's the mayor of Crazytown at this point.
posted by palomar at 5:10 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

That lawyer said rager has dredged up seems like a real prince as well.
posted by bibliowench at 5:24 PM on October 21, 2014

palomar: So I guess now the roid rager is calling Chris Kluwe a rape apologist and threatening a lawsuit or something? It's hard to tell, that guy's the mayor of Crazytown at this point.

A challenger appears to Jim Hoft for Dumbest Man on the Internet?
posted by ob1quixote at 5:29 PM on October 21, 2014

I thought the lawyer and the roid rager were the same person.
posted by Navelgazer at 5:29 PM on October 21, 2014

Well, cretins tend to stick together.
posted by palomar at 5:29 PM on October 21, 2014

I thought the lawyer and the roid rager were the same person.

This guy is the lawyer.
posted by bibliowench at 5:34 PM on October 21, 2014

I'm with hades and mhum: These guys are reminding me more and more of Scientology.
posted by dhartung at 5:41 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

I can't tell if Chris Kluwe has a leg to stand on with a libel suit or if he's just been successfully trolled. :-/
posted by murphy slaw at 5:48 PM on October 21, 2014

Hard to say. Looks like right now the two gross dudes are trying to make it look like they're being actively harassed by Kluwe in order to rev up their army of winged turds for attack time. It's all theater for them.
posted by palomar at 6:00 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

I will never cease to be amazed by people for whom the world isn't shitty enough, and so more shittiness must be arranged.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:02 PM on October 21, 2014 [14 favorites]

This guy is the lawyer.
and when I clicked the link, I found this tweet. Whoever's side he's on, I don't think he's capable of providing any kind of legal advice.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:26 PM on October 21, 2014

In fairness, that last one looks like a parody of conspiracy, and I grinned.
posted by msalt at 6:33 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

Sometimes I take a break from trying to waste the GamerGaters' time with my Markov bot (it's amazing how long you can string along conversations with them replying to a bot which generates tweets from the GamerGaters' own canon), and actually engage with dudes.

Yesterday I had a guy with (a) a nickname, no real name of course (b) an avatar of an anime character, of course (c) no location shown, of course (d) no tweet ever made on any topic except GamerGate. He told me, multiple times, that "the threats aren't real, they're just bored people on the internet, women should just ignore the threats like I do". From a guy who took complete measures to hide his online identify so he could never be actually identified and threatened. Oh, he complained a lot about "bullying". Bullying is, apparently, when someone publishes an article expressing broad, justified criticism of something you like or people you agree with. That's bullying, and there is a global journalistic cabal dead-set on bullying nerds like him and destroying his cultural identity. By writing articles. But actual threats against people? Actual "I've got a gun, see you tomorrow" threats? Oh women shouldn't take them seriously, those are just bored people on the internet, those sorts of threats should be ignored.

This is so cult-like it's bizarre.
posted by Jimbob at 6:51 PM on October 21, 2014 [20 favorites]

The lawyer seems to think that the first amendment is relevant in libel cases. I wonder what kind of law he practices.
posted by lodurr at 7:03 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

He's supposed to be a 1st Amendment lawyer and I guess he specializes in SLAPP suits. Does a lot of work with the porn industry.
posted by palomar at 7:12 PM on October 21, 2014

But how would that work? How do you sue an individual for violating the first amendment rights of another individual? What's the rationale?
posted by lodurr at 7:19 PM on October 21, 2014

I have no idea... it seems pretty nonsensical from here, but I admit I'm not a brilliant lawyer like the roid rager or his hired hand.

In other news, Chris Kluwe is taking on Adam Baldwin now. Baldwin's responding with memes, because that's what adults do. :/
posted by palomar at 7:24 PM on October 21, 2014

I am enjoying the Kluwe/Baldwin, ah, discussion (?) very much. Obviously this makes me a terrible person.
posted by Andrhia at 7:44 PM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]

The lawyer seems to think that the first amendment is relevant in libel cases. I wonder what kind of law he practices.

Heh. Mark Randazza is a legit attorney and in total not a bad dude. He specializes in first amendment/libel issues. He's the guy who defended the owner of www.glennbeckrapedandmurdered[whatever the hell the website was] and won. He's done a lot of work defending bloggers against spurious dmca and just crazy legal threat people (vexatious-style litigants), often pro bono. Ken White is a fan, and on free speech creds that's proof enough for me.

And lodurr, you don't sue a person for violating first amendment rights, but (in my understanding as a non-us lawyer) you defend by convincing the court that they don't have the right to enforce it. So like there are limited exceptions to the protection of the 1A, such as libel and fighting words and all that. If that hasn't been proved, then the court can't tell someone not to talk about a topic (and for example it has a really hard time doing a preliminary order, or at least it should).

I didn't see what happened re: Randazza, read part of the early-ish spat between the roider and Kluwe. Anyone mind cluing me in? All I could find quickly was this, which is him taking a few cheap shots at feminists but coming down pretty hard on the side of Sarkeesian.
posted by Lemurrhea at 8:10 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]

It looks like Adobe is wading into the fray, as they made a tweet about being against bullying and removing Gawker advertising except now they're unofficially saying maybe they were mistaken or misunderstood or something.
posted by rmd1023 at 8:17 PM on October 21, 2014

I think people just misread the tweet. I think they were saying, "We don't sponsor with them so we're not sure why we're listed and we asked them to take that off. In general, we're against bullying, obviously." This is probably a good example of why trying to talk about anything serious on Twitter is so hard.
posted by Sequence at 8:21 PM on October 21, 2014

Ah, yeah, apparently Gawker had some "partners" page that GG took as being their list of advertisers, but it wasn't, and so now they're struggling to find actual advertisers to target. This guy actually *gasp* visited Gawker without AdBlock to do research. If there's anything that really annoys me about all of this, it's that they're forcing me to sympathize with Gawker. I haven't really cared for Gawker Media in quite a while, just because their site design got increasingly unusable and Lifehacker's stories have descended into useless clickbait. And yet I still prefer them to anything that could possibly be GG-supported.
posted by Sequence at 9:12 PM on October 21, 2014 [5 favorites]

I still prefer them to anything that could possibly be GG-supported.
well, Breitbart has declared itself the only media entity that's not part of the Liberal Anti-GG Conspiracy (not I will NOT link to it... it was painful enough to get tricked into going there myself)
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:23 AM on October 22, 2014

I guess saying I prefer something to Breitbart is not really a spectacular surprise.
posted by Sequence at 1:27 AM on October 22, 2014

I didn't see what happened re: Randazza, read part of the early-ish spat between the roider and Kluwe.

Kluwe quotes Cernovitch as saying Kluwe failed to report a rape. If Kluwe's quote is accurate, it was a pretty unambiguous allegation, albeit lacking the name of a specific victim or rapist. That's basically the core of it. Then Randazza becomes involved as Cernovitch's counsel.

Based on what you're saying it sounds like he would make a case that if a court ruled against Certnovitch for defamation, it would be suppressing his first amendment rights. Whether he's 'totally not a bad guy' or not, that's fucked up.
posted by lodurr at 3:11 AM on October 22, 2014

I'm the gamer in my family so my brother and sister-in-law turn to me for advice on what games they should let my nephews, 8 and 10, play. I usually explain what type of violence or sexual stuff there is an let them decide. This Christmas they are considering getting them their first adult console and asked if it should be XBone or PS4. I'm still researching games and what I feel will be a better fit for them but I'm starting to lean towards neither. I might just send them a few articles on the whole fiasco. I don't want my nephews in this culture; I don't want anybody to put up with or be inspired by this nonsense. We game together right now and it's wonderful. It hurts me that gaming is so toxic I'm driving people away from it. But here we are.
posted by MaritaCov at 4:46 AM on October 22, 2014 [6 favorites]

I'm not a libel attorney, but the fact that Kluwe is a Public Figure does in fact make the 1st Amendment relevant to a libel case, and makes it almost impossible for Kluwe to successfully press one. FWIW.
posted by Navelgazer at 5:22 AM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

MaritaCov: I don't know about their budget, but in that situation, rather than trying to push them away from gaming--which is unlikely to work, it's not a fringe hobby at this point--switch towards an inexpensive gaming PC. You can still do controllers and everything, you can still even hook them up to an HDTV generally with the right ports on the video card. It's a more complicated option, but there's little real independent presence on the consoles, and looking at independent developers opens up a lot more games that are doing more inventive and diverse things. And it also opens up the ability to really talk more about how games are made and the fact that you don't have to just accept what you're given; with a real PC, they can actually learn to use modding tools and start doing designing of their own, even coding if they have an interest.

I mean--I'd still not want to see kids in any of those voice-chat sort of multiplayer games, and even Youtube comments can be so dangerous, but they've got a guide into this world right now who understands what's going on out there, and I'm afraid of the drug comparisons here, but let's be honest: They're probably going to get it somewhere, and it's better if it's in a context where they're being encouraged from as early as possible to think critically about even things they love, and you're in such a good position to do that.
posted by Sequence at 6:12 AM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

Lodurr: it pretty much comes down to New York Times v Sullivan, a decision that sets an almost impossibly high barrier to Kluwe were he to try to sue over this.
posted by Navelgazer at 6:32 AM on October 22, 2014

I took gilrain as meaning 'pushing away from gaming as a career', but Sequence's point actually still holds: the "future of gaming" is not on the consoles, but on the general purpose devices (phones, tablets, workstations*).

--
*what the hell do we call 'the PC I do all my work on' anymore? There's not really a strong differentiation in capability between laptops and desktops, and 'workstation' is already the generic IT term, so I'm settling for that.
posted by lodurr at 6:34 AM on October 22, 2014

The Kluwe thing boils down to Klue tweeting that "everybody knew" about an incident with two players and an underage teenager, and a CBS Reporter going full high dudgeon that Kluwe was wrong for not reporting it to the police.

Ignoring the kind of important detail as to whether Kluwe actually witnessed anything the police would use as evidence. It was a terrible column.
posted by msalt at 7:00 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Thanks, msalt. I wish that made it clearer; now it sounds like Chris was dinging Cernovitz for referencing a bad CBS column. I think I need to stop trying to understand it, now.
posted by lodurr at 7:23 AM on October 22, 2014

Clickhole weighs in with the best piece about Gamergate written so far. "It is important to remember that the members of Gamergate, only some of whom threaten to rape and murder women, are simply fighting for ethics in gaming journalism."
posted by Andrhia at 8:29 AM on October 22, 2014 [30 favorites]

Ah, Clickhole...there must be some named-derivative of Poe's Law that captures my discomfort at the fact that it's such a great parody of clickbait while simultaneously such perfect clickbait. And now they've added pandering...i wonder how many gaters take it seriously?
posted by lodurr at 8:45 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

idiots are pawing through depression quest's source code, PROVING nathan grayson is being SECRETLY thanked - aha! smoking gun! collusion!! oligarchy!!1!!!11

...except -that exact same information appears in the credits to the game, alongside a bunch of other names. and if this about ethics and not about quinn, why are they attacking her source code with a fine toothed comb? anyway, zoe quinn's twitter has been hilarious this morning.
posted by nadawi at 8:49 AM on October 22, 2014 [5 favorites]

>if this about ethics

Holy shit gross/trigger warning but.. Has anyone seen this yet about the KotakuAction subreddit we've been linked? The mods that run the place also mod some other horrible subs.

Today, the easy winner in my informal “Worst Thing I Saw On The Internet” contest is a horrendous little hangout for dudes with a very particular sexual fetish: they like to fantasize about raping and sexually humiliating feminists.

...

The other mod, oxymuncha, is the founder of TumblrInAction (an anti-”Social Justice Warrior” subreddit with 137,000 subscribers) and mods four other TumblrInAction spinoff subs. He’s also a mod of KotakuInAction (the largest pro-GamerGate hangout on Reddit) and the Gor subreddit (a porn subreddit inspired by an infamous series of male supremacist SF novels).

This is my not-shocked-but-still face.
posted by anti social order at 9:03 AM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

Holy shit, source code? Seriously? I think these people need medication it's getting to the point of paranoid schizophrenia, or something. Somebody get these people jobs so they have something better to do with their lives. Usually I don't take that line of thinking, but man... This is something else.

That Clickhole is genius.
posted by symbioid at 9:04 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

To answer Lodurr's question - at least one!
posted by ominous_paws at 9:07 AM on October 22, 2014

@Quinnspiracy is just retweeting GGer after GGer who thinks the Clickhole article is sincere. So great.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 9:09 AM on October 22, 2014 [8 favorites]

Eh, i don't think the source code thing is all that paranoid. (Actually I find it kind of telling they haven't thought of it before now -- I'd regard it as 101 for this kind of thing. But then I'm a webdev, and we largely learn our trade via view-source.)

What I do find inexcusably amateurish is failing to notice that the source code isn't telling them anything new.
posted by lodurr at 9:19 AM on October 22, 2014

To clarify, the fact that they haven't looked at source (for a Twine game) before now tells me that they have been buying too much into the narrative that success in games means they're messrs. clever boots. If they were that clever they'd have looked at the source on day 1.
posted by lodurr at 9:21 AM on October 22, 2014

Lodurr, the point so far as I'm concerned is that they're looking at the source code of a Twine game because something-something-ethics in journalism. No but seriously you guys this isn't about Zoe Quinn! Literally Who!
posted by Andrhia at 9:29 AM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

But what exactly are they expecting, clues that she faked the moon landing or that Jesus Christ had children? This is not how real-life conspiracies work, guys.
posted by RobotHero at 9:29 AM on October 22, 2014

Okay, I'm not a developer at all, but what is the source code supposed to tell them? Even if Grayson weren't publicly thanked in the credits, which he apparently is, what would the be looking for? A super-seekrit hidden thank you? And that's not paranoid?
posted by Navelgazer at 9:30 AM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you ... #bloom. Posting this here first to say thanks for this thread (which is helping me keep track of the whole situation) before I pass it on to the rest of the world.
posted by jake at 9:30 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

From Cracked: 5 Ways Society is Sexist Against Men
posted by Navelgazer at 9:33 AM on October 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

/** My dastardly plan will work -
All the tools of the patriarchy will fall
by the might of the Quinnspiracy.
Secret minions who are looking at this source code,
Pull out your ROT-13 Decoder Ring:
'qevax lbhe binygvar'
And any misogynists reading this,
"there is no cabal" **/
posted by symbioid at 9:33 AM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

storify is shitting the bed today...
posted by nadawi at 9:35 AM on October 22, 2014

Posting this here first to say thanks for this thread (which is helping me keep track of the whole situation) before I pass it on to the rest of the world.

Whoa, did everyone from here crash Storify, then?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:35 AM on October 22, 2014

Okay, I'm not a developer at all, but what is the source code supposed to tell them?

It proves that Quinn knew the guy before they had started their affair. Don't you see!
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 9:35 AM on October 22, 2014

storify has been having issues all day as far as i can tell.
posted by nadawi at 9:39 AM on October 22, 2014

Whoa, did everyone from here crash Storify, then?

Haha, I'm used to this, every time I post a track on Soundcloud or a link to a Kickstarter campaign, the respective sites immediately go down 100% of the time

I wish I could say it was the Jake Effect and not just absurdly unfortunate timing
posted by jake at 9:41 AM on October 22, 2014

Storify is back, but Jake's link now goes 404 :(
posted by pharm at 9:45 AM on October 22, 2014

Try this one, it's a direct permalink
posted by jake at 9:47 AM on October 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

Yeah, something happened over at storify's infrastructure. I was getting an SSL cert error, so I figured maybe they were updating in advance of the certipocalypse due on 11/1 when chrome starts marking insecure certs as bad, but I clicked through a SHA1-signed cert and got a 404 so, uh, I got nothin.

on preview: yay! the direct permalink works!
posted by rmd1023 at 9:48 AM on October 22, 2014

Lodurr, the point so far as I'm concerned is that they're looking at the source code of a Twine game because something-something-ethics in journalism. No but seriously you guys this isn't about Zoe Quinn! Literally Who!

Oh, I totally get that. It's just that for an HTML5-based game, that should literally be the first thing you do, or you just don't really know anything about what you're claiming to defend. I guess it's offensive to me, professionally, that these turds don't respect my profession enough to do the first thing young web devs are taught on their first day hacking HTML.

You know, aside from being turds.
posted by lodurr at 9:51 AM on October 22, 2014

This screenshot of a Fine Young Capitalists tweet is hilarious.
posted by Lexica at 10:00 AM on October 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

Pax Dickinson weighs in on GG. Suffice to say, he misses the point:

I see the current GamerGate uproar as a pushback against a related ongoing moral panic, this one against ‘sexism’ in video games. The video gaming press has launched a moral shaming attack against their own readers for their perceived sexism, but unlike the previous moral panics the gaming community has refused to cower before the onslaught and has risen up in rebellion against the accusations.

Like moths to a flame, GG seems to be attracting all the misogynists.
posted by Cash4Lead at 10:09 AM on October 22, 2014 [5 favorites]

NoraReed: "Willingness to accept the silencing, harassment and violent threats as collateral damage is a misogynistic thing to do regardless of the roots of one's character."

This has also reminded me of Jay Smooth's bit about the "You said or did something racist" conversation vs. the "You are a racist" conversation.

The Gaters want "GamerGate is misogynistic" to have to mean that every single supporter is explicitly motivated by misogyny, because it's impossible to prove that. So they will fight to have that conversation, rather than a conversation about the consequences of supporting GamerGate. And that's also why the fixation on how insulted they are, how anything emphasizing the harassment is slander, and the trend a while back where they were donating to charity to prove they were really good people.
posted by RobotHero at 10:10 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

A Summary Of The Gamergate Movement That We Will Immediately Change If Any Of Its Members Find Any Details Objectionable
posted by tonycpsu at 10:11 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Brianna Wu has been getting apologies from gamergaters after it was shown that some of the tweets they were mad at her for were actually sent by @spacekatgaI not @SpacekatgaL.
posted by papercrane at 10:16 AM on October 22, 2014

ggatersare trying to co-opt the Canada news hashtags to promote their cause on Twitter. They are also paranoid about being blamed for the attacks. Finally they beleive it is ISIS who are just as evil as SJW's because freedom.
posted by humanfont at 10:22 AM on October 22, 2014

ggatersare trying to co-opt the Canada news hashtags to promote their cause on Twitter.

FLAMES

FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:23 AM on October 22, 2014 [16 favorites]

they are presently super proud of themselves seemingly for proving that people who admitted to having some sort of a relationship had met previous to fucking. but, this isn't about zoe quinn! if you'd only look at this screen shot with red lines!
posted by nadawi at 10:27 AM on October 22, 2014 [3 favorites]

That seems really weird to me. They knew each other socially, that's already been accepted. All this is proof off is something everyone already knew. Maybe they're trying construe this as him having worked on the game? Which seems like a stretch, people thank their friends in the credits all the time.
posted by papercrane at 10:35 AM on October 22, 2014

That and I feel like people were already upset that his name was in the credits, maybe six weeks ago? GamerGate's desperate flailing attempts to incriminate Zoe with SOMETHING are beyond pathetic.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 10:37 AM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

In the glorious gamergate future, everyone who reviews games and everyone who designs games will walk around with blinders on at all times; they will have their internet access taken away outside of work hours; they will wear google glass connected directly to the gamergate monitoring station. Then and only then can we be certain that games designers and games reviewers never meet socially, never discuss the industry together, and most importantly never touch each other, and thus will gaming be saved from corruption forever!

Publishers will still be free to fly journos out to Vegas to preview upcoming games in 45-minute controlled sessions sandwiched between lapdances, obviously.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 10:41 AM on October 22, 2014 [14 favorites]

they also have a new redline document proving that zoe & nathan were in a publicly available video together at gdc a couple weeks before they supposedly hooked up - something no one has ever disavowed or tried to hide..
posted by nadawi at 10:41 AM on October 22, 2014

a new redline document proving that zoe & nathan were in a publicly available video together

Christ, it's like Woodward and Bernstein...if you hit them in the head with a shovel.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 11:05 AM on October 22, 2014 [17 favorites]

Christ, it's like Woodward and Bernstein...if you hit them in the head with a shovel.

So...just like how Woodward is now, then?
posted by zombieflanders at 11:26 AM on October 22, 2014 [7 favorites]

That Clickhole post is amazing. Anyone tried actually emailing that address?
posted by sparkletone at 11:35 AM on October 22, 2014

So, unrelated to although apropos of all this, Pew has released a new report on online harassment.

Harassment—from garden-variety name calling to more threatening behavior— is a common part of online life that colors the experiences of many web users. Fully 73% of adult internet users have seen someone be harassed in some way online and 40% have personally experienced it.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:35 AM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

(To be clear, I'm not trying to draw some equivalence between that opening and the much more serious stuff thrown at ZQ, BW, & AS. Just seemed like a good quote about the lack of fun of going online.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:36 AM on October 22, 2014

papercrane: They knew each other socially, that's already been accepted. All this is proof off is something everyone already knew. Maybe they're trying construe this as him having worked on the game?

You're over-thinking this. Remember, this is cargo-cult thinking -- it's all magical incantations (which I guess is what we should expect of people who conflate game-cleverness with real-cleverness).

Trying to make logical sense of the reasoning is a sure way to make yourself crazy.
posted by lodurr at 11:51 AM on October 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

So, unrelated to although apropos of all this, Pew has released a new report on online harassment.

The Pew report also breaks their results down demographically. In particular, no-one in this thread will be surprised by these statistics, but it's helpful to have them as backup evidence:

Young women, those 18-24, experience certain severe types of harassment at disproportionately high levels: 26% of these young women have been stalked online, and 25% were the target of online sexual harassment. In addition, they do not escape the heightened rates of physical threats and sustained harassment common to their male peers and young people in general. In addition, they do not escape the heightened rates of physical threats and sustained harassment common to their male peers and young people in general.

And to head off the false equivalence before the GGers jump on this, men are "more likely than women to encounter name-calling, embarrassment, and physical threats". Also, tellingly, women "were more likely than others to experience harassment on social media. Men—and young men in particular—were more likely to report online gaming as the most recent site of their harassment."

From this angle, Gamergate just looks like embittered young men taking the harassment they regularly experience in video games out on women on social networking sites.
posted by Doktor Zed at 12:23 PM on October 22, 2014 [3 favorites]

(And, as usual with this kind of vicious cycle, the bullying bullied tend to magnify the abuse on their original targets or the next wave of victims to the point where they get trapped in a paranoid cycle of "preemptive retaliation".)
posted by Doktor Zed at 12:39 PM on October 22, 2014 [5 favorites]

Publishers will still be free to fly journos out to Vegas to preview upcoming games in 45-minute controlled sessions sandwiched between lapdances, obviously.

That's just showing how they've nailed the totally essential and in-context lapdance mission with the new game engine.

Being possessed of ladyparts, on the other hand, is an unfathomably corrupting power.
posted by holgate at 1:12 PM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

wears earring ornaments to attract attention
posted by nadawi at 1:29 PM on October 22, 2014 [11 favorites]

I love the earrings because her critics hate them so much. It's like a giant "fuck you" to all her haters.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 1:39 PM on October 22, 2014 [10 favorites]

I love the earrings because her critics hate them so much. It's like a giant "fuck you" to all her haters.

That's probably why I find myself wanting a plaid shirt like the one she wears in the videos.
posted by Lexica at 1:45 PM on October 22, 2014

What: so only people who don't care about their appearance get to criticise video games? How does that make any sense? (Not that anything in this whole shitstorm has to make any sense whatsoever, but still.)
posted by pharm at 1:45 PM on October 22, 2014

No, don't you see! It's some sort of mating display! She's using her sexual traits as an evolutionary advantage in order to trick innocent mens or something!


Actually- my only issue with the giant hopes, is that you can't menacingly pull them off just before dropping a world of hurt on some jackass.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:53 PM on October 22, 2014

you can totally yank of hoops in a menacing way - maybe even better than with typical earring backs. clip-ons are, obviously, the easiest.
posted by nadawi at 1:55 PM on October 22, 2014

The glimmering ear decorations dazzle and amaze!
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 1:56 PM on October 22, 2014

GG makes me so angry, I can't really explain why other than it seems to be such an incredibly pointless waste of so much time.
posted by cell divide at 2:05 PM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

So, they're finally getting around to admitting that they find Anita Sarkeesian attractive, and that's why they're threatened by her? In a bizarre way, that's a step forward.
posted by lodurr at 2:09 PM on October 22, 2014 [6 favorites]

The glimmering ear decorations dazzle and amaze!

You've got to bedazzle your opponents in life, after all.
posted by subversiveasset at 2:10 PM on October 22, 2014

Well, now we know... #gamergate is nothing more than a viral promotion campaign for a new morally repugnant game, appropriately named Hatred.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:18 PM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

I've been wearing big-ass hoops all week in solidarity.
posted by Biblio at 2:22 PM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

Three new Gamergate-related articles up on Gawker today:

About Bullying by editorial director Joel Johnson more or less apologizing for Sam Biddle's tweet.

How We Got Rolled by the Dishonest Fascists of Gamergate by Max Read basically saying, among other things, "WTF, dude?" to Johnson's apology.

These Are the Creepy 4Chan Successors Behind Gamergate's Pathetic War [warning: some NSFW and also super-duper misogynistic and maybe triggering screenshots below the fold] by Andy Cush is a quick primer on 8chan, WizardChan (I had forgotten that it was WizardChan who were the original Depression Quest haters from way back last year), and AnonIB.

Also, hoops not fierce? The Beygency would like to have a word...
posted by mhum at 2:31 PM on October 22, 2014 [5 favorites]

and AnonIB

AnonIB? I thought that place died.

Not gonna go check on it, but I remember it did the 8chan thing where anyone could create a board, and it quickly became a dumping ground for the kind of content that was banned on 4chan.

The actually interesting thing about it was that people seemed to be setting up local boards for their region or city. Sort of like an local-interest mailing list or blog, but these were specifically for rule 34 requests/dumps of real people. Which is not how rule 34 works, but says something about expectations of availability of pornographic material in that scene; if you build it, someone will posts nudes of your hot neighbor, was the apparent belief.
posted by postcommunism at 3:35 PM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

The earrings thing gets me because they're really a pretty strong cultural signifier. White girls tend not to wear earrings like that. They're pretty strongly associated with people who are some variety of brown. I love that she's making them so iconic in this context.

The Extra Credits creators seem to have pretty strongly come out against GamerGate, now, which seems to have shocked a number of people who... I don't know, never actually watched Extra Credits or something?
posted by Sequence at 3:45 PM on October 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

Felicia Day just put up a post on tumblr about this whole mess. Very worth a read.
posted by sparkletone at 4:26 PM on October 22, 2014 [21 favorites]

Felicia Day wrote a post. I'd pull a couple quotes out but this thread makes my phone cry.
posted by Corinth at 4:41 PM on October 22, 2014

And someone fucking doxxed her in the comments thread on her own fucking post.
posted by palomar at 4:42 PM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ha. QED. Sorry!
posted by Corinth at 4:42 PM on October 22, 2014

She turned the comments off. Probably wise, who has the freetime necessary to moderate that mess ?

What a bunch of goddamned children GG is.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 5:10 PM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

The comments are still alive and well, I can access them by going to Discus's website and viewing comments I've replied to. People are still commenting, and the doxxing comments have been flagged but not removed.
posted by palomar at 5:12 PM on October 22, 2014

And someone fucking doxxed her in the comments thread on her own fucking post.

We can't have nice things.
posted by sparkletone at 5:12 PM on October 22, 2014

And OF COURSE there are tons of GGers in the comments doing the "but you can't blame this on GG, how do you know that's not an anti-GGer trying to make us look bad, it's about journalistic integrity" bullshit.
posted by palomar at 5:14 PM on October 22, 2014

What does it mean to doxx Felicia Day when she isn't anonymous? I don't see comments, maybe I've got it scriptblocked.
posted by Justinian at 5:14 PM on October 22, 2014

To clarify, the comments are now removed from the tumblr post, but apparently they live on at Disqus.

I believe doxxing Felicia means printing her personal contact information or address, but somebody else would have to confirm that.
posted by dialetheia at 5:17 PM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

What does it mean to doxx Felicia Day when she isn't anonymous?

She covers that in her post - she's been harassed by stalkers and the like, and has gotten many restraining orders, so she's even more tuned to the dangers of her address and stuff becoming widely available. She identifies this fear as the main reason she hasn't spoken up about the issue so far.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 5:18 PM on October 22, 2014 [4 favorites]

Public figures still have private information; personal email address, home address usually not widely known. That's what was revealed.
Give them a couple hours, they'll have some semi-skillfully photoshopped nudes up.

We can't have nice things.
The GGterrorists have won.
But hey, we can still have the Hatred game, so Freedom of Speech lives!
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:18 PM on October 22, 2014

They published her home address. I feel like, since she's had stalkers, that's not public information.
posted by palomar at 5:18 PM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

Oh, that sucks. I'm sure this is another example of No True GamerGater, though. Clearly an abberation and not representative of the movement as a wh... sigh.
posted by Justinian at 5:18 PM on October 22, 2014

Yep, the comments disappeared after I'd got through the "but it's about ETHICS in JOURNALISM" derail, but before I got to the actual doxxing.

At the risk of sounding blindingly obvious, if you can read a post like Felicia Day's, and your first response to that gorgeous essay is to want to frighten her, then you are an unvarnished shitmuffin of a human being, and I do not want to know you.
posted by bakerina at 5:21 PM on October 22, 2014 [14 favorites]

The comments are still very active.
posted by palomar at 5:23 PM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

Can we start the #implausibledeniability hashtag?
posted by Navelgazer at 5:24 PM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

That's a truly weird discussion system. The comments are on another host with no link from the post to the comments.
posted by Justinian at 5:26 PM on October 22, 2014

That's a truly weird discussion system. The comments are on another host with no link from the post to the comments.

They were removed by Felicia Day from her post. Because of the doxxing.
posted by almostmanda at 5:27 PM on October 22, 2014

Oh, fuck this noise. I'm flagging the fucking doxxers in Disqus's thread: here and here. The fucking anonymous GG cowards are claiming it's public information. Then how about you sign in under your real fucking names, you suppurating assholes?
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:28 PM on October 22, 2014 [11 favorites]

disqus has always been on another host. What happened was she turned it off on her tumblr (or this tumblr post, don't know which), but the comments are still live on disqus and under the same likely-molasses-slow moderation situation as before.

Doktor Zed, none of the shitmuffins are likely old enough to remember Rebecca Schaefer. If they used DMV data to obtain this data, they have committed a federal crime. (I suppose it's possible they found it another way, but I think it's easy to assume that there may have been violations regardless.)
posted by dhartung at 5:34 PM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

Give them a couple hours, they'll have some semi-skillfully photoshopped nudes up.

I suspect that the number of semi-skillfully photoshopped nudes of Felicia Day that are generated because of GamerGate will be a drop in the bucket compared to the countless number of semi-skillfully photoshopped nudes of Felicia Day that can be found on the web already.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:37 PM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

The comments are on another host with no link from the post to the comments.

That's how most comments systems work these days, though Disqus does it in a weirder way than most by having its own public-facing Tumblresque thing for the stuff that gets included on posts.

And what matters about doxxing is proximity and context, regardless of where the information comes from: it makes it highly visible to a slavering horde. It is, once again, a weapon of disempowerment.
posted by holgate at 5:37 PM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

And naturally in the Disqus thread there are the GG enablers providing sophomoric intellectual covering fire for the worst of their movement. It's mostly the usual "No True Gamergater" fallacy, but they're cutting-and-pasting in all their stale talking points to the extent that it looks like they have keyboard macros for them.

On the other side of the argument, one commentator got in a good retort when a GGer brought up one of their donation drives: "GG folks seem to think donating to charity is like getting carbon credits for harassment."
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:46 PM on October 22, 2014 [20 favorites]

I realize it may be a huge sacrifice in some quarters, but - I wonder if people publically returning/discarding/getting rid of FIREFLY merchandise in some kind of symbolic protest would be an effective means to combat Gamergate?

Then again, it may also start an inter-nerd-world Gotterdamerung of a geek civil war, and that may make things even worse.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:58 PM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

...or Joss could just reedit Serenity so that Jayne dies instead of Wash... THAT would be a best-selling DVD.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:00 PM on October 22, 2014 [19 favorites]

I wonder if people publically returning/discarding/getting rid of FIREFLY merchandise

Baldwin already has an image macro mocking people who say this has ruined Firefly for them, so ... no.
posted by dhartung at 6:03 PM on October 22, 2014

Also Baldwin is the only person involved with Serenity who is also on the Babbys' side of this.
posted by Navelgazer at 6:04 PM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

A more effective form of protest would be to boycott any of Baldwin's current or upcoming work, and to let the media outlet that produces said work know why you're boycotting.
posted by palomar at 6:06 PM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

His IMDB credits list two TV shows he's working on now. If you want to boycott something, don't go after Firefly. Go after "Beware the Batman" and "The Last Ship".
posted by palomar at 6:08 PM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

Oh, my comment about FIREFLY was more thought experiment than anything else and wasn't serious.

But, #sinkthelastship does make for a catchy hashtag, come to think of it....
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:22 PM on October 22, 2014 [6 favorites]

Don't you drag the name of my postrock band into this!
posted by Corinth at 7:05 PM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

Incidentally, Chris Kluwe has come up with the perfect counterpart to #NotYourShield: #YesYourPatsy
posted by Doktor Zed at 7:19 PM on October 22, 2014 [13 favorites]

Baldwin gets work?
posted by Artw at 7:19 PM on October 22, 2014

Well, he has nothing on imdb beyond his current gigs...
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:28 PM on October 22, 2014

Thesis: GG is about ethics in journalism the way Voter ID laws are about vote fraud. Both are thinly-concealed attempts to silence voices they don't like.
posted by suelac at 7:40 PM on October 22, 2014 [25 favorites]

I'd forgotten how much I enjoy Chris Kluwe... this week has been a nice reminder.
posted by palomar at 8:00 PM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'll be curious to see if there's a strong decrease in Firefly-derived "Jayne hats" at cons. Or perhaps if it becomes more of a 'fuck you' signifier from some segments of nerd-dom.
posted by rmd1023 at 8:52 PM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]

That's probably why I find myself wanting a plaid shirt like the one she wears in the videos.

I saw some pretty similar ones at Target on the sale rack recently and really wanted to buy one, but there weren't any in my size, so I got one in black instead.
posted by NoraReed at 10:07 PM on October 22, 2014

Perils of the Lady Gamer, Chapter 2
posted by Artw at 10:16 PM on October 22, 2014 [23 favorites]

Some photos of people using #NotYourShield, including Adland's Dabitch.

The Unsafety Net: How Social Media Turned Against Women (doesn't directly name GamerGate but does bring up Anita Sarkeesian)
posted by divabat at 10:23 PM on October 22, 2014 [3 favorites]

divabat: "including Adland's Dabitch."

By painting gaming and gamers, developers and fans as a large group of violent misogynistic creeps, you are shrinking the market, there's no doubt in my mind. And right at this very moment, there might be a young gamer-girl in College who is getting a phone call telling her that her internship won't happen because a dev is closing shop. By painting anything said about three women as threats and misogynistic violence and then attaching it to all gamers & the game-dev industry, the media may very well have poisoned the well for all other women.

This is bizarre. No-one's being "painted" as a misogynist creep; the first action of the people who would rally under #gamergate was to attack a woman on the say-so of an ex-boyfriend and to pry into her sex life.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 2:53 AM on October 23, 2014 [24 favorites]

The concern that women might be driven from the industry is especially rich since all this harassment actually has driven women from the industry, and terrified a lot of women still in the industry.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 2:58 AM on October 23, 2014 [22 favorites]

I'm actually kind of revolted by the idea that we shouldn't criticise harmful subcultures because it might affect -- in some way that isn't quite clear -- the industry that panders to them.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 3:30 AM on October 23, 2014 [15 favorites]

So if I understand dabitch's argument correctly, it's that the way to prevent harassment and marginalization of women in the game industry is to not talk about harassment and marginalization of women in the game industry.

Because that always works so well to prevent harassment and marginalization of women in other areas.
posted by lodurr at 3:45 AM on October 23, 2014 [11 favorites]

And right at this very moment, there might be a young gamer-girl in College who is getting a phone call telling her that her internship won't happen because a dev is closing shop.

"Oh, won't someone pleeeez think of the children entirely hypothetical young College gamer-girl???" (As opposed to, you know, the real-live women gaming devs who have been getting harassing phone calls from GGer trolls.)

It's as though the #notyourshield can't come right out and say their personal experiences trump those of Zoe Quinn and Brianna, et al., so they have to make up an innocent, helpless female figure with whom they can safely sympathize.

And yes, you guessed it, Adland's Dabitch has declared that for Halloween, she is going to dress up as Vivian James.
posted by Doktor Zed at 4:15 AM on October 23, 2014 [17 favorites]

I wouldn't be surprised that someone who makes their living off of the advertising industry supports a movement which seeks to ensure the status quo of AAA publishers being able to buy reviews without worrying that they might be criticised for their games content.
posted by PenDevil at 4:41 AM on October 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

I mean technically, PenDevil, every games journalist makes their living off of the advertising industry, and plenty of them have managed to land on the "screw the Gaters" side.
posted by Andrhia at 4:44 AM on October 23, 2014

> And yes, you guessed it, Adland's Dabitch has declared that for Halloween, she is going to dress up as Vivian James.

Every time I see a picture of Vivian James with some kind of grumpy "can't SJWs go away so we can play videogames?" caption, this pops into my head.
posted by postcommunism at 4:50 AM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

And yes, you guessed it, Adland's Dabitch has declared that for Halloween, she is going to dress up as Vivian James.

Whose purple-and-green color scheme, for those who haven't heard yet, is a reference to an oh-so-hilarious 4chan meme involving one Dragonball Z character anally raping another one. Stay classy, Gamergate.

THE_MORE_YOU_KNOW.GIF
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 4:57 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

After realizing that I actually look a lot like Vivian James I briefly considered dressing up as her and then just doing parody video or something but then I remembered it is actually impossible to parody these people and got depressed
posted by NoraReed at 5:03 AM on October 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

wears earring ornaments to attract attention

These guys use the same logic that republicans have been using for ages. "Sarkeesian wears jewelry therefore games are not sexist" is the equivalent to "Al Gore travels in a car, therefore global warming isn't real" or "Michael Moore has a big house, therefore he can't talk about poverty"
posted by octothorpe at 5:18 AM on October 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

After realizing that I actually look a lot like Vivian James I briefly considered dressing up as her and then just doing parody video or something but then I remembered it is actually impossible to parody these people and got depressed

They would read this as agreement and support, just like they read agreement and support into her initial creation, their own set of hundreds of sockpuppet accounts, whichever self-promoter shows up to be #Gamergate's hero on any given day, and the article on Clickhole. They will find validation anywhere, because they are so, so desperate for it.
posted by almostmanda at 5:18 AM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

"Sarkeesian wears jewelry therefore games are not sexist"

Actually, I suspect that the mindset behind pointing out her jewelry is "Sarkeesian complains about sexism but wears flashy jewelry and attention-getting clothing so she is a hypocrite". Y'know, a subset of "but the way she was dressed she was asking for attention".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:50 AM on October 23, 2014 [15 favorites]

I would like to see a counter-meme about a James Vivian, the 4channer who came up with Vivian James and pretends to be her.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:03 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Also a subset of "anything a woman does to her appearance beyond wearing a big sack is done in order to gain male approval".
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 7:04 AM on October 23, 2014 [9 favorites]

Hah, you were... saying that anyway. But better. I blame the headache.

*leaves thread, loudly blaming headache*
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 7:06 AM on October 23, 2014

...and if she wears a big sack she's still doing it wrong.
posted by pharm at 7:07 AM on October 23, 2014 [6 favorites]

To be fair, there are sacks and there are sacks, you know?
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 7:09 AM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

chris kluwe is planning an ama on r/kotakuinaction today.
posted by nadawi at 7:26 AM on October 23, 2014 [5 favorites]

Also a subset of "anything a woman does to her appearance beyond wearing a big sack is done in order to gain male approval".

But if she were wearing a big sack, she'd be doing all this because she can't get a man.
posted by jeather at 7:33 AM on October 23, 2014

The dabitch thing is creeping me out. The comments section is completely dominated by "right on!" comments, totally buying into the 'hypothetical moral panic' argument. She's giving cover and respectability to behavior that deserves condemnation.

I see she's been conspicuously absent from MeFi threads on gamergate. It would be nice if she would come here and explain her extremely problematic reasoning in a bit more detail, so we could make sense of why she thinks gamergate is going to lead to Swedish-style #moralpanic thoughtcrime pros/persecutions, or Hayes Code style regulation. Anyone who's been on the web for more than 5 years and has been paying attention has no excuse not to know that the latter more or less can't possibly happen, and anyone who actually pays attention to what the anti-gamergate folks are actually saying had no excuse to not know they're not asking for persecution.
posted by lodurr at 7:38 AM on October 23, 2014 [10 favorites]

also, Solve Media CAPTCHAs are super obnoxious.
posted by lodurr at 7:42 AM on October 23, 2014

Yeah, I'd like it if dabitch could come in here and give an explanation (and we could all keep from getting too fighty over it.) Don't know if that's possible, though.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:01 AM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yeh, this is going to feel like hostile territory to someone who buys into the idea that not talking about repression is a valid way to fight repression.
posted by lodurr at 8:12 AM on October 23, 2014 [7 favorites]

Given how personally she's taken the whole thing, ie "Feminists are bad because they stopped me going into comics in the 90s by censoring comics, therefore gamergaters are in the right", I doubt that would be very productive.
posted by pharm at 8:13 AM on October 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

It's a weird argument. There is no #moralpanic against #gamergate. What there is, is #moraloutrage: at people being threatened with violence, being subjected to unambiguously abusive, violent language, at criminal behavior designed to silence the voices of people who are trying to do things much like what dabitch was trying to do in the 90s.

On the other hand, #gamergate is directly analogous to the #moralpanic she so strenuously objects to. It's identified a problem (anyone outside of this mystical 'community' of so-called "gamers" daring to have an opinion, and especially so if they are women), and it's set about mobilizing a #moralpanic to control it.

That she doesn't see it as moral panic is telling: It indicates she's stuck in a right-left understanding of the ethos. Real moral panic is always more complex than that. It's about what people fear. The violent sexual imagery that Anita Sarkeesian and many other people have criticized -- not, advocated controls on, not lobbied congress to suppress -- is all about fear of sexuality, just like the Swedish #moralpanic of the 90s that nipped her comics career in the bud.

This is what I'm not getting: Why does a person who has such history in alternative media not see that?
posted by lodurr at 8:27 AM on October 23, 2014 [7 favorites]

Wait, is that dabitch also mefi's own dabitch? (So confused, and also sleepy.)
posted by rtha at 8:27 AM on October 23, 2014

I have been assuming so, since the confluence of interest is pretty much in line.
posted by lodurr at 8:29 AM on October 23, 2014

It is. (Unless there are two dabitches at Adland, I mean.)
posted by Navelgazer at 8:29 AM on October 23, 2014

I see she's been conspicuously absent from MeFi threads on gamergate.

I'm glad you mention that, lodurr, because talking about her in the third person is unsettling when she's a Mefite of long standing. I can understand why she's been reluctant, though. It isn't fun to be a lone identifiable voice up against a group who think otherwise. [Insert observation about irony here.]
posted by rory at 8:30 AM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I just looked more at her profile here. Dang.
posted by rtha at 8:30 AM on October 23, 2014

chris kluwe is planning an ama on r/kotakuinaction today.

popcorn.gif! Can't wait.

I came across this series of tweets on tumblr and it's one of my favorite explanations of the problem yet. I'm a wee bit uncomfortable with the way some of Kluwe's rhetoric reinforces that particular dynamic, but at the same time I can't deny that it makes me feel positively gleeful to see an ally stand up for women with such ferocity.
posted by dialetheia at 8:36 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

I was neither surprised nor disappointed at dabitch's position. I used to follow and occasionally comment at AdLand, but in recent years, the "adgrunts" attitude has devolved into such "vintage Mad Men" amorality (Vivian James Halloween costume? Not doing your usual Megan Draper?), trying to provide cover for some pretty awful stuff (#notyourshield? how ironic), panicking over moral panic and serving Corporate Overlords more like an AdMinion than an AdGrunt.

I don't think dabitch could do any more to explain her position than she has in the linked article, any more than that notorious "SJW*", MeFite John Scalzi, who hasn't been in this thread either.

But Feminists kept her out of comics in the '90s?!? An anti-feminist attitude might hurt you today, but in that era, it was a positive asset; much more likely Rob Liefeld thought her boobs weren't big enough.

*I continue to stand by my first comment on the subject.
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:49 AM on October 23, 2014

Well it sounds like it was a specific publishing deal that fell through, re. the collapse of what sounds like a fairly interesting house. And what she described does really suck, but tarring "feminists" with that brush is pretty weird given that what she describes could not possibly have occurred without a lot of mutual-fellow-travelling with conservative moralists.
posted by lodurr at 9:07 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Maybe it's my reading, but that Adland piece doesn't seem to lay out any kind of clear thesis. I want to see a simple statement like "I experienced X in the comics industry in the nineties. This is the same as X because Y," and it isn't there. There's an idea of a thesis somewhere in the discussion of the moral panic, but it's not actually stated in the piece.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:08 AM on October 23, 2014

The advertising spin from Adland is interesting to me, though. I don't have the time to do it now, but later I might poke around to see what the mainstream ad press is saying (if anything) about gamergate. My bet is that they're repulsed by it. That would arguably be hypocritical; I don't know many ad people who lose much sleep over hypocrisy, though.
posted by lodurr at 9:10 AM on October 23, 2014

It's not as clear as it could be, Going To Maine, but think there is one. It looks to me like the thesis is basically 'anti-gamergate is moral panic, and moral panic is bad because [examples].'

The big problem I'm having is that, as I've said, it looks to me like the 'moral panic' side is #gamergate. We don't see it that way because their ethos is so deeply shitty, but it's still an ethos, and they want to punish the rest of the world for not validating it.
posted by lodurr at 9:12 AM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

Hmf. I hadn't heard of Adland before, so I clicked over there and opened the first #gamergate related article I saw, Adobe stands against bullying. Are bullied on twitter for it. The headline does not describe the content of that article at all -- I honestly don't think any of the responses the Adobe corporate Twitter account received could be considered bullying. Well, some of them perhaps, if they were directed at a human individual, but I don't think one has to show the same consideration for feeling when calling a corporate entity "awful".

Is it worth reading, like, anything else on that site? Maybe that was just a particularly stupid article?
posted by daisyk at 9:15 AM on October 23, 2014

Putting this in alignment terms (and anyone feel the need to amend/correct this, please do), I see gamergate as an alliance between a chaotic evil core and a group of lawful evil useful idiots.
posted by lodurr at 9:16 AM on October 23, 2014

But Feminists kept her out of comics in the '90s?!?

Her argument seems to be that criticism of comics in the '90s as being pornographic and/or misogynistic, partly coming from feminists but also others, led retailers to stop stocking them and closed off opportunities for artists just entering the industry. She seems by analogy to be arguing that criticism of games as being pornographic and/or misogynistic, partly coming from feminists but also others, will lead retailers to stop stocking them and close off opportunities for games designers just entering the industry.

But what we're seeing, surely, is that (some) gamers being misogynistic in response to feminist critique of games is what threatens to close off opportunities for games designers, either by scaring off existing and potential new designers through direct or implied threats, or by making parents think twice about letting their sons and daughters join those gamers' ranks. It's not the critiques of the games themselves that represent the main threat at this particular moment (or, one might argue, at any moment; encouraging a more diverse range of games that appeal to players from all walks of life doesn't mean a smaller gaming industry, it surely means a bigger one).
posted by rory at 9:25 AM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

She's also failing to acknowledge that she's only talking about Sweden, and only a very short period of time. And that the publishers she's talking about were all either indy or small-press. The AAA game publishers are in absolutely no danger from the types of pressure she's talking about.

There is a probability that people listening to feminist critiques of game design will lead to diminished availability of hook-em-in action games targeting the "core gamer" demographic, but I'm unclear on what would be wrong with that since it would basically amount to AAA game manufacturers making a market decision. Which they're going to be making in the next several years anyway, given the shifting demographics. I'd expect someone in marketing to get that, BTW.
posted by lodurr at 9:31 AM on October 23, 2014 [6 favorites]

Her argument seems to be that criticism of comics in the '90s as being pornographic and/or misogynistic, partly coming from feminists but also others, led retailers to stop stocking them and closed off opportunities for artists just entering the industry. She seems by analogy to be arguing that criticism of games as being pornographic and/or misogynistic, partly coming from feminists but also others, will lead retailers to stop stocking them and close off opportunities for games designers just entering the industry.

That's an argument that makes not a lick of sense, because games are created, marketed, and delivered in exactly not the same way as comic books.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 9:31 AM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Basically her argument amounts to supporting the large-scale game dev industry over indies, and given her history I find that really disconcerting.
posted by lodurr at 9:32 AM on October 23, 2014 [5 favorites]

Because as we all know, moviegoers stopped watching movies after feminist critiques of '80s action films forced Hollywood to start churning out rom-coms instead. The NOW came for their copies of Commando and swapped them for Sleepless in Seattle, and there wasn't a damn thing they could do about it.
posted by rory at 9:45 AM on October 23, 2014 [7 favorites]

led retailers to stop stocking them

Well, by the time the '90s rolled around, comics weren't for kids anymore, but adolescents and adults. Kids were buying Simpsons and Sonic the Hedgehog comics and Mad Magazine and that was it. The complaints that retailers had stopped stocking comics is a moot one - comics weren't selling in retailers, only in specialty shops, and to a post-pubescent audience.

This meant characters like Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman, went from this to this an an effort to chase after hormone-addled readers. Yeah, maybe not appropriate to carry in a spinner rack at a toy store or a supermarket checkout.

On the other hand, we had titles like Batman Adventures based on Batman: The Animated Series and Spiderman Adventures that were directly aimed at kids. Feminists loved them, as they had great women characters. Kids still weren't buying them at retailers. They were going to the comics shop, or spending money on movie rentals or sports equipment or trading cards. Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh took over the gradeschooler's disposable income completely, and anything left over went to Sonic the Hedgehog (lord knows why, fads be fads, yo) Simpsons comics or Mad Magazine, which the comic stores didn't even carry. You can still buy Simpsons comics at the convenience store magazine rack - I picked up last year's Treehouse of Horror issue from between motorcycle and wieghtlifting magazines.

And then the "collectibles" market imploded, a lot of indie companies went out of business and established companies saw sales crater, never to really return to pre-crash levels as the speculators turned their fist-fulls of cash towards beanie babies instead.

So, no, it wasn't feminists. It was foil-embossed alternate #1 issues in rare variant covers and Pokemon that killed her career.
posted by Slap*Happy at 9:47 AM on October 23, 2014 [15 favorites]

I think the internet has made it very easy for anger to go viral. The small kernel of truth behind Gater anger at so-called SJWs I think comes from this.

Say there is a low-level background radiation level of sexism, where in your day-to-day life is easy to take for just the way things are. It's easy to normalize it when you see it all the time. And then one day, one of the dumb things you said or did goes viral. Suddenly you've got thousands of people saying how sexist you are.

The anger is going to seem out of proportion to what you did, and maybe it is. A lot of the anger at you is really anger at a wider problem of sexism in games, which you have temporarily become a symbol for.

And even if individually, their anger is completely proportional, the sheer numbers of them will wear you down. It's going to feel like you've been set upon by an angry mob.


But many of the Gaters have clearly demonstrated they love acting like an angry mob, and they're going to work their hardest to be the angriest mob that ever mobbed. Motes and beams.
posted by RobotHero at 9:49 AM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

The two things that really damaged comics in the '90s were pandering to speculators to a degree that would make even a Dutch tulip collector say "I think that's a bit excessive."; and Rob Liefeld.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:54 AM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Slap*Happy, your analysis is on-point for the market, but not necessarily for the specific case.
posted by lodurr at 9:57 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Chris Kluwe takes on r/KotakuInAction.
posted by pharm at 10:29 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Putting this in alignment terms (and anyone feel the need to amend/correct this, please do), I see gamergate as an alliance between a chaotic evil core and a group of lawful evil useful idiots.

I would say "lawful neutral" instead of "lawful evil".
posted by Going To Maine at 10:31 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

"I Am Mike Cernovich's Raging Bile Erection. AMA!" Chris Kluwe, I kiss you.
posted by palomar at 10:33 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm not very enthused about the Kluwe AMA. It's pretty clear it won't achieve anything and the GG litany is so robotic now that there aren't even any lulz to be had. He's mud-wrestling with a pig.
posted by murphy slaw at 10:33 AM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

Yeah, it instantly devolved into whining about how there's no misogyny.
posted by palomar at 10:36 AM on October 23, 2014

Now now, we got to see them attempt to use the Matt Klickstein "diversity is racism if there's not a reason for a character to be a minority" logic in action.
posted by Navelgazer at 10:41 AM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

Chris Kluwe takes on r/KotakuInAction.

Come for his title, "I am Mike Cernovich's Raging Bile Erection. AMA!", stay for the occasional zinger like "Our secret conspiracy with the Obama Jew Lizards who secretly control the Illuminati and are using video games to train the next Benghazi assailants." His stated purpose, though, is to engage with the Reddit audience, so even if he doesn't change very many minds, it's a more civil discussion than anything he could conduct on Twitter. His Medium piece was cathartic to read after all the digital diarrhea from the Gamergate side, but it wasn't exactly written to move the discussion forward.

Wait, is that dabitch also mefi's own dabitch? (So confused, and also sleepy.)

Yes, I was confused about that as well and mistakenly thought I was distinguishing between two entirely different dabitches when I wrote my post. The Adland piece simply didn't seem like the work of the same person from the Blue. Moreover, in this thread, we already had discussed the real-life case of Zoe Quinn's "The Ones We’ve Lost" collection letters from young girl gamers who don't want to become developers because of the horrible currently existing environment. That alone negates the speculative argument of a fictional young college gamer-girl losing an imaginary internship because of a hypothetical anti-gaming cultural backlash that might happen if Gamergate is represented as the hate-campaign it is at heart.
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:54 AM on October 23, 2014 [11 favorites]

Cernovich has now hired a PI to tail Zoe Quinn .
posted by murphy slaw at 11:27 AM on October 23, 2014 [7 favorites]

Christ, what an asshole.
posted by papercrane at 11:29 AM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

That is fucked up.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 11:30 AM on October 23, 2014 [8 favorites]

I went to that Cernovitch link expecting to be pissed off and came away laughing out loud. Man, that guy is... well... there's just now way to put this politely: He's a fucking idiot. Bragging in public about 'putting his PI on it'? Which, of course, he's probably not going to do. That's money & time, & time is money, and he has to know that could constitute grounds for a harassment claim. But even if he doesn't do it, bragging about it publicly just looks FUCKING STUPID.

Except to his peanut gallery. To them he looks tough and brilliant. From where I'm sitting: Fucking idiot.
posted by lodurr at 11:32 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Quinn is now referring to herself as "Khaleesi of SJWs." Heh.
posted by homunculus at 11:32 AM on October 23, 2014 [5 favorites]

Investigating potential actionable misconduct is not stalking, thanks.

<blink>THIS IS WHAT GAMERGATERS BELIEVE.</blink>
posted by Talez at 11:34 AM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Let's chip in to put a tail on Cernovitch, to see if he's beating his kids in public.

It's not stalking because if he beats his kids, it's 'actionable misconduct.'
posted by lodurr at 11:36 AM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

murphy slaw: "Cernovich has now hired a PI to tail Zoe Quinn ."

Oh no what if this means an imaginary college gamer girl gets her internship--

No, no I can't even finish that.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 11:36 AM on October 23, 2014 [6 favorites]

I just had to have a conversation with my partner telling him he should probably leave me to save himself

:(
posted by twist my arm at 11:37 AM on October 23, 2014

Cernovich has to have done enough by now to be sanctioned by the CA Bar, right?
posted by Navelgazer at 11:38 AM on October 23, 2014

Quinn's description of Cernovich as "the human tribal tattoo" is pretty great.
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:43 AM on October 23, 2014 [11 favorites]

Yeah, and him responding "I don't have any tattoos." He really has no idea how he's coming across here, does he?
posted by almostmanda at 11:49 AM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

He has no clue. He's well insulated by all the verbal dick-sucking he gets from the GG crowd.
posted by palomar at 11:51 AM on October 23, 2014

Cernovich apparently passed the bar less than a year ago and is currently "taking a year off" from practicing law. In other words, he couldn't get a job with Better Call Saul's law firm...
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:51 AM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Cernovich has to have done enough by now to be sanctioned by the CA Bar, right?

I just used the CA bar's feedback form to alert them to this and ask them to do so. The form is here.

Oh, and Cernovich's contact information, should you wish to provide it on that feedback form, is here.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:55 AM on October 23, 2014 [9 favorites]

Now now, we got to see them attempt to use the Matt Klickstein "diversity is racism if there's not a reason for a character to be a minority" logic in action.

This completely flummoxes* me, because it is seems to dance around some huge problems with how media handles diversity, but instead of diagnosing the problems it prescribes them! It mandates default-white and encourages the more damaging form of tokenism (where all minority characters must embody the stereotypes of their race and/or gender).

Though I suppose this does imply that "default-male" is sexist, since at least in North America (except Greenland) and Europe (except Turkey, half of which I think of as being part of Europe) there's more women than men.

* The flumm-ox is a close relative of the bewilderbeest
posted by aubilenon at 11:56 AM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

I am skeptical that Cernovich will be able to afford a private investigator. Of concern to me is his escalating fantasies of harassment and harm. Hopfully Zoe will be able yo get a restraining order against him.
posted by humanfont at 12:10 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Cernovich has now hired a PI to tail Zoe Quinn .

"Not content with publishing your personal info online, which I am threatening to do more of by the way, I am also at least going to publicly threaten to have you stalked IRL."

Just. What.
posted by sparkletone at 12:11 PM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

Slap*Happy: "So, no, it wasn't feminists. It was foil-embossed alternate #1 issues in rare variant covers and Pokemon that killed her career."

For the record, selling a copy of my comic book to a cop got a comic book store owner arrested in Texas in the 90s. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has been running for decades because of moral panic. Fighting obscenity charges killed my company. How the American market relates to the Swedish market, I cannot say. I have no experience with the Swedish market. But, yes...just as there was moral panic about heavy metal, and dungeons & dragons, moral panic did kill some comic companies.

That said; it's certainly not "Feminists" who did it. It was weirdo Christians what killed the beast. They're like the least feminist people on the planet.

And none of that has a rat's ass to do with GamerGate.

I'll share another story. I used to write for a gaming site. When the site owners decided during the nym wars that everyone was going to shed nyms and write under their real names, I declined to write for them any more. I tried to explain that a female using her real name on a gaming site when she made fun of games and gamers was a really bad idea, and they patted me on the head and said I was being silly and hyperbolic. I feel a bit Cassandra right now, I can tell you.

This morning, I got a message that said someone was doing a story about women who had been run out of gaming journalism, and they wanted to include me. The level of panic I felt was palpable. I mean serious, heart racing, palm sweaty, can't breathe, panic.

I'm terrified of the Gaters. I refused to be a part of the story. I've refused writing jobs about GG. You guys, some of y'all have known me on this site for 12+ years or something...I'm not afraid of stuff...and I'm terrified of the Gaters. I've pulled games off my personal profiles, I've pulled gaming publications off my lists of publications, I've gone back and scrubbed messages at sites. Hell, if I could scrub messages here, I would.

These guys are terrorists. Plain and simple.

GG has fuck-all to do with gaming. It has everything to do with power and proving that they have it.
posted by dejah420 at 12:12 PM on October 23, 2014 [69 favorites]

dejah420, fwiw you're one of the people I think of when I think of people I respect on MeFi, and I respect a lot of people here. So it pisses me off greatly that this makes people like you feel that way.
posted by lodurr at 12:18 PM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

Jesus, Zoe's Twitter timeline is heartbreaking right now. Has anyone asked Zoe or the other women affected if they might accept fundraising for security services? I feel so helpless watching this endless inundation against them without having any idea of a tangible action to take in response.
posted by brookedel at 12:32 PM on October 23, 2014 [6 favorites]

Alex Hern: Felicia Day's public details put online after she described Gamergate fears

She explained that her major fear was being “doxxed” – having her personal information disseminated over the internet. “I have tried to retweet a few of the articles I’ve seen dissecting the issue in support, but personally I am terrified to be doxxed for even typing the words ‘gamer gate’. I have had stalkers and restraining orders issued in the past, I have had people show up on my doorstep when my personal information was hard to get.”

But just minutes after her post was made, a commenter with the username “gaimerg8” posted what they claimed was her address and personal email in the comment section below the post. The comment, and the entire comment section, have since been removed.

Many have pointed to the immediate doxxing received by Day to underscore the differing treatment experienced by men and women who speak out against gamergate. The former NFL star Chris Kluwe, whose own post against Gamergate went viral after he called members of the group “slackjawed pickletits”, “slopebrowed weaseldicks” and a “basement-dwelling, cheetos-huffing, poopsock-sniffing douchepistol”, made the point himself.

“None of you fucking #gamergate tools tried to dox me, even after I tore you a new one. I’m not even a tough target,” he tweeted. “Instead, you go after a woman who wrote why your movement concerns her.”

posted by zombieflanders at 12:33 PM on October 23, 2014 [18 favorites]

Oh, and Cernovich's contact information, should you wish to provide it on that feedback form, is here.

Cernovich's contact information is also available on the State Bar of California's website, via the "attorney search" box on the homepage or on the pulldown menu labeled "public."
posted by bakerina at 12:34 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm kind of "HULK SMASH" angry about this whole thing right now, but I have absolutely no outlet for it. Just being a decent person on the internet isn't enough to stop any of this shit.

Felicia Day: It wouldn't surprise me a tiny bit if her doxxing was the work of 4|8|whothefuckcares|chan trolls trying to stir up even more shit rather than the core gamergate crowd, but it doesn't really matter at this point does it? She still gets to know that the internet will stamp on her the moment she displays the tiniest speck of vulnerability. Horrible.

ARGH. HULK SMASH. ALL THE THINGS.

Seriously: I have no idea what I could do that would make any of this any better for anyone, and it's an awful feeling. Suggestions?
posted by pharm at 12:40 PM on October 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

bakerina: "Cernovich's contact information is also available on the State Bar of California's website, via the "attorney search" box on the homepage or on the pulldown menu labeled "public."

LAWYER REGULATION
If you feel that you have grounds for a complaint, call 800-843-9053 to request a form. Here is some information that will help you file a complaint, including how to get copies of attorney discipline records and getting reimbursed if you have lost money to an attorney who has been disciplined.
posted by boo_radley at 12:42 PM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

Seriously: I have no idea what I could do that would make any of this any better for anyone, and it's an awful feeling. Suggestions?

Make a twine game about either
a) your feelings
b) a naive gamergater who discovers the dark heart of his movement.

& then post it on the internet.

Or, alternately, you could through some cashbux at some of the victimized womens' patreons.

Also, has the EFF said anything about this? Because if not, you could write them an angry letter about how they need to step up for victimized women & not just the anonymity rights of trolls.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:48 PM on October 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

Make a twine game about either
a) your feelings
b) a naive gamergater who discovers the dark heart of his movement.

Maybe put it at some URL like gamesaboutgamergate.com and then let other people put their own games there too?
posted by Going To Maine at 12:49 PM on October 23, 2014

*smites forehead* Thanks, boo_radley. I should have mentioned that I am not endorsing directly contacting/arguing with/threatening/doxxing Mike Cernovich in any way. Not that I think anyone here would do that, but, just to be safe, DON'T DO THAT.

(Can you tell that I am also a licensed attorney in California, and that I take the State Bar's warnings about ethics and disclaimers very, very seriously? They did a good job putting the fear of god into me.)
posted by bakerina at 12:51 PM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Meanwhile Shaenon K. Garrity ("Narbonic", "Skin Horse") has done a tall steampunk-ish comic titled "Perils of the Lady Gamer" (semi-about the real woman who invented the game that later became Monopoly)... and then, Chapter 2 "Scores and Scandals", which shows how little NotAllMenButMost have changed in the last century.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:56 PM on October 23, 2014 [8 favorites]

I'm not entirely convinced trying to get him disbarred/sanctioned is going to help things. He's already unstable and getting into creepy/threatening territory. I understand the reasons completely, but trying to ruin his professional life is only going to make things worse. (I absolutely don't mean for this comment to be excusing/defending him in any way, in case it's not clear. I'm just concerned for the safety of the main people involved here.)
posted by naju at 1:00 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yeah, but it will go a long way towards blocking his access to the tools he's using. If he's not a lawyer any more, how's he gonna have access to a PI?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:01 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Also, has the EFF said anything about this? Because if not, you could write them an angry letter about how they need to step up for victimized women & not just the anonymity rights of trolls.

The EFF, or at least one of their directors, uses the bullshit maximalist "all speech must be protected/harassment isn't censorship but stopping it is" line that a lot of goobers do. So, no, I don't think you can expect any help from them. I think they're worse than useless in the regard, and I actually wouldn't be surprised if they stepped in to defend Gjoni or Cernovich or anyone charged with harassment.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:02 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Anyone can employ a PI EmpressCallipygos.

And yeah, the EFF sided with Weev over Cathy Sierra, so you can pretty much see where their sympathies lie (I know it's more complicated than that, but that was the ultimate result). I wouldn't be at all surprised to see them defending some poor benighted #gamergater who finds themselves the wrong side of the law this time around either.
posted by pharm at 1:06 PM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

but trying to ruin his professional life is only going to make things worse.

what professional life? if he had one he wouldn't be pissing around with this
posted by pyramid termite at 1:09 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think they're worse than useless in the regard, and I actually wouldn't be surprised if they stepped in to defend Gjoni or Cernovich or anyone charged with harassment.

EFF defended weev while he was appealing his conviction, some time during the process of which he apparently decided neo-nazism was cool. I love a lot of the EFF does/has done in the past. This is not an area where I'd expect them to help.
posted by sparkletone at 1:11 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Well, if I ever had any feelings that "First Amendment Rights" should be considered Absolute, they have been put six feet after reading the words of Jillian C. York, linked by zombieflanders. She obviously speaks for all the women wo have "been issued rape threats" but never actually raped, lucky lady. Or "the words of the great Justice Louis Brandeis, that the best remedy to “bad” speech is more speech", just like the only response to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. By "Electronic Frontier", they obviously mean "Wild West, Yee Haw". Is there an Electronic Civilization Foundation anywhere?

This is becoming my all-around go-to quote: "The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it."
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:15 PM on October 23, 2014 [5 favorites]

The EFF's mission doesn't map cleanly onto this. The explanation zmobieflanders linked to is totally post-hoc and chickenshit, of course, but it's kind of EFF's job to defend even the shitty cases.
posted by Navelgazer at 1:16 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Anyone can employ a PI EmpressCallipygos.

Yeah, but I suspect not being able to write it off as a business expense to a legal practice would cause the layman to think twice about the expense.

Same too with his access to Lexis/Nexis he's talking about. That is a publically-available forum, yes, but it's EXPENSIVE. He only has access because of his legal practice he can expense it to, and having to pony up out of his own pocket would be a whole other ballgame.

(The bank I worked for also had Lexis/Nexis, and I saw the annual bill once and it's QUITE pricey.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:18 PM on October 23, 2014

Seriously: I have no idea what I could do that would make any of this any better for anyone, and it's an awful feeling. Suggestions?

Suggestions? MOCK THEM.

@TheQuinnspiracy regularly pokes fun at GGer idiocy, even as they try to tear down her life. Kluwe's borderline-but-not-quite-over-the-line-obscene blog post was hyperbolically funny. Scalzi created the hashtag #pineapplepizzagate for an evening's collective amusement. And of course there's Shaenon Garrity's above-mentioned Perils of the Lady Gamer cartoons (which I hope she turns into a regular webcomic series, with a cliffhanger at the end of each installment). Day, on the other hand, was vulnerably sincere in expressing her fears, which was red meat to assholes like "gamerg8"* (and fuck you, Disqus, for not removing his doxxing post from your archive yet).

Remember Margaret Atwood's inquiry into what really drives things like #GamerGate, /r/TheFappening, etc., etc.:

"Why do men feel threatened by women?" I asked a male friend of mine. {...} "I mean," I said, "men are bigger, most of the time, they can run faster, strangle better, and they have on the average a lot more money and power." "They're afraid women will laugh at them," he said. "Undercut their world view."

The corollary is, unfortunately, a greater hurdle to clear:

Then I asked some women students in a quickie poetry seminar I was giving, "Why do women feel threatened by men?" "They're afraid of being killed," they said.

Humor isn't a silver bullet, nor does employing it make light of the seriousness of death threats, stalking, harassment, and all the other evil tactics for which #GamerGate's collective stupidity provides cover. It does, however, deny the trolls of their targets' anger and fear, which is what sustains them deep down.

So on that note, here's Internet Trolls - The Halloween Musical. "We are trolls, we are trolls, big black holes instead of souls!"
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:18 PM on October 23, 2014 [7 favorites]

what professional life? if he had one he wouldn't be pissing around with this

Maybe not. But it would be an escalation of a matter that has already scarily, steadily escalated for the women involved here. Just throwing that out to consider.
posted by naju at 1:20 PM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

The explanation zmobieflanders linked to is totally post-hoc and chickenshit, of course, but it's kind of EFF's job to defend even the shitty cases.

Somehow the ACLU does a much better job at conveying the message "we do not support Nazis but we support their right to their beliefs" than the EFF is doing. The EFF's message seems to be much closer to "suck it up and get a thicker skin".
posted by Lexica at 1:21 PM on October 23, 2014 [15 favorites]

Lexica: I agree entirely.

Doktor Zed: I also completely agree with you, re: mocking them. Of course, as Kluwe mentioned, that's a lot easier to do if you're male. But I keep thinking of, "first they ignore you..." I believe there's a corollary to that, with those who stand in the way of social change. When you're the status quo, you were starting from the winning position, and then people fight you, and then they mock you, until finally they simply ignore you.

I'm ready to move from fighting these children to mocking them. I look forward to ignoring them soon.
posted by Navelgazer at 1:26 PM on October 23, 2014

Doktor Zed: "And of course there's Shaenon Garrity's above-mentioned Perils of the Lady Gamer cartoons "

Can we add Manfeels Park as well?
posted by boo_radley at 1:28 PM on October 23, 2014 [5 favorites]

oneswellfoop: "This is becoming my all-around go-to quote: "The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.""

Holy shit, that is a gosh-darn-diddly-fuck beautiful quote and that image is all kinds of saved to my "piss off" folder for dealing with jerks.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 1:29 PM on October 23, 2014 [6 favorites]

The EFF's message seems to be much closer to "suck it up and get a thicker skin".

Yeah, I understand why they have their position, but the sheer hamfistedness of their approach here just made me change my automatic charitable donation from them to the MSF.
posted by aramaic at 1:29 PM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

I used to believe in the power of Mocking. Heck, I wrote (and got paid for writing) things that mocked people and groups that deserved mocking and needed to be deterred. You know how many times I (and my fellow mockers) made a difference? I can't think of any.

Mahatma Gandhi said "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win." Ridicule is the second step toward defeat... for those dishing out the ridicule. One of the hardest lessons I've had to learn in my life.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:31 PM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

The EFF is an organization founded on the principle that the Internet can self-govern, if it's given the freedom to do so.

They ain't gonna do shit.
posted by lodurr at 1:35 PM on October 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

Harassment and death threats are not protected speech. As already noted, the ACLU makes that distinction just fine. That The EFF doesn't is a black mark in my book.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:37 PM on October 23, 2014 [8 favorites]

This link from a friend at GamersWithJobs made me laugh out loud: "If you want to check in on the inept hilarity that is the trailer for The Sarkeesian Effect without curdling your soul or boosting their numbers, Matt Lees has you covered."
posted by dejah420 at 1:40 PM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

From another angle, "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win" is a cautionary summary of how to lose.

In the first place, don't ignore them: report abuse, speak up against harassment, etc. Second, ridicule is only mockery without humor - humor is essential, not only to sap the opponents' morale but to keep up one's own as well. Third, when they fight you, you fight back. Gandhi's pacifist tactics worked well enough against the British Empire, but he never had to argue with 4channers on the Internet.
posted by Doktor Zed at 1:47 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Moreover, in this thread, we already had discussed the real-life case of Zoe Quinn's "The Ones We’ve Lost" collection letters from young girl gamers who don't want to become developers because of the horrible currently existing environment.

And Quinn and her partner have actually lost work themselves because of GG.
posted by homunculus at 1:48 PM on October 23, 2014

Post on the Geek Feminism Blog: Why We’re Not Talking About GamerGate.

…So before you lament how terrible it is to ‘let them win’ by being silent, please stop and think of a better way to phrase “I want to live in a world where the victims of abuse campaigns have a winning move.” Don’t ask women to sacrifice their names, careers, and safety to the fantasy that life is fair.

Telling women to be brave and speak up is telling them to face a violent horde unarmed. We don’t have an effective defense against these terror campaigns. We desperately need one. We’re going to follow up and see if we can develop any effective strategies.

In the meantime, I’ve already painted the target on my back, so I might as well say it.

Fuck GamerGate.

posted by Lexica at 1:50 PM on October 23, 2014 [21 favorites]

The EFF, or at least one of their directors, uses the bullshit maximalist "all speech must be protected/harassment isn't censorship but stopping it is" line that a lot of goobers do.

That is a dumb article, and that person is dumb for making that particular case.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:08 PM on October 23, 2014

We don’t have an effective defense against these terror campaigns. We desperately need one.

The one we need is also the one possible silver lining I can see being gleamed from this shit-storm cloud, and that is a system that takes harassment seriously.
posted by Navelgazer at 2:16 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Moreover, in this thread, we already had discussed the real-life case of Zoe Quinn's "The Ones We’ve Lost" collection letters

To be clear, that was someone Brianna Wu referred to as "my friend Quinn", and only GGers were certain that she meant Zoe Quinn. (If this has been clarified, let me know.)
posted by dhartung at 2:16 PM on October 23, 2014

Google's prior obsession with making everyone make a Plus account in their legal name and then linking every bit of social media to it looks even more ridiculous than it already did in light of this mess.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 2:19 PM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

Again: Put aside any hope the EFF will ever be interested in helping. Oneswellfoop nailed the essential reason for this thusly:

By "Electronic Frontier", they obviously mean "Wild West, Yee Haw". Is there an Electronic Civilization Foundation anywhere?

The EFF uses the term "frontier" for a reason. It dates to a time when people like John Perry Barlow (one of its founders) could straight-facedly say things like "I'm a citizen of the internet nation," and believe passionately that we ought to take that seriously. It belongs to the era of the Cluetrain Manifesto.

I have a vivid memory of reading Barlow's essay on the EFF in Whole Earth Review, when he was in the process of founding it. (I won't pretend to have been on the WELL in those days.) I have it up in my attic somewhere -- I could look up the hard copy. I say that to point out how long ago this org was founded, and whence it draws its ethos.

EFF is a fundamentally net.libertarian organization. It will never, ever help foster civilization unless it thinks that civilization is net.libertarian in its nature.
posted by lodurr at 2:25 PM on October 23, 2014 [8 favorites]

And...Shaenon Garrity has written/drawn a second comic: "Perils of the Lady Gamer: Chapter 2 - Scores & Scandals."

Argh! Scooped by oneswellfoop!
posted by TrishaLynn at 2:28 PM on October 23, 2014

It strikes me that a lot of what's going on now involves confusion over what constitutes doxxing, and more broadly what is private and public in the Internet era.

GGers are equating things like linking to a public facebook page or listing a lawyer's public office's address with posting the private address, phone number and email of female Internet figures and their families.

It's as if they think that everyone has a private secret identity that should never be compromised, and a separate unrelated public identity, even if they are an officer of the court or a public official or a project leader avidly seeking publicity in traditional media.
posted by msalt at 2:28 PM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

Aside from making a public statement denouncing what gamergate is doing, I can't think of anything that would make sense for the EFF to do even if they wanted to help. What they do is lobby for or against various legislative or regulatory changes, and sue or defend various people and businesses in the courts.

It's extremely difficult to translate "We need to take harassment more seriously" into something that makes sense for the legal mechanisms with which the EFF primarily operates.
posted by aubilenon at 2:29 PM on October 23, 2014

It's as if they think that everyone has a private secret identity that should never be compromised, and a separate unrelated public identity, even if they are an officer of the court or a public official or a project leader avidly seeking publicity in traditional media.

From what I'm seeing it's more like, "if we can equate these two things then we haven't done anything wrong."
posted by Navelgazer at 2:31 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

I don't think 'equating' quite covers it, because they sure as hell wouldn't 'equate' those things if it happened to them.

I think it's more sinister than 'equating'.

To put it bluntly, I think their unstated belief is that you should be strong enough to be doxxed, and if you're not, you deserve what happens to you.

As with almost everyone who espouses a 'let the chips fall' (a.k.a. 'might makes right') attitude, they are typically not very happy to have it demonstrated that they're not as tough as they expect the girls to be.
posted by lodurr at 2:31 PM on October 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

What the gamergaters want is the privilege of having their obnoxious behaviour on the net never ever be linked to their real-world offline personas because they know their behaviour is indefensible. It's why doxxing is the ultimate sin on reddit / 4chan etc.
posted by pharm at 2:38 PM on October 23, 2014 [18 favorites]

There isn't "confusion" about doxxing, just massive double standards.

Probably we need a different term for the posting of private information in the hope of causing harm that doesn't originate with shitty trolls.
posted by Artw at 2:39 PM on October 23, 2014 [8 favorites]

Criminal Harassment and Invasion of Privacy?
posted by Navelgazer at 2:40 PM on October 23, 2014 [5 favorites]

That pretty much covers it.

And no, "feministSuperGameChallenge is actually a guy named Dave!" doesn't count.
posted by Artw at 2:53 PM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

In happier news, Anita Sarkeesian finally has a verified Twitter account.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 3:19 PM on October 23, 2014 [8 favorites]

That's great! What's less great is how many months it took Twitter to do that. REALLY made them look bad, IMO.
posted by palomar at 3:22 PM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

They are not Trolls. They are men.

This just came across my tumblr feed.

I agree with this. I would add that it is not always men, but 99% of the time, it is. Of course, statistics, etc.

Dehumanizing language is dangerous. I know it is frustrating to deal with people who have a toxic cultural worldview. It is so much easier to dismiss them. But we really can't.

Also, to comment on something quoted earlier:
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win."

This is not true. It works, but it is way too simplistic to believe this is an absolute. Especially in the case of India, the thing that made it "work" was the sheer number of people. Had England had superior numbers, it would not have worked out the way it did. This fight is not that fight, and trying to apply strategies from a different battle are more likely to lead to defeat.

Also, I see a lot of people applying this to the GG'ers themselves as the ones being ridiculed. I would say that what we have now is the opposite. It is the marginalized (yet proportionally larger population) groups that have been ignored, ridiculed, and are now being fought. And they will win. However it has to be on all fronts. Show the advertisers that you have money to spend and they will pander to you. Show them that you are receptive to being catered to, just as much as the "gamers". As dabitch strangely referenced (but it did shed some light on a point of view I had been mulling over), expand the market, don't limit it. I do not agree with her assessment of the situation, nor do I think that the anti-GG'ers are equivalent to "moral panic" crusaders.

I do hear phrases and language that sounds vaguely similar, yet I have no heard any pushes for legislation, criminalization, or legal ramifications (aside from already existing harassment and invasion of privacy stuff). If someone would like to point out legitimate citations of any of these kinds of calls to action on the part of the anti-GG crowd, I am most interested in hearing it.

I do not think we will ever get rid of bad behavior. It will always be with us, and we will always have to confront it. But it shouldn't just be the vulnerable who have to deal with the brunt of this. Everyone should choose to "do good". Everyone should want to. Should. Operative word, there. The GG'ers do not want to "do good." They want to protect their position of seeming power.

The funniest thing is that they have no power. They are the product. They are the target of monetary extraction by game publishers. They are the target of game review sites, paying their bills with ad revenue. They don't see that. Which would be funny, if it were not so fucking sad.
posted by daq at 3:37 PM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

It's a small thing but Gears of War quoted Felicia Day's blog post on their Facebook page. There are a few gamergate comments but mostly just people asking for maps, remakes and sequels. It's nice to see a reminder that most gamers out there just want games.
posted by MaritaCov at 4:13 PM on October 23, 2014

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win."

This is not true. It works, but it is way too simplistic to believe this is an absolute. Especially in the case of India, the thing that made it "work" was the sheer number of people.

In any case do note, social media memes notwithstanding, this is not a legitimate Gandhi quotation. It seems to have originated in US trade unionism.
posted by dhartung at 4:27 PM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

To put it bluntly, I think their unstated belief is that you should be strong enough to be doxxed, and if you're not, you deserve what happens to you.

This is pretty much the same justification people use to justify paparazzi and sending creepy fanmail. They're not people, they're avatars and objects.
posted by divabat at 4:52 PM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

So, there's a direct link to be made between the dynamics that have enabled gamergate to develop and rape culture. I mean, beyond both being manifestations of misogyny and patriarchy. Most folks still in the conversation here have probably already made that connection, but to review:

A relatively low proportion of people (mostly men) are responsible for a major proportion of rapes (mostly of women). Men who rape interpret the silence of other men on the topic as either tacit acceptance of the behavior or an indication that it's not a topic that the non-rapey but silent men consider serious or worthwhile. And worse, when other men make misogynist comments and jokes, the men who rape interpret this as active support for rape. Meanwhile, men who harass and rape women typically do so out of view of most other men. Plenty of men who find rape abhorrent still harbor some, perhaps unexamined and subconscious, sexist ways of interpreting the world, and do not listen to women or take women seriously when women report that they have been harassed or raped. So rape really is a topic that at least some of the non-rapey but silent men (as well as non-rapey but sexist-comment-making men) do not consider serious or worthwhile, at least in practice. At any rate, this combination of behaviors by the non-rapey men enables and encourages the men who rape.

Likewise, a relatively low proportion of gamers and online peeps (mostly men) seem to be responsible for the major proportion of serious online harassment and threats (though one of the links upthread noted that a distressingly high number of people had engaged in some form of online harassment). At least, the research into the major users involved in gamergate linked to upthread seems to indicate that gamergate is relatively small in numbers. Their effect on women in gaming and online is amplified, however, not just by the particular technological tools involved, but also by a culture that enables their behavior. As we've seen directly with the heroes of gamgergate lists, men who harass and make threats of violence online interpret the silence of non-harassing, non-violent-threat-making men online as tacit support, or lack of concern for the issue; and they interpret the words of those who use casually misogynist language and who make sexist jokes as active support for their more serious harassment and violent-threat-making. Gamergaters not involved directly in issuing violent threats are directly enabling that violence, and male gamers and men online who are remaining silent on the issue even when faced with it directly are also enabling the violence. And the worst, most violent threats are often conveyed, like rape, out of the public eye.

We've made some small bits of progress on addressing rape culture in the past few years, that give some pointers on a few ways that we can address gamergate. Namely:

1. Men (and all of us) can speak up and speak out.

(a) We need a collection of alternate profiles like the "Stop SOPA" graphic that people can replace their facebook, twitter, and other avatar profiles with for a period of time. Men can help develop the graphics, social media sites, and spearhead this campaign, or just assist as their skillset allows.
(b) We need a list of stock responses to sexist or misogynist comments that other men can, with minimal effort of cut-and-paste or a keyboard shortcut or browser plugin or cell phone app, respond with when they are in a forum where such comments are being put forth - something brief and generic and a web site explaining the campaign that the person using the stock response can link to without spending a whole bunch of time and energy engaging with the person or people exhibiting sexist language. The stock responses would probably be most effective if developed by someone with some requisite expertise (psychology? anti-bullying? marketing?) and shouldn't inadvertently contribute to the problem of pervasively sexist discourse (i.e. run them by a few serious feminist theorists first), but men can totally develop the social media sites and spearhead this campaign, too, or just assist as their skillset allows.
(c) Men can honestly and compassionately engage other men who use sexist language whom they are friends with or have some amount of trust built up with, explain how and why their use of sexist language is harmful, and encourage other men to improve.
(d) Men (and all of us) in positions of leadership especially can speak up and speak out. Especially men in the software industry and geek culture, and especially especially men in the gaming industry.
(e) When men (etc.) in positions of leadership do not speak out against serious harassment and violent threats, other men (or all of us) can hold them accountable, initially by writing letters of encouragement to speak out, escalating to condemning the action (or inaction) and boycotting these leaders' work, if necessary.

2. Men (and all of us) can listen to and take what women say seriously.

(a) Men (and all of us) can believe women's own assessment of the seriousness of the harassment or threats that they have received.
(b) Men can speak up to remind other men who are not taking women's voices seriously to do so. (This can be one of the stock responses from 1(b).)
(c) Leaders in the software industry can listen to what women report as the reasons for not entering or dropping out of the industry, and enact programs to increase women's participation based on those responses.
(d) People who run online forums can proactively check in with female forum participants about their experiences with harassment or violent threats as a result of the forum.
(e) Women can speak up and reach out with compassion when we see other women implicitly or explicitly supporting sexism and misogyny by acting out the exceptional woman role.

3. We can organize active defense for women affected by online harassment and violent threats.

(a) We can start a defense fund to help defray the expenses of women who are forced out of their homes, to hire lawyers, etc.
(b) We can research, write up, and distribute information sheets on how to document stalking to enable a police response.
(c) We can draft a statement of ethics or principles to ensure that any informal (non-law enforcement) activities to defend women against online harassment and threats do not themselves become what we are protesting and protecting against.
(d) We can research the legalities of various means to obtain information on the identities of harassers (in the absence of speedy or skillful law enforcement investigations, or if harassment and threats have been injurious to the affected person's mental health, career, etc. but haven't been deemed actionable by police), and determine what uses of this information align with our statement of ethics or principles (pass on to law enforcement, sending messages to the individuals responsible from the defense organization requesting that they desist from their activities, publicly connecting the individuals responsible with their behavior?).
(e) We can support (financially or through our volunteer time) local women's shelters and safe houses, and work together with these organizations to provide safe shelter for women forced out of their homes by online threats.
(f) We can volunteer to provide pet-sitting while women who have been the target of threats are at work, keep an eye on homes (in coordination with the women who have been targeted, so we ourselves don't scare them as a potential stalker), donate and install security systems if that's an area that we have expertise in, or make other labor or material (but non-financial) contributions that would be helpful in each particular case, that the defense fund in (a) would have a harder time covering.
(g) We can volunteer our time to help moderate targeted women's social media feeds if they would like such assistance, to wade through the manure and catalog and document so that the targeted woman doesn't have to do all of that herself.
(h) We can pay particular attention to and take care of one another's mental health when working on such moderation and documentation of harassment and threats.
(i) Sometimes it's a lot easier to ask for help from a group whose purpose is doing this sort of support work, than from individual friends. We can be proactive in forming a support group/network/whatever, and in offering help.
(j) We can keep in mind that everyone's response to harassment and violence is different and everyone's support needs are individual; we can refrain from judging any targeted woman's choices in how she responds to her harassment and threats.

4. We can create harassment-free spaces.

(a) We can insist that online multiplayer games (WoW, etc.) make available harassment-free instances, where harassing language gets one red-carded or eventually banned if repeated too much, and we can use these and make them popular.
(b) We can stop using online forums that tolerate harassment, and switch for forums like metafilter that do not. Places like reddit vary greatly by subreddit, I'm told: remove this implied acceptance of harassment by association by moving the good subreddits to a parallel but harassment-free system.
(c) Leaders of software companies (gaming or otherwise) can enact stronger workplace harassment policies, in consultation with experts in this area.
(d) The rest of us can lobby, with our voices, our dollars, and/or our bodies, for software companies to enact stronger workplace harassment policies. We can ask about a company's anti-harassment policy before investing in it, and support independent developers and small companies that have good workplace harassment policies. Changing the culture where games and software get developed will help somewhat to change the culture where they are consumed; but also, making the industry more welcoming to women will ensure that no individual woman is as much of a target, will help ensure a wider diversity of games and software in general thereby changing the overall culture, and will help strengthen games and software companies' commitment to and support of their female employees, thereby decreasing the odds of serious negative career repercussions for women who have been targeted for harassment and threats.
(e) We can support, through our time and/or our money, programs that give girls opportunities for coding.

5. Women can support each other.

(a) Historically, many victims of online harassment and violent threats have suffered alone. We can create networks to share experiences, share successful tactics for dealing with harassment and threats, and support each other.
(b) We can hold virtual and offline (eg. at the headquarters of relevant companies) "Take Back the Web" rallies?

6. We can prepare girls in a positive, empowering manner.

(a) We can prepare girls by giving them positive, harassment-free experiences with games, software, and online communities while educating them about their rights (both legal and ethical), and connecting them to other girls in gaming and online to form their own support networks.
(b) We can educate girls with the tools to identify, label, and analyze sexism and misogyny.
(c) We can do both of the above through conversations with individual girls that we know, as parents volunteering to coordinate after-school groups, as community members volunteering to partner with schools for the same, and through clubs and camps not directly affiliated with schools.
(d) We can encourage our workplaces to sponsor such groups or events as well.

7. We can connect gamergate to other societal problems that it is directly connected to.

(a) We can connect with efforts to prevent and address cyber-bullying.
(b) We can connect with efforts to prevent and address offline bullying in schools and workplace bullying.
(c) We can connect with efforts to change and address rape culture.

There are certainly some changes that could be made to how we deal with online harassment and threats legally: police departments often have limited expertise with anything computer-related, don't take online anything as seriously, don't take violence against women seriously (eg. police departments in the US have insanely high rates of domestic violence themselves - higher than domestic violence rates in the NFL, for example), etc.

I'm sure I've left some stuff out of the above list, too. Folks with experience in old-fashioned offline sexualized violence response and support, chime in?
posted by eviemath at 4:53 PM on October 23, 2014 [43 favorites]

eviemath: Your points make me wonder if there's a way to fold UN's new #HeForShe campaign into this (especially since Emma Watson ended up being a target of Internet harassment for being their spokesperson).
posted by divabat at 4:57 PM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Thank you, eviemath,
posted by Navelgazer at 4:57 PM on October 23, 2014

Ah, I forgot one:

1(f) or 5(c) (and related to 3(d)): We can create an online hollaback where, despite anonymity with regard to offline identity, specific online users can be called out as repeat harassers or worse. This should be a searchable database, eg. that forums can automatically access. Reports would have to be verified, but then other sites could hold any comments from offending online identities for moderation rather than posting them to comment threads immediately. The database would have to be able to link usernames across platforms that had been identified as belonging to the same user. This would require a fair amount of volunteer time, both to code initially and to moderate/verify reports, but would be incredibly useful. Even without the search feature, just being able to identify and document the worst offenders.
posted by eviemath at 5:06 PM on October 23, 2014 [5 favorites]

Google's prior obsession with making everyone make a Plus account in their legal name and then linking every bit of social media to it looks even more ridiculous than it already did in light of this mess.

And yet, last I checked, Felicia Day's G+ account which had her story on it, was free of doxxers and harrassers. And for the last several months, the people I know in game development have been able to discuss their reactions to gamergate freely on G+. Actually the ONLY place in social media I know of where women in gaming have largely been free to talk is G+. Where would you have them go? Facebook? Twitter? Those sites have a vested interest in making money off the harrassers- it will be difficult, if not impossible for them to take meaningful steps..

Frankly, gamergate is succeeding because the harrasser and doxxers are able to hide behind multiple false identitiess. Linking online identities to real names would be far from perfect, but it would be a better situation than the one we have now.
posted by happyroach at 5:07 PM on October 23, 2014 [4 favorites]

(Would have to have a clear statement of what meets the criteria for harassment for inclusion, but that's a solved problem.)
posted by eviemath at 5:08 PM on October 23, 2014

Hmm. "Take Back the Gamez"? "Take Back the Knight"? That last one would be prone to misinterpretation, though I do like a good play on words.
posted by eviemath at 5:12 PM on October 23, 2014

Song A Day 2121: If It's Not About Zoe Quinn Stop Talking About Her
posted by homunculus at 5:26 PM on October 23, 2014 [10 favorites]

To be clear, that was someone Brianna Wu referred to as "my friend Quinn", and only GGers were certain that she meant Zoe Quinn. (If this has been clarified, let me know.)

i can't be sure that's who she was talking about but they had a twitter conversation about zoe quinn having a similarly described folder.
posted by nadawi at 5:27 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ah, thanks, nadawi.

Columbia Journalism Review: How do we know what we know about #Gamergate?
The media has flocked to cover a largely anonymous movement that has no clear aims, leaders, or organization

Likewise, a relatively low proportion of gamers and online peeps (mostly men) seem to be responsible for the major proportion of serious online harassment and threats

eviemath, Andy Baio tweeted
So far, 100 people are posting 24% of the total traffic to the Gamergate hashtag. Half those accounts were created in the last three months.
posted by dhartung at 5:41 PM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Not to make this issue any more other-ing or divisive, but I just realized something.

Now, I somehow got subscribed to a GOP spam email serve that hits me with 12-gauge bullshit about three times a day. I haven't unsubscribed from it because its content is such an unfiltered version of the already heinous FOXNews model that it's a little fascinating. Race-baity as hell, trying to constantly drum up reasons why Michael Brown's shooting was justified, why Obama is using Ebola as part of his plan to take the guns and what weird tricks you can use for investing in gold now before the government makes it illegal, etc.

This is, of course, not stuff that a Republican politician with any real sense of savvy would actually say in front of a microphone. Most of it isn't stuff that, AFAICT, even FOX would want to have their name attached to. It is the gritty, grimy bowels of the elderly-white-fear-machine.

But then, of course, there are all the Republican politicians without so much savvy. Sometimes they rise into actual national spotlight, a la Palin. Sometimes people don't know they're being recorded, a la Romney. But the wires get crossed on which messages are meant for insiders vs outsiders.

Obviously we're seeing a lot of that struggle here, with GG constantly claiming to not be about the only noteworthy thing about them, i.e. the misogyny and harassment, but meanwhile the spots where they're breeding that stuff are still open for all to see. So they can't stay on message because their fir-for-public-consumption purpose is laughably pathetic and their only-for-the-base purpose is what's causing all the outrage. But they're the ones who are paranoid about conspiracies.

I guess I wonder (1.) if this is a universal trait of ideological groups and I just can't see it for the trees in my own camps? And (2.) If there's something about acting in that two-tiered model that makes one assume their their opponents must be doing the same, even if said opponents are hiding nothing.
posted by Navelgazer at 5:48 PM on October 23, 2014 [6 favorites]

I guess I wonder (1.) if this is a universal trait of ideological groups and I just can't see it for the trees in my own camps? And (2.) If there's something about acting in that two-tiered model that makes one assume their their opponents must be doing the same, even if said opponents are hiding nothing.

The Paranoid Style in American Politics (link to the actual essay) by Richard Hofstadter.

In short: 1) no. 2) yes.
posted by soundguy99 at 6:14 PM on October 23, 2014 [10 favorites]

I guess I wonder (1.) if this is a universal trait of ideological groups and I just can't see it for the trees in my own camps?

Like I said waaay upthread, I think this will provide ample research material for people investigating the origins of group identity, its dissemination of ideas and its formulation of ideology in an entirely digital environment (one big difference from Occupy) because it's concentrated in a relatively small space over a relatively tight time frame. It almost demands an epidemiological model.
posted by holgate at 6:15 PM on October 23, 2014

Jesse Singal Reddit AMA.
posted by hot_monster at 6:22 PM on October 23, 2014 [5 favorites]

Not much to add at this time, but i'll just tuck this quote in as I am thinking of it more and more often while reading many twitter exchanges.

"The prejudices of ignorance are more easily removed than the prejudices of interest; the first are all blindly adopted, the second willfully preferred." ~BANCROFT.
posted by edZio at 7:09 PM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Heh, the 10 year old digital distribution platform gamersgate.com has apparently been receiving threats and harassment because of the name. It's like that pediatrician who got attacked by illiterates, except way less serious!

Still, I'm sure it will just give more ammunition to the Gaters.
posted by Justinian at 7:13 PM on October 23, 2014

Jesse Singal's AMA is awesome. He just said that gg'ers "wield words like 'bias' like a toddler with a papier-mâché light saber."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:13 PM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

Navelgazer: "which messages are meant for insiders vs outsiders"

The author Dave Neiwert has done a lot of work tracking and investigating radical right-wing groups (including guys like white nationalist militias, etc...). A long while back (pre-Tea Party but post-9/11), I remember reading some stuff on his blog about this phenomenon. If I recall correctly, it's not just two tiers but quite a few. It went something like: newsletters (like the one you're subscribed to) and email forwards at the bottom, then various local AM talk radio shows, then national AM talk radio shows (with Rush Limbaugh at the top of those), then finally Fox News at the top. The idea is that the lower levels would come up with all kinds of crazy theories. Some of them would stick and percolate into a higher level, and so on until it reached Fox News by which time it was completely validated into the conservative zeitgeist. The key is that this filtering process prevents the really crazy stuff from leaking out of the hardcore conservative circles and potentially alienating some of the less hardcore people.

I haven't really kept track of Neiwert's blog in a long while, so I wonder what his take was on the Tea Party and whether or not they introduced a short-circuit into this media ecosystem that caused some of the crazier stuff to leak out.

Anyways, to bring this back to Gamergate: yeah, the gators lack this kind of sophisticated media filtering system, so their craziest parts are right out there, front and center.
posted by mhum at 7:15 PM on October 23, 2014 [15 favorites]

Neiwert was very informative in the Bush era, when all the craziness was half-hidden. But really, it's not filtered any more... these days we get elected Republican officals calling for a military coup, with no repercussions.

(Or more precisely, the Gamergaters seem they're trying to reinvent the concept of disinformation based on a Wired article they read once. "Meow"? "Literally who"? It'd be hilarious if they weren't doing so much real harm.)
posted by zompist at 8:24 PM on October 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

zompist: "But really, it's not filtered any more... these days we get elected Republican officals calling for a military coup, with no repercussions. "

Yeah, that's my feeling too. How about I raise your already-elected county recorder with a currently-running US senate candidate warning against Agenda 21? Serious tin-foil hat territory.

Meanwhile, the more I think about Gamergaters, the more parallels I find to previous, right-wing reactionary movements. I feel like there are elements of the Tea Party, the John Birch Society, maybe the Know Nothings. They all seem to spring up as a reaction to perceived conspiratorial threats not just to the status quo but to the believers' own core sense of identity -- whether it's feminism, communism, or catholicism.
posted by mhum at 11:00 PM on October 23, 2014

from Shaenon Garrity on Twitter: "Possible irony: I didn't get it [the LadyGamer2 comic] finished last night because I was playing original Mario Galaxy."
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:43 PM on October 23, 2014

Folding Ideas S4E7: #Gamergate
posted by sukeban at 1:55 AM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

I think today's Chainsawsuit might be relevant.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:05 AM on October 24, 2014 [7 favorites]

we're seeing a lot of that struggle here, with GG constantly claiming to not be about the only noteworthy thing about them, i.e. the misogyny and harassment

The only noteworthy thing about them. Says it all.
posted by five fresh fish at 2:15 AM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Apparently they lost one of their outspoken female members due to harassment from the rest of the movement.

Also amusing:

Stop giving trolls and anti-GGers the time of day in r/KotakuinAction, please. We don't have to engage in censorship, but we don't need to listen to their bullshit either. Quietly downvoting something and moving on doesn't make us an echo chamber... it makes us focused and unwilling to be distracted by jokes about who the leader of gamergate is, or what kind of coffee anti-GG drinks. We know they're laughing at us already, there's no reason to make it pleasant for them.

After a lifetime of feminist infighting, that thread is schadenfreudy goodness.
posted by almostmanda at 5:07 AM on October 24, 2014 [5 favorites]

Also also of interest (same page linked by almostmanda):

Stop identifying as "#GamerGaters." You're Gamers first, Consumers second. Identifying as a "#gamergater", instead of being a supporter, is making you identify with a group painted as a hate mob, rather than as a concerned Gamer with a very real expectation for accountability.

So #gamergate is dead. Which basically means that they're now free to actually make it a discussion about what they've been pretending it's about -- if they so choose.

Let's see if they so choose.
posted by lodurr at 5:31 AM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

Incidentally, Dave Malki has produced some amusing broader commentary on this whole donnybrook in his Punch-style webcomic Wondermark: Old Dog, Oldest Trick and The Terrible Sealion. And now there's a Terrible Sealions t-shirt!

#notallsealions
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:38 AM on October 24, 2014 [9 favorites]

lol @ that link - haven't they been saying the whole time that down voting is censorship? what a bunch of tools.
posted by nadawi at 6:17 AM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Let's see if they so choose.

THE CHOICES

1. Someone you don't know who makes games stopped having sex with someone you don't know who doesn't and started having sex with someone you don't know who writes about games. Do you:

a) Stop buying or playing the first someone's games
b) Stop reading the last someone's articles or reviews
c) Stop everything to memorise the dumped someone's grievances
d) Stop the first someone from enjoying a normal life
e) Stop worrying about it

2. Someone you don't know posts videos criticizing aspects of games you may or may not play. Do you:

a) Stop watching her videos
b) Stop playing games
c) Stop her from enjoying a normal life
d) Stop anyone else from enjoying her public appearances or videos
e) Stop worrying about it

3. Someone you don't know tweeted something sympathetic about the aforementioned someones you don't know. Do you:

a) Stop following their feed
b) Stop taking breaks to eat or sleep so you can respond to their tweets 24/7
c) Stop thinking of them as a person but instead as a TLA
d) Stop them from enjoying a normal life
e) Stop worrying about it

4. Someone you don't know wrote that "gamers are over". Do you:

a) Stop reading her articles or reviews
b) Stop anyone from reading any articles or reviews like hers
c) Stop other women from enjoying gaming until this woman admits that gamers are not over, so there
d) Stop gaming to pursue fulfilling new opportunities in private investigation, harassment and megalomania
e) Stop
posted by rory at 6:17 AM on October 24, 2014 [25 favorites]

Maybe the GamerGaters will STFU now that Civilization:Beyond Earth is released. But of course they won't because that would mean they actually spend most of their time gaming as opposed to crybabying.
posted by Justinian at 6:26 AM on October 24, 2014

Maybe the GamerGaters will STFU now that Civilization:Beyond Earth is released.

Booo still no Mac/Linux release date...
posted by Navelgazer at 6:33 AM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Don't worry, I am wasting enough alien slugoids for the both of us.
posted by Justinian at 6:40 AM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

As far as the advertiser campaign hours, I would not be surprised at all if we get one or more of the AA game developers coming out with a statement "against censorship". After all, the gamergaters are exactly the market drones want: a group that wants: to maintain the status quo in games, against independent developers and reviewers, with "reviews" basically no more than advertising arms of the companies.

Of course to do that, Marketing is going to have to get the developers to shut up. But Marketing had the advantage in this.
posted by happyroach at 7:06 AM on October 24, 2014

Booo still no Mac/Linux release date...

THOSE ARE COMMUNIST SHEEP SJW PLATFORMS!

REAL #GAMERS USE WINDOWS 7 MACHINES THAT ARE TINY GODS!
posted by Talez at 7:58 AM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

Hmmm an 'honest' GG post? (safe bet to assume there were about 100 posts following that calling the OP a shill)
posted by edZio at 8:08 AM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

Tumblr of the day.
posted by sparkletone at 8:23 AM on October 24, 2014 [7 favorites]

The clip edZio links to basically says 'gamergate should stop pretending to be about game journalism, because we all know and always have known that it's not. This is causing us to be seen as sleazy because everyone sees through it, and besides it's causing cognitive dissonance in our movement.'

This is not a nice guy but at least he's being honest.

And I think it shows their faultlines: People who really believe in the 'anti-SJW' agenda but don't buy into the vicious and overt misogyny may well comprise their own distinct subgroup, just as there are staunch social conservatives to whom the Tea Party is anathema.

As bad as all this is, I'll echo what people have been saying up thread: this is going to be rich, rich fodder for students of organizational dynamics for decades to come.
posted by lodurr at 8:47 AM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

With the dirty tricks, enemies lists, and generalized paranoia, at this point I'm pretty much assuming that Richard Nixon's Head In A Jar is a driving force behind GamerGate.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:12 AM on October 24, 2014 [15 favorites]

Actually it IS about ethics in game journalism, and how #GG wants to return to a time when there was none and "game journalism" was the same thing as "game promotion".

Now, what it's NOT about...
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:22 AM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Richard Nixon's Head In A Jar also had a better ending for Mass Effect 3.
posted by almostmanda at 9:22 AM on October 24, 2014

And here's your screenshot for the day... Isn't Polygon one of those site #Gamergators are boycotting/attacking?
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:37 AM on October 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

REAL #GAMERS USE WINDOWS 7 MACHINES THAT ARE TINY GODS!
SHOCKINGLY, it seems GamerGate-enemy-site Kotaku agrees.
#ethicsingamejournalism
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:47 AM on October 24, 2014

10/20 isometric podcast:

brianna: this is the hardest thing i've ever done in my life and i'm so disappointed at the men in this field that they'd let it get to this point because they don't give a crap about us. and it has only been shame that has made them finally wake up and start talking about what's happening to us, and i'm so angry about that.

maddy: ...these journalists and these developers, people who have sort of social capital, social power, guys don't think they need to say anything, they think they can just sit back and wait for it to blow over, they feel like it really doesn't affect them and taking a stance is a big risk for them. but honestly the risk that we are facing is so much higher and we don't have a choice to opt out.

...some of these guys have stepped up, like you took giant bomb to task when you were on msnbc and then a few hours later giant bomb did a story about you, i don't know if those things are related or not, but they did finally cover the story. but they didn't cover the story any other time before that. and honestly that is pathetic...

brianna: ...i've risked everything and i'm tired of hearing from men in this field how tough it is. i don't ever wanna hear that again. i want them to man. up.

maddy (re: #stopgamergate2014): it's been really cool to see people actually directly talking about the problem as it actually is. as opposed to just side-stepping it and being like "well we all know harassment is bad, anyone who harasses anyone, not that i'm naming names here" ... yeah we can all agree harassment's bad dude, try to be a little more specific next time.

brianna wu has been tearing up her colleagues this morning:

What the game industry doesn't understand is they had a part to play in the culture that spawned #gamergate and is now terrorizing women.

When women aren't speakers, when women aren't journalists, when women aren't developers - it signals to men that games are their space.

I want to be crystal clear. To the men of the videogame industry - YOU CREATED THIS PROBLEM. We need you to stand up and help solve it.

Gamedev lip service about respecting women doesn't cut it any more. You're either working to include us, or you're part of the problem.

90 percent of what I advocate is hiring women at all levels of gamedev. That I get so much resistance says SO MUCH about the problem.
posted by twist my arm at 10:46 AM on October 24, 2014 [16 favorites]

Fresh thread.
posted by almostmanda at 11:00 AM on October 24, 2014

One of the (many) things that makes me nuts about hiring women in software dev is that -- at least in my experience -- women help a team make better software.

It's a great source of coginitive dissonance for me that this doesn't result in more equal hiring. At some level I guess I still buy into the idea that if doing x means making a better product or make better margins, management will do x.

And yet the world is replete with examples of cases where that wasn't done. Tobacco companies could have moved into other businesses decades ago; clothing manufacturers (especially underwear manufacturers) could have gotten many more female customers by selling sensible underwear that wasn't shaming; software companies could have hired women and then done something other than one-tracked them into lower-management.

And now we see shifts in "gamer" demographics and we see large game publishers doubling down on their old, shrinking demographic, instead of trying to crack the new market.

Fucking dinosaurs. It makes me crazy -- not only won't they do some basic human stuff, they won't even look out for their own fucking interests.
posted by lodurr at 11:30 AM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

"gamers are dead"? innacurate. "gamers are The Walking Dead"? much more accurate.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:17 PM on October 24, 2014

Not sure if this is the right place for this, but it looks like the Occupy Wall Street twitter account has now jumped on the GG bandwagon. (Is that really an official account? It does have over 200k followers.)
posted by nobody at 12:39 PM on October 24, 2014

It's "official" for values of "official" equal to "belongs to the person who last changed the password while involved with OWS".

Said person having since become a fairly firm convert to libertarianism.
posted by lodurr at 12:45 PM on October 24, 2014

The person who runs that account is Justine Tunney, briefly mentioned at the start of this piece, whose politics are awful. She has endorsed the writings of Mencius Moldbug and affiliates herself with the Dark Enlightenment and Neo-Reactionary politics in general. The official Occupy Wall Street Twitter account no longer expresses the views you would expect from OWS.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 12:53 PM on October 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

lodurr: One of the (many) things that makes me nuts about hiring women in software dev is that -- at least in my experience -- women help a team make better software.

Absolutely. I do business software not games, but some of the best teams I've worked on have been led by women, and all the best teams have women on them. I honestly can't understand where "brogrammers" and the like are even coming from.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:54 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Anonymous launches OperationGamerGate:

Operation GamerGate @OpGamerGate · 2h 2 hours ago
Would you like to play a game? X-P | #OpGamerGate #Anonymous #FuckMisogynists

posted by dejah420 at 12:59 PM on October 24, 2014

well this could be grimly interesting.
posted by lodurr at 1:03 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

Remember in a previous thread when someone asked "Where is Anonymous in all of this?"

I wish we could still ask that. I'm not confident they'll be a net benefit, no matter what side they come down on.
posted by papercrane at 1:08 PM on October 24, 2014

#OpGamerGate #Anonymous #FuckMisogynists

Well, it's a relief that [the social media account of] at least one leg of the early 2010s lefty-anarchist trifecta is on the decent side of this.
posted by nobody at 1:09 PM on October 24, 2014

If you search for #OpGamerGate on Twitter, you will, um, see some images that remind you why anonymous movements are easily co-opted. So who the heck knows.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:12 PM on October 24, 2014

If you search for #OpGamerGate on Twitter, you will, um, see some images that remind you why anonymous movements are easily co-opted. So who the heck knows.

Uh, holy shit don't do that. Hopefully I don't get fired for that.
posted by empath at 1:14 PM on October 24, 2014 [5 favorites]

Uh, holy shit don't do that

Seriously. I'm glad nobody was over my shoulder. Excuse me while I go look at pictures of kittens now.
posted by papercrane at 1:18 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

The person who runs that account is Justine Tunney, briefly mentioned at the start of this piece, whose politics are awful.

Previously.
posted by homunculus at 1:39 PM on October 24, 2014

Sorry! I should have definitely used an NSFL tag on that. Egregious understatement on my part in the comment.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:57 PM on October 24, 2014

In other news: Men’s Rights Group Masquerades As Fake Domestic Violence Campaign To Confuse Donors

Paul Elam responds to critics of his phony White Ribbon page with reasoned argument. Kidding! He had a tantrum
posted by homunculus at 2:48 PM on October 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

Uh, holy shit don't do that. Hopefully I don't get fired for that.

Yeah, just to be absolutely clear, I'd rather not have seen a guy fucking an eviscerated corpse. Delete browser history, set computer on fire.
posted by naju at 3:27 PM on October 24, 2014

The example given that I read (and which made me feel like I could empathize with their position somewhat), was this:

Let's say a reviewer is a conservative Republican and homophobic. He calls himself a journalist. He reviews Dragon Age: Origins, and tears it apart, not because the game mechanics are bad or the graphics suck, but because Dragon Age: Origins has gay characters. Journalists are supposed to be objective, not biased like that.

Where did this text actually come from? Googling any substantial phrase from this purported quotation finds nothing but this thread.
posted by RogerB at 3:37 PM on October 24, 2014

It comes from a Twitter discussion between a mefite & a gamergator to try & suss out their beliefs. As such, that particular block quote is a sequence of joined together tweets. ( I can't find the original tweet where the mefite linked to their discussion; it's buried somewhere in this monster thread & is not the thread using the blockquote.)
posted by Going To Maine at 3:56 PM on October 24, 2014

As such, that particular block quote is a sequence of joined together tweets.

Not any public tweets that I can find.
posted by RogerB at 4:02 PM on October 24, 2014

You'd have to ask misha, that's from her comment here.
posted by soundguy99 at 4:11 PM on October 24, 2014

Ah! My bad. I had remembered it coming from the conversation that murphys slaw had. (Storify here)
posted by Going To Maine at 4:20 PM on October 24, 2014

I guess it could be a paraphrase? It's a pretty outlier hypothetical, though, since Dragon Age: Origins (and in particular Dragon Age 2) got a lot of flak for having too much same-sex romance narrative and plotting - I would imagine from many of the same people who are now Gamergating.
posted by running order squabble fest at 7:56 PM on October 24, 2014

the gamer manbabies were SO UNCOMFORTABLE with the explicit bisexuality of Anders, it was wonderful
posted by NoraReed at 10:03 PM on October 24, 2014 [3 favorites]

Anders was hilarious. You're just kinda nice to him and then all of a sudden BOOM, his tongue is down your throat! I was all like, whoooooa buddy we're just friends and he was all like THE HEART WANTS WHAT THE HEART WANTS and then I had to let him down all easy-like and he was sort of a crybaby about it and talking about friendzoning and stuff. Poor Anders.
posted by Justinian at 11:01 PM on October 24, 2014 [4 favorites]

This is the best effort at a "...then you win" that GG can come up with.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:02 AM on October 25, 2014

1). Harass and threaten women who make video games
2) ???
3) Ethics in journalism!
posted by aubilenon at 1:27 AM on October 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

So, Mike Cernovich has pinned a tweet to the top of his profile talking about how anti-GG people are swatting him. Hilariously, if you read the archived blog post that he links to, you can see that it advises calling the cops and literally providing a description of his recent actions. So apparently having the cops called on you for the things that you've been doing is the real problem.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:34 AM on October 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

Flip comments about SWATting were a severe tactical error. Joking about SWATting is high on the list of many places you should not go when trying to fight trolls. They typically have no concept of satire, sarcasm or irony when they feel in any way threatened.
posted by lodurr at 11:36 AM on October 25, 2014

Flip comments are about swatting are gauche & a mistake (just as how whatever percent of GGers are actually getting harassed is similarly terrible), but in case it's unclear it should be said that idledillettante (the poster) did, in fact, go to the cops about Cernovich and reported his ongoing & escalating harassment of ZQ as he was apparently responding to how idledillettante (& not ZQ) had found his publicly-available, advertised address.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:10 PM on October 25, 2014

I see IGN have released some kind of weak, both sidesy comment, as befits a bunch of useless fucks in the pocket of AAA gaming.
posted by Artw at 12:16 PM on October 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

Game Informer came out pretty strongly against, & Brianna Wu made a post responding to IGN's weak sauce. Meanwhile, Newsweek's made a post: Is GamerGate About Media Ethics or Harassing Women? Harassment, the Data Shows
posted by Going To Maine at 12:21 PM on October 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

The one thing that I will say for GG is that before it existed I had no idea about archive.today, and it's a pretty good service. So thanks, GG.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:28 PM on October 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

> anti-GG people are swatting him

How did "someone filed a police report" go to "i got swatted"?
posted by anti social order at 12:38 PM on October 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Flip comments about SWATting were a severe tactical error.

---

Flip comments are about swatting are gauche & a mistake

it's an asshole move - if this kind of thing keeps going on then it's just going to be another great internet pissing match where both sides are at blame

unfortunately, things like this tend to spiral out of control
posted by pyramid termite at 12:38 PM on October 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yeah the claim that he was 'driven from his home by anti-GGers' is such utter sensationalism you can could almost assume it was satire :P

I like this post which commented on how wrong this was.
posted by edZio at 12:52 PM on October 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

How did "someone filed a police report" go to "i got swatted"?

Someone other than the person who filed the police report made a joke about SWATting. Cernovitch being Cernovitch proceeded to auto-concern-troll into pretending he'd been threatened.
posted by lodurr at 6:01 PM on October 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Saying that he had been forced out of his home is pretty savvy. Not only does it reinforce the "both sides are doing harassment" narrative, it also trivializes the responses of people getting actual threats.
posted by idiopath at 12:13 AM on October 26, 2014

I think there's a lot of signs that where this all started--4chan, the #burgersandfries crowd on IRC, the people who're on 8chan now... none of these people have shown a lot of real commitment to the supposed ideals, here. They'll spout off about all sorts of things, but if they're not really about ethics, then what are they really about? Misogyny? Well, I believe what they're doing is hurting women, but I'm not sure they're really just by some coincidence discovering that being an MRA is a thing. At root, what they wanted in the first place was to be destructive. I think they've now attracted some people who really believe in something, even if they can't all agree on what that something is, but there are enough people still involved from that initial group that I think now that things are going, we're going to be seeing a lot of attacks against both sides. Not just as an effort to discredit people who are anti-GG, but--at this stage, probably because they've whipped people into a sufficient frenzy. 4chan's had a long tradition of trolling each other being basically deemed just as good as trolling other people.

This is what kinda scares me, because now we're reaching that point where they can start just going after whoever they think is most likely to explode in an amusing fashion, and there are more of those on the "seriously misogynist and possibly violent" side of things. They started off talking about how a real goal was whether they could get Zoe Quinn to commit suicide. I'm afraid we may now be hitting a point where they see bigger fish.
posted by Sequence at 3:04 AM on October 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

At root, what they wanted in the first place was to be destructive.
I whole-heartedly agree. In Chris Suellentrop's piece for the NYT, "The Disheartening GamerGate Campaign", he concludes "not all that long ago, I was hoping, even predicting, that something better was not just on the horizon, but imminent. To that dream... GamerGate has dealt a grievous if not yet mortal blow." Sounds like the trolls can begin declaring victory.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:46 AM on October 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

In Chris Suellentrop's piece for the NYT..

GamerGate wins. They couldn't buy this propaganda victory for a million dollars.

There is a point where the harder you fight, the more you legitimize your enemies' propaganda. When you are fighting a small band of insurgents, Total War will play into their hands.

#thebattleofalgiers
posted by charlie don't surf at 6:17 PM on October 26, 2014

Can someone explain how an article pointing out that Gamergate is destroying the image of the gaming industry means that they're winning?
posted by palomar at 6:28 PM on October 26, 2014

My mid-term prediction is something closer to a schism, or at least a drawing of boundaries that separates "the gaming industry" into distinct sub-industries: indie devs and the publications focused on them will continue along one track and tell the gators to go fuck themselves; the AAA studios and related media will operate under a new chill. Instead of writing about big-budget games, a bunch of critics will shrug and say that they're no longer engaging with consumer-grade chum for an audience of spoilt, vicious children. Some of those critics will still get work because general-interest publications will be mindful of gaming's broader audience and won't want to touch the gators' fiefdom with a shitty stick.
posted by holgate at 6:45 PM on October 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

Can someone explain how an article pointing out that Gamergate is destroying the image of the gaming industry means that they're winning?

Because they got their message on the editorial page of the NYTimes. Because they got their opponents to put their message on the editorial page of the NYTimes. Game over.
posted by charlie don't surf at 8:45 PM on October 26, 2014

Because they got their opponents to put their message on the editorial page of the NYTimes. Game over.

"One more victory over the Romans and we shall be ruined."

It's fairly clear now that the AAA studios don't want their spoilt-child paying customers to have a hissyfit. It'll just mean that the spoilt-child demographic and their toys will have to be content with coverage from Actually It's About Ethics And Kill Mechanics And Shut The Fuck Up dot com and not the NYT because people like Suellentrop will cross large areas of the gaming map off their beats other than to acknowledge they're still there and still shitty. Life will go on.
posted by holgate at 9:01 PM on October 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

Because they got their message on the editorial page of the NYTimes. Because they got their opponents to put their message on the editorial page of the NYTimes. Game over.

Did we read the same article?

If you want to call it game over and give up, that's up to you. But that's some bullshit, son.
posted by palomar at 9:10 PM on October 26, 2014 [9 favorites]

Can someone explain how an article pointing out that Gamergate is destroying the image of the gaming industry means that they're winning?

Because they got their message on the editorial page of the NYTimes. Because they got their opponents to put their message on the editorial page of the NYTimes. Game over.

GamerGators can't "win" in any conventional sense because they have no defined goals, and no real way to get them. Their are various things media outlets can do to sort of appease them, but there's really no fixed end. If they manage to get one, good. But an angry op-ed, let alone an angry op-ed that does them no good in framing their goals, does nothing for them. (If gamergate did actually manage to organize itself, it could probably force online papers to do *something*. But given that all of their recent advertising victories appear to be generally considered disingenuous, if they want to become legit they will still have to markedly change their approach.)
posted by Going To Maine at 9:26 PM on October 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

My mid-term prediction is something closer to a schism, or at least a drawing of boundaries that separates "the gaming industry" into distinct sub-industries...

I don't see this working out at all well for GamerGate because, well, they have the trigger discipline of a pack of rabid squirrels and it's going to be kind of hard to base your identity politics on the identity of "gamer" when you're . I mean, take a little while and look at all the games that they're going to see the effect of the dreaded social justice warrior in. Female main characters, gay characters, whatever sends their little hearts into a tizzy. Then follow the family tree up and down through studios and publishing houses and see what all they won't be playing. Hell, I think all the AAA linear gritty racist cover-based regenerating-health cut-scene fests that define "hard core gaming" these days are going to off limits. Or they'll break ranks.

I suppose a bigger company could create a shell and use it to stroke these guys fragile little egos, but I can give you a long list of who I'm pretty sure it won't be.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 10:06 PM on October 26, 2014

Can someone explain how an article pointing out that Gamergate is destroying the image of the gaming industry means that they're winning?

As near as I can tell, the logic is the same as "ignore the trolls and they'll go away." The paradigm holds that "trolls" or "bullies" or whatever we're calling them in this venue are rewarded by the attention of their target. It's present in a variety of places, from the "he's only mean to you because he likes you" romantic nonsense to the "if you stopped being nice to him he's stop stalking you" victim blaming.

The problem is, it's not true. It's never been true.

Trolls and bullies get intrinsic value out of tormenting others, whether it is some sort of gain in terms of status or belongings, or a moral win in terms of making someone else hurt and hopefully shutting them up - but even if the target does shut up that won't actually end the attempts to hurt them; several women have dropped out of public life entirely and continued to receive harassment.

"If you give them attention they win" is victim blaming.
posted by Deoridhe at 1:34 AM on October 27, 2014 [13 favorites]

Contrary to popular wisdom, not all PR is good PR.

Also, 'Ignore the trolls and they'll go away' hardly ever works. We knew it when we were kids in the schoolyard; why should we forget it now?
posted by lodurr at 3:34 AM on October 27, 2014 [6 favorites]

The one argument I can see for 'winning' is that what they want is their own pristine patch, and that by rolling back all the acceptance-work that gamification folks have done over the past 10+ years, they'll hold off the spread of game-based-education/work for another little while by poisoning that well.

The argument wouldn't work because there's just too much money riding on gamification, both in current investment and potential upside. And because #gamergate is primarily an english-language and US thing at this point. The game market is international.
posted by lodurr at 3:40 AM on October 27, 2014

Deoridhe: "If you give them attention they win" is victim blaming.

lodurr: Also, 'Ignore the trolls and they'll go away' hardly ever works. We knew it when we were kids in the schoolyard; why should we forget it now?

I think people at least mean well when they say it, but what it fundamentally forgets is that giving them attention is not the only way they can possibly know that they've hurt you. It's A way that they can know that they've hurt you, so they definitely respond to it, but it's certainly not the only way. And if you're a human being who's been hurt, asking you to stay completely silent and ignore it is totally ridiculous. It's a thing that works for small-scale teasing, not ongoing and pervasive horribleness. We lack any kind of model for how to deal with ongoing and pervasive horribleness.

A version of Twitter that could do some kind of RL identity verification but then allow you to post under a pen name would be my ideal world. Something where the service has some way of filtering out bad behavior--if you're banned, you're not going to get verified again on a new account--but I don't know how you'd make it scale. I guess it doesn't need to go that far. The point isn't really that you need to be known by your real name to the general public, it's that the current level of anonymity prevents any meaningful consequences for poor behavior. I don't really care if your name is Jane Smith, but I care that there's going to be some barrier to you just creating infinite new accounts if you get banned, I care that someone's actually paying attention.

So, who's going to tell Twitter about the $5 plan?

Seriously, I am only just now realizing how much of the worst of the internet $5 protects us from. Reddit is a freaking war zone, even in the spaces with active moderation, and Twitter doesn't even seem to be trying, and that's even without getting into the places that are just straight out cesspools.
posted by Sequence at 4:41 AM on October 27, 2014 [10 favorites]

A version of Twitter that could do some kind of RL identity verification but then allow you to post under a pen name would be my ideal world.

I've been working on the web long enough to remember when this is exactly how a lot of stuff worked. I had at least 8 Yahoo profiles at one point, all linked by a single login, with no restriction on the gender, age or personal details. But the 'net was a lot smaller then, and you could more plausibly* claim that everyone knew you might be a dog.

--
*"arguably" is still more than "not very."
posted by lodurr at 5:14 AM on October 27, 2014

... as for the $5 plan, I think it would be polite to give Matt a chance to say "please God don't", first.
posted by lodurr at 5:15 AM on October 27, 2014

We've talked a little about this, but I'm struck again this morning by the congenial overlap between gamergate and the anti-feminist backlash in the freethought web. I've been thinking about it for a while, but the Rebecca Watson piece linked above brought that really front and center in my mind over the weekend. I'm struggling with how to visualize this, but there's got to be a good way to plot the network of connections w.r.t. freethought, libertarianism and anti-feminism.

One thing that strikes me is that a thing like gamergate can serve to catalyze and purify a person's ideology. People who were anti-feminist but didn't like libertarianism might find the latter attitude receding; 'freethinkers' who were just sort spectating approvingly when some prominent atheist sniped at a woman daring to expect her opinion be listened to (or, for that matter, expecting that she not be accosted by drunks in elevators) may come to see a deeper truth to the highly rationalized MRA/PUA-style arguments for the fundamental inferiority of women, or the existence of a vast and ancient feminist conspiracy.*

I say this as an observation, not as doomsaying. Some catalysis may happen in the other direction, too. People do flirt with the dark side and come to the light.

--
*Is this what's meant by 'dark enlightenment'?
posted by lodurr at 5:27 AM on October 27, 2014

Also, is 'dark enlightenment' something I'd be wiser to not google at work?
posted by lodurr at 5:45 AM on October 27, 2014

Also, is 'dark enlightenment' something I'd be wiser to not google at work?

It is like the least sexy thing you can possibly imagine googling, if that helps. Imagine a bunch of people on Usenet arguing about the merits of feudalism.
posted by verb at 5:54 AM on October 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

The "dark enlightenment" is a bunch of fascist nerds posting about how great fascism is and how they're the genetic and intellectual superiors of everybody else. Laughable aside from the involvement of some tech industry dicks.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:58 AM on October 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

Oh, so it's Plato fanbois.

Not something for work, but for a totally different reason than I feared. Net answer is the same, but at least the temptation to look it up right now is gone.
posted by lodurr at 6:48 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

It's like that thing that happens when you've had a lot of coffee and been playing Civilization or Tropico or something for like ten straight hours and you start thinking about what it'd be like if you were really In Charge. Only when it happens to me, I pretty quickly think that sounds terrible and go to watch something on Youtube instead.
posted by Sequence at 6:59 AM on October 27, 2014 [3 favorites]

#GamerGate question of the day: Does Davis Aurini own multiple skulls, or is he moving one skull from room to room?

(Pretty much inevitably, video clips contain offensive language, misogyny and racism.)
posted by running order squabble fest at 7:21 AM on October 27, 2014

Derail ahead:
I've been following a bunch of the "dork enlightenment" people for a while, and every single thing they seem to talk about almost always breaks down to this:
"Ah-ha, so society is built upon lies, and I can see them now. Let me latch onto this 'new/old' idea and this is the New Truth that I must evangelize." It is like someone who has had the veil lifted from their eyes, and the first thing they see, they latch on to as The Truth, instead of continuing to learn that The Truth is so much more complicated than whatever it is they latch on to.

Hell, I am pretty sure one of the qualities of The Truth is that it is never a fixed thing, and is manifest differently to each person who seeks it. But, that's just getting all metaphysical, but it's October and Halloween is just around the corner, so I'm practicing my spoopy and creppy mumbo-jumbo for scaring the kids with.

Anyway. It seriously seems like the adherents of the idea really don't get out enough. Which is funny, because they decry the "Ivory Tower" liberal academic stuff more than they decry the failures of society. But, you know, mote/beams, whatever.
posted by daq at 7:28 AM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

GamerGators can't "win" in any conventional sense because they have no defined goals, and no real way to get them.

Sure they have clearly defined goals: to get as much attention as possible. To force their opponents to fight on their terms. They achieved their goals.

Don't forget these are elite trolls and they are experts in tricking people into doing what they could not do by themselves. There is only one successful tactic in this situation: don't play their game by their rules.
posted by charlie don't surf at 7:33 AM on October 27, 2014

And, from the other side of a night's sleep, "...it's going to be kind of hard to base your identity politics on the identity of "gamer" when you're not able to play any of the current games."

Sigh.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 7:40 AM on October 27, 2014

You know what? I'm tired of that "oooooh, don't feed the trolls" bullshit. Notice that the people who say that NEVER have any kind of solution, other than to bury your head in the sand and pretend nothing is happening. To hell with that, to hell with people who have no ideas to offer except to shut up and stay meek. It's fine if you're too scared to try to change things, but quit trying to shut everyone else up along with you.
posted by palomar at 7:47 AM on October 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

I hear you, but 'don't play by their rules' is still essential, and it doesn't have to mean doing nothing. Brianna Wu isn't 'playing by their rules' right now, e.g. Filing a police report when they break the law isn't 'playing by their rules.' (Their rules would require you to sit still and take it like a woman.)

So I totally agree that head-in-the-sand is bad; but it is important not to fight fire with fire. That's how we get scorched earth.
posted by lodurr at 7:50 AM on October 27, 2014

I think I'm just overly tired of the handwringing. Oh noes, they've "won" because now mainstream press is paying attention? Maybe I need to go back to just silently rolling my eyes at useless, unhelpful statements like that.
posted by palomar at 8:04 AM on October 27, 2014 [5 favorites]

#thebattleofalgiers

An analogy like this, I must say, is pretty astute, because I, for one, can't think of any important differences between colonized Algerians and gamers.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 8:32 AM on October 27, 2014 [10 favorites]

No, don't just roll your eyes. Just know that at least some of us substantially agree with you on that score.
posted by lodurr at 9:12 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

I've been reading way too much about this and giving it way too much headspace. I'm a very very casual gamer, but I'm a programmer and I could easily see myself getting deep into the gaming world, particularly development. Tech is hard enough for women to get into as it is without these blowhards shitting everything up.

Anyway I realized last night that GamerGater is the halloween costume of the year:
- oversized video game related t shirt (maybe with Ron Paul sticker or something), possibly with a poorly written phrase like "femanisim sux" on it
- bulky pillow under the t shirt, with a flesh colored balloon stretched over one end to look like large stomach poking out from bottom of shirt
- glue some cheetos to the shirt stomach area
- cargo shorts
- really intense looking gamer headset
- facepainted or fabric i've-been-too-busy-playing-wow-to-shave facial hair/neckbeard (if you're of the female/non facial hair growing variety like me)
- maybe gaming gloves or something

someone please do this
posted by ghostbikes at 9:31 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think that dressing as Gamergate for Hallowe'en would probably involve dressing as something else entirely, and when people say "Oh, nice Michael Myers costume", angrily insisting that you are dressed as ethics in video game journalism.
posted by running order squabble fest at 9:43 AM on October 27, 2014 [26 favorites]

I hear you, but 'don't play by their rules' is still essential, and it doesn't have to mean doing nothing.

Right. But it means not doing something: when they hold up a hoop, you don't jump through it.
posted by charlie don't surf at 9:45 AM on October 27, 2014

But you do explain that There Is No Hoop.
posted by lodurr at 9:51 AM on October 27, 2014

Sure they have clearly defined goals: to get as much attention as possible. To force their opponents to fight on their terms. They achieved their goals.

I think you're wrong.

The #Gamergate community is built up of a weird melange of groups with a weird melange of goals and overlapping memberships. Let me try to break it down as best I can, because this seems like a fun way to spend the next few minutes.

• The #burgersandfries blokes. These jagoffs wanted to harass Zoe Quinn, pure and simple. They started there, and they will finish there. They are less trolls and more terrorists operating on a small scale with a dumb goal.
• The MRA Mainsplainers. These are your typical dumb misogynist guys who like to harass all women, everyone, because ovaries. They didn't like Anita Sarkeesian, they don't like Brianna Wu, they don't like anybody. There's probably some overlap with the #burgersandfries folks, but they were around before and they'll be around afterwards.
• The obscure opportunists. This is the grab bag of folks like Mike Cernovich and Milo who have hopped on board the bandwagon to get some press. I would say that this also includes a token subgroup of #NotYourShield Shields.
• The Non-Leader Leaders. These are folks like TotalBiscuit, Boogie2988 and The Ralph Report, people who existed before #Gamergate and will exist afterwards, and who seem convinced that this thing is indeed about ethics. They aren't in charge, because no one's supposed to be, but they seem to have had pre-existing brands that #Gamergators like.
• The Terrible Trolls. Pure, attention desiring trolls, doing the standard stuff that trolls do. This largely includes folks who got in late in the game. I'd say that the channers who came up with #NotYourShield and the notion that it's about ethics in video game journalism are members of the aforementioned #burgersandfries blokes, since this was all done as cover for harassing ZQ.
• The "Actually, it's about ethics in journalism" Alligators. Provided that we're not talking about the #burgersandfries folks creating a false flag and pure MRA folks, you're dealing with a grab bag of people with nebulous ideas about the "movement" with which they've affiliated themselves. Some think that game journalists are in a conspiracy against "gamers". Some don't believe that games are sexist, or that they are sexist and that's just fine. Some think (rightly) that game journalism has had some scandals and that it's time for a change. Some believe that there's not much trolling going on. While it's an odd mix, it does at least have some arbitrary benchmarks for success. Pixiejenn has put together a list of thingsthat Gamergaters think they've accomplished, there's a helpful KiA post where a guy talks what he perceives as the group's successes, and you can look at this other KiA post where a guy glories in how Gamergaters reported some Twitter harassment of Brianna Wu before she managed to. These are people who think tha #Gamergate as a signifier of "gamers" is a good thing, and that it has made specific inroads on the opposition. Their subreddit is chock-full of one-sidedness and out-of-contxt information, but they've certainly believe that they are doing the right thing.

Which of these groups benefits from press coverage?

Not the blokes and mansplainers. They've been accomplishing their goals for some time by harassing women. Shining a light on them causes people see them for what they are, and -hopefully- might even yield some kind of prosecution for their actions.

Maybe the obscure opportunists and the non-leader leaders, but that's harder to know. Either way, it forces #Gamergate to actually develop a brand under these folks or fall apart. (I mean, when AdAge starts telling advertisers to not pay atttention, you aren't doing great.)

The terrible trolls benefit, but trolls always benefit, so whatevs. Screw them.

The "Actually, it's about ethics in journalism" alligators benefit in the same way as opportunists and the non-leader leaders, in that they learn that the public percieves them as a disorganized rabble. Either the members explode in white-hot rage about this, they realize that maybe this #Gamergate thing isn't a hot idea, or they do successfully make it about ethics in journalism.

Honestly, I don't care if #Gamergate goes away or does get to be co-opted by alligators to actually be about journalism. I just care that women stop getting bile thrown at them or get kicked out of their homes. Hell, if "gamers" manage to organize themselves enough around that principal to see that it happens, I'll be content.

So, to wind up this bag of words: I think that more sunlight is pretty much only good for #Gamergate, in that it will kill it or cause it to reform.

All of that said the one goal that KiA seems to have settled on at present is that it must destroy Gawker because reasons, so one heck of a lot of additional self-reflection is needed.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:02 AM on October 27, 2014 [11 favorites]

>the one goal that KiA seems to have settled on at present is that it must destroy Gawker because reasons

Gawker publicly outed Reddit for hosting forums dedicated to sexualizing underage girls and named the guy running them. That specific guy getting found out was the reason for the huge 'no doxxing/no PII' rule on reddit.

but I'm sure reddit hosting these anti-gawker nuts is just a wacky coincidence.
posted by anti social order at 10:11 AM on October 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

But it means not doing something: when they hold up a hoop, you don't jump through it.

Okay, you know, sometimes metaphors are just really not useful. What does that even mean? We have a concrete situation, here. Exactly what do you think people should be doing differently about it? Is it okay that the USU talk got cancelled, or is that too reactive? Is it okay to contact law enforcement about threats, or is that too reactive? I'm not really saying I think you're going to find those too reactive, charlie don't surf--I'm just saying, clearly there are things happening here where people can't not react. Do you actually think, in light of those things happening, that there's some level of non-reaction that will significantly improve the situation? Where does the line fall? Specifically? Who should have done what differently?

We're not just talking about hypotheticals, here.
posted by Sequence at 10:14 AM on October 27, 2014 [3 favorites]

ghostbikes:
Come on, now. Please do better than that.

A better "GamerGate'r" costume would be just like Wednesday Adam's Serial Killer costume. Look "normal".

That's actually scarier than some caricature.
posted by daq at 10:22 AM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

Okay, you know, sometimes metaphors are just really not useful.

And that strikes me as a great response, because what "they" want is often a metaphorical response -- they don't expect to get a real one.

A simple, clear "you threatened me, which was wrong, and here's why it actually does constitute a threat" is something that, IMO, should be done every time a threat is made. It might enrage the person making the threat or validate a troll, but so what? Other people need to see that, either so they know they're not alone, or so they know that someone actually got hurt and this is not cool.

Whenever the threat is actionable, and assuming the person with standing to do so has reason to believe she's as safe from danger as she thinks she needs to be, it should be taken. That's not 'jumping through a hoop,' IMO -- it's a perfectly appropriate response to someone breaking the fucking law.

I mean, I could go on, but I think the golden rule on this is probably "be real," with a rider of "be (reasonably) safe." I include the latter and will defend it because it's going to really matter to some people who've got a history of being abused.
posted by lodurr at 10:24 AM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

Which of these groups benefits from press coverage? [...] Maybe the obscure opportunists and the non-leader leaders, but that's harder to know.

No, it isn't. These are your cutesy alliterative names for the third-stringers of Breitbart et al, the preexisting right-wing antifeminist culture warriors, right? Pundits and ideological opportunists of that kind are exactly the people who come out of this benefitting from the coverage, since they're now cannily positioned as "balance," there on demand to fill the "pro" side of a thousand shouting-heads-format TV debates and dueling op-eds.
posted by RogerB at 10:25 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

These are your cutesy alliterative names for the third-stringers of Breitbart et al, the preexisting right-wing antifeminist culture warriors, right?

Not quite. These are my cutesy names for the specific folks in that group who have come out in favor of gamergate, and it includes other oddballs. Mike Cernovich is very strange - I have no idea why he jumped on the Gamergate bandwagon, and he's hardly in the business of critiquing culture (tho' he is an MRA dude). I know nothing about TotalBiscuit, but he basically seems to be a youtube-based video game reviewer with some cachet in that community. He's probably not a feminist, but I'm not aware that that's something he's built his career on. He might definitely benefit from becoming the "leader" of gamergate, but I don't think he's trying to push some bigger cultural narrative.

Milo is certainly a Breitbart third-stringer, so sure. But there are folks coming to GG from all over the place. Heck, Eron Gjoni wants to be thought of as a GG leader/mouthpiece, and I have no idea whre he falls in all of this beyond the guy who made a very dumb post.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:32 AM on October 27, 2014

Where Eron Gjoni falls, I have a hunch, is in the place of a future wannabe Frank T. J. Mackey. I think one to three years from now we'll see him selling his story, possibly in the form of lectures or workshops, with the goal of educating people about the real misogyny -- which sin is going to look suspiciously like identifying and calling out misogyny.
posted by lodurr at 10:41 AM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

Popehat: Ten Short Rants About #GamerGate

The 10 point headings, but really just go read the article:
1. 95% Of Label-Based Analysis Is Bullshit.
2. Timing Matters. So Does Your Chosen Vehicle.
3. People Are Going To Say Things You Disagree With, And You Need To Get A Fucking Grip About It.
4. Live by the Sword, Die By The Sword.
5. Your Insult-Parsing Is Bullshit.
6. The Enemy Of Your Enemy Is Not Your Friend.
7. The Media Is Usually Banal, Not Motivated Enough To Be Conspiratorial, And Not Your Life Coach.
8. Women, Minorities, and LGBT People Are Not Magic.
9. Stop Trying To Be A Special Snowflake.
10. On Threats.

posted by Theta States at 10:41 AM on October 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

Exactly what do you think people should be doing differently about it? Is it okay that the USU talk got cancelled, or is that too reactive?

When someone says cancel your talk or else, and you cancel it; when someone says run and hide because we're coming for you, and you run and hide, you are teaching your opponents exactly what tactics will defeat you.
posted by charlie don't surf at 10:50 AM on October 27, 2014

That, or you're taking responsible steps to ensure the safety of your audience (case 1) and your family / self (case 2). But yeah, we should all always stand up to highly graphic threats of terrible violence, regardless of the potential cost.
posted by lodurr at 10:52 AM on October 27, 2014 [9 favorites]

When someone says cancel your talk or else, and you cancel it; when someone says run and hide because we're coming for you, and you run and hide, you are teaching your opponents exactly what tactics will defeat you.

I hope you can clarify this, because as written it sounds like pure victim blaming.
posted by murphy slaw at 10:53 AM on October 27, 2014 [9 favorites]

"Don't turn tail and run" is a really easy position to take when you're not the one being threatened.
posted by palomar at 10:55 AM on October 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

When someone says cancel your talk or else, and you cancel it

You do realize that was a situation where PEOPLE WOULD BE ABLE TO CARRY GUNS AND SIT IN THE AUDIENCE, right? And the police were legally unable to stop that?

I'm sorry, but critiquing women for being unwilling to give a talk while people with guns were sitting in the audience in front of them - after, mind, two years of death threats - is really unreasonable.

Her getting shot would have given them what they wanted, too.
posted by Deoridhe at 10:59 AM on October 27, 2014 [11 favorites]

"Don't turn tail and run" is a really easy position to take when you're not the one being threatened.

Yes, I know. But there must be another way that doesn't empower your opponents. Maybe Sarkeesian could have given her talk by teleconference, just to show that her message can't be stopped.
posted by charlie don't surf at 11:02 AM on October 27, 2014

Sarkeesian has been giving talks under death threats for years now. The only difference with this one was that additional security measures couldn't be taken because of Utah's concealed carry law.
posted by Deoridhe at 11:02 AM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

I really don't think the problem here is that Anita Sarkeesian isn't doing enough.
posted by almostmanda at 11:04 AM on October 27, 2014 [12 favorites]

Yeah, if someone claims they're going to kill you, you believe them. You take it seriously. Especially considering the organized, concerted invective - the GG folks have been loudly wondering why no-one has rid them of that meddlesome priest.
posted by Slap*Happy at 11:06 AM on October 27, 2014

My first thought when I heard that she'd canceled, and before I understood why, was that she must have felt there was a risk to the audience. Because canceling was very unlike her. When I understood why, I thought, 'that must have been a hard decision to make.' Because I was pretty sure she'd have preferred to 'not give them what they want.'

I never thought she'd done the wrong thing.
posted by lodurr at 11:07 AM on October 27, 2014

CLEARLY she is not actually Magneto, how dare she, clearly a fake gamer girl
posted by jetlagaddict at 11:08 AM on October 27, 2014

But there must be another way that doesn't empower your opponents.

I can appreciate the idea of looking for the just and righteous approach to responding to bad behavior that I think is what you're ultimately getting at, but I don't think you're approaching this in a remotely empathetic way in your framing here.

The idea that the top priority for someone should be Not Empowering Their Opponents when they didn't even opt in to the whole oppositional dynamic and it's not what their work is about is silly and dangerous and adding another no-win dilemma for them. It's not Anita Sarkeesian's job to stare down a bullet just to make us feel better about standing up to bullshit; it's certainly not our job to tell her she's failing to fight the fight sufficiently correctly for not doing that.

Justice and righteousness are good goals but most people—even people who have been as brave and stubborn in the face of unjust, unrighteous bullshit as Sarkeesian has—still have to live with compromise, and compromise to have a livable life. To criticize that is to come off as blustering and out of touch with the reality that these are real people, not abstract narrative ideals.

All of that, all of that, being aside from the fact that her opponents in this case are a teeming, unaccountable loose federation of people who can't even agree among themselves what the goalposts are or where they're located. When half a dozen factions want half a dozen things that don't align, the balancing act of doing-nothing-empowering gets more and more restrictive. By embracing a "yes, but don't empower them" stance you're asking a tremendous amount, and you're asking for it from a safe remove of people who don't have the advantage of that distance and safety.
posted by cortex at 11:13 AM on October 27, 2014 [16 favorites]

When someone says cancel your talk or else, and you cancel it; when someone says run and hide because we're coming for you, and you run and hide, you are teaching your opponents exactly what tactics will defeat you.

It's a shame she isn't bulletproof? I am really impressed with people who give talks after death threats, but I don't think they're bad people if they instead say, "You know, maybe I don't want to die over sexism in video games."
posted by jeather at 11:18 AM on October 27, 2014 [5 favorites]

When someone says cancel your talk or else, and you cancel it; when someone says run and hide because we're coming for you, and you run and hide, you are teaching your opponents exactly what tactics will defeat you.

Yep, getting coverage in every mainstream media outlet about how gamergaters are a bunch of lunatics was absolutely a total defeat.
posted by empath at 11:31 AM on October 27, 2014 [8 favorites]

Yes cortex, as usual, you are entitled to disagree with my framing. Yes, if your opponents want you dead, you do not empower them by dying. Nobody is asking for martyrs. Perhaps I am an optimist in thinking there is a way to take the high road. But you can understand the frustration of watching smart people like Sarkeesian and Wu being manipulated by stupid trolls.

When half a dozen factions want half a dozen things that don't align, the balancing act of doing-nothing-empowering gets more and more restrictive.

Divide and conquer.
posted by charlie don't surf at 11:37 AM on October 27, 2014

But you can understand the frustration of watching smart people like Sarkeesian and Wu being manipulated by stupid trolls.

That's a really bizarre take on what they're doing. The only reason most people know who they are is because of their enemies.
posted by empath at 11:45 AM on October 27, 2014 [3 favorites]

Sarkeesian and Wu are still doing their work, or trying to, in the face of extreme adversity to put it mildly, and doing what's necessary to protect their own lives in the process. I don't see how that's NOT taking the high road. I think it's really weird to insist that someone dealing with the level of harassment they're dealing with should just ignore the harassment because you personally think that's the best course of action. You're discounting their entire lived experience because you can't relate to it, and that's not okay.
posted by palomar at 11:47 AM on October 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

I think that dressing as Gamergate for Hallowe'en would probably involve dressing as something else entirely, and when people say "Oh, nice Michael Myers costume", angrily insisting that you are dressed as ethics in video game journalism.

This is the first time I've wanted to wear a Halloween costume in twenty-four years.
posted by winna at 11:48 AM on October 27, 2014 [10 favorites]

When half a dozen factions want half a dozen things that don't align, the balancing act of doing-nothing-empowering gets more and more restrictive.

Divide and conquer.

You're supposed to divide the enemy, not yourself.
posted by Lemurrhea at 11:51 AM on October 27, 2014

But there must be another way that doesn't empower your opponents.

I have faint hope that the public profile of this incident will result in a meaningful investigation by the FBI that will ferret out the cowards making these threats, subject them to prosecution, and leave them open to civil lawsuits by the victims.

At least, that's how we do it in the real world.
posted by dhartung at 11:52 AM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

charlie don't surf: "But there must be another way that doesn't empower your opponents"

Ah. But, why must there be? This feels a little too close to a "just-world hypothesis"-esque reading of the world. Why should there always be good options? Sometimes you only have bad options and you have to pick the least bad.
posted by mhum at 11:53 AM on October 27, 2014 [10 favorites]

palomar, I never said they should ignore the harassment. I said that they should think strategically, not tactically. The gamergaters are a bunch of tiny factions of terrorist guerillas. Do you want to win the battle and lose the war?

Why should there always be good options? Sometimes you only have bad options and you have to pick the least bad.

Perhaps a better model is counterinsurgency.

Where the counterinsurgent differs from other actors is largely a matter of intent. Like other players, we seek to maximize our survivability and influence, and extend the space which we control. But unlike some other players (the insurgents, for example) our intent is to reduce the system’s destructive, combative elements and return it to its “normal” state of competitive interaction.

If this sounds soft, non-lethal and non-confrontational, it is not: this is a life-and-death competition in which the loser is marginalized, starved of support and ultimately destroyed.. Marginalizing and out-competing a range of challengers, to achieve control over the overall socio-political space in which the conflict occurs, is the true aim.
posted by charlie don't surf at 12:00 PM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

The gamergaters are a bunch of tiny factions of terrorist guerillas. Do you want to win the battle and lose the war?

This doesn't seem to be an apt comparison. What's the "war" here?
posted by Going To Maine at 12:07 PM on October 27, 2014

Time to lighten the mood with more accurate metaphors via comics! :D

A comic about Seagulls
posted by edZio at 12:10 PM on October 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

Also, if we do choose to adopt a counterinsurgency model, here's one way I could imagine responding to death threats:

• Maximize public safety.
• Diminish or eliminate the material impact of the threat.
• Impact the public trust in the insurgent faction, e.g. by ensuring that the public is aware of their dangerous and violent tactics.

Oddly enough, that looks a lot like what Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian are doing.
posted by lodurr at 12:11 PM on October 27, 2014 [3 favorites]

The big point here, is that the people under threat are already doing everything we can reasonably expect them to do -- and in some cases, a lot more. So what's the problem?
posted by lodurr at 12:12 PM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

Sarkeesian isn't a battalion commander, and this is not a guerrilla war. I get that everyone wants analogies, but sometimes they all suck.

My recollection of the threat against her Utah talk is that it also involved threats to the audience. What is she supposed to do about that, and why is it her job?

Perhaps I am an optimist in thinking there is a way to take the high road.

I do admire the optimism. I do not admire your insistence that there must be such a road, and you know what it is, and judging that someone who doesn't follow it is somehow failing.
posted by rtha at 12:13 PM on October 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

I said that they should think strategically, not tactically.

You're making a TON of assumptions about what Sarkeesian and Wu are doing. You're not privy to anything but their most public of actions, and you have no earthly clue what else they're doing besides trying to continue their work as best they can. Maybe instead of making all these assumptions, you could just... stop.
posted by palomar at 12:15 PM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

So what's the problem?

They're not doing it with enough keyboard-commando militarism, apparently.
posted by RogerB at 12:23 PM on October 27, 2014

You're making a TON of assumptions about what Sarkeesian and Wu are doing. You're not privy to anything but their most public of actions, and you have no earthly clue what else they're doing besides trying to continue their work as best they can. Maybe instead of making all these assumptions, you could just... stop.

gamergate is not going to just stop. They use public media stunts to radicalize any faction that will fight on their behalf. They succeeded. Maybe you should stop trying to silence people who are on your side, and instead, at least recognize that we are all are trying to find some way to help Sarkeesian and Wu (and everyone else) continue their work without having to deal with terrorists destabilizing their world.
posted by charlie don't surf at 12:30 PM on October 27, 2014

They use public media stunts to radicalize any faction that will fight on their behalf.

I really don't know what you're referring to here, & I figure that you must be perceiving this situation very differently from myself. Can you clarify? What factions? Who has been radicalized?
posted by Going To Maine at 12:34 PM on October 27, 2014

Have you considered that they may be directed by their local and federal law enforcement not to take certain actions, either for their safety or as part of a potential sting/bust?
posted by zombieflanders at 12:35 PM on October 27, 2014

recognize that we are all are trying to find some way to help Sarkeesian and Wu

There is not one single person in this thread, including you, who has enough information about the non-public information about their particular situations to be actually helpful. You imagine this fantasy that your suggestions are ones that A) can't have occurred to them; B) must be relevant and based on accurate information.

All of us could do better with less of the assumptions that we know the Way to Make This Stop. We don't, and there is no one way, or even several ways, that will make determined and unhinged people from being less determined and more hinged.
posted by rtha at 12:40 PM on October 27, 2014 [8 favorites]

#gamergate, by the numbers
posted by nadawi at 12:43 PM on October 27, 2014 [6 favorites]

Maybe you should stop trying to silence people who are on your side...

Ahem.
posted by lodurr at 12:59 PM on October 27, 2014

There is not one single person in this thread, including you, who has enough information about the non-public information about their particular situations to be actually helpful.

gamergate is a bunch of trolls trying to manipulate public opinion with public media. We are all part of the public. gamergaters are trying to take control of the public dialogue. Obviously they have succeeded.

As I just quoted upthread:

Marginalizing and out-competing a range of challengers, to achieve control over the overall socio-political space in which the conflict occurs, is the true aim.
posted by charlie don't surf at 1:03 PM on October 27, 2014

Andy Baio's analysis (linked by nadawi, above) is both unsurprising and refreshingly empirical. I found it particularly neat that he reached out to Brandwatch, one professional to another, to clarify the meaning of the language in their Newsweek analysis.
posted by lodurr at 1:08 PM on October 27, 2014 [3 favorites]

I think it's time to stop engaging Chicken Little.
posted by palomar at 1:11 PM on October 27, 2014 [3 favorites]

charlie don't surf: gamergaters are trying to take control of the public dialogue. Obviously they have succeeded.

Not seeing that. Perhaps you could explain your claim? Is it that by "control" you mean "make sure that a lot of people are talking about them"?
posted by lodurr at 1:11 PM on October 27, 2014

gamergate is a bunch of trolls trying to manipulate public opinion with public media. We are all part of the public. gamergaters are trying to take control of the public dialogue. Obviously they have succeeded.

There are people who are looking at what gamergate is doing and blaming it on the women they are targeting for not doing the right things, like not give a talk in Utah for example, that is for sure.
posted by Deoridhe at 1:15 PM on October 27, 2014 [5 favorites]

gamergate is a bunch of trolls trying to manipulate public opinion with public media.

We're in pretty different spots about the aims of #Gamergate and their successes. Have you visited KiA? The gaters there seem to have pretty clear goals of boycott & such, not simply getting attention. As to "manipulating public opinion with public media", it seems like the vast majority of the media opinion is critical. Do you think that a particular message is coming through it that would lead folks to their side?
posted by Going To Maine at 1:20 PM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

There are people who are looking at what gamergate is doing and blaming it on the women they are targeting....

While it's hard to debate the reflexive identity "misogynistic assholes are misogynistic assholes", I'd hardly equate that with victory for the gamergaters. They have done a profoundly poor job of controlling the narrative beyond their relatively tiny community, except for groups that have been traditionally anti-women and very much anti-video game, and most of their boycott success have been overwrought or quickly reversed when the marketing department began to develop an understanding of what kind of mongolian clusterfuck they just hitched their wagon to.

I can't say for anyone else, but all I know is if I was calling the shots a little organization called "Advanced Micro Devices" the "Seriously guys, what the fuck crawled up your ass?" ad campaign would be in full swing right about now.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 1:42 PM on October 27, 2014

We're in pretty different spots about the aims of #Gamergate and their successes. Have you visited KiA? The gaters there seem to have pretty clear goals of boycott & such, not simply getting attention. As to "manipulating public opinion with public media", it seems like the vast majority of the media opinion is critical. Do you think that a particular message is coming through it that would lead folks to their side?

There have been so many comments that people aren't looking at the top of this page, and the subject of the FPP, so let me excerpt it here..

Social researcher Jennifer Allaway examines the ways in which #GamerGate functions as a hate group..she identifies four essential elements to any hate group:

the leadership which originally inspired the movement,
the recruitment strategy it uses to appeal to insecure and impressionable gamers,
the social-psychological techniques by which it spreads its message and enflames its members' beliefs,
and, finally, the process by which it dehumanizes its victims, and turns them into targets whose attacking earns group praise.

They're not trying to recruit people like you and me. They're trying to recruit people they can radicalize into attacking their chosen victims. You and I may see overwhelmingly bad publicity and criticism, but the message is polarizing and incited a lot of people to align with the gamergaters.
posted by charlie don't surf at 1:47 PM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

You seem to be moving the goalposts around.
posted by lodurr at 1:53 PM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

yes, and in the long run, what's in it for those who get radicalized? - what changes?

the simple truth is, for the more casual people who aren't in it for the lulz or the butt-hurt, there's nothing there
posted by pyramid termite at 1:54 PM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

They're not trying to recruit people like you and me. They're trying to recruit people they can radicalize into attacking their chosen victims. You and I may see overwhelmingly bad publicity and criticism, but the message is polarizing and incited a lot of people to align with the gamergaters.

I'd agree that the message is polarizing, but by that same token I'd say that Allaway's article itself was polarizing -no GGers (or potential GGers) were going to be happy to be called a hate group- and yet it was worthwhile to publish the story. Sometimes it's okay to risk knocking few candidate members into the enemy camp in order to better drive home the truth the organization is an anarchic minority that should be squished.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:56 PM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

#gamergate, by the numbers

Wow, that is fantastic analysis! Really well-done. I might take a look at his data if I get some spare time. Does anyone have any particular questions I could try to answer?

I just pulled it into R and apparently the variables include:

timestamp
tweet text
username
user description
account creation date
default profile?
default image (egg)?
follower count
friend count
tweet count
if a retweet: retweeted user
how many times retweeted
posted by dialetheia at 1:57 PM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

woah: Gamergate Supporters Partied at a Strip Club This Weekend by Adrian Chen
posted by Theta States at 2:00 PM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

From that: "I wasn't as aroused as I expected to be....Guess all that porn got to me."
posted by lodurr at 2:04 PM on October 27, 2014

Sometimes it's okay to risk knocking few candidate members into the enemy camp in order to better drive home the truth the organization is an anarchic minority that should be squished.

The counterinsurgency article I linked to calls that "Spreading Democracy." Normality will be restored.
posted by charlie don't surf at 2:10 PM on October 27, 2014

I note that the party at the strip club was sparked by the fact that the guy who founded 8-chan is moving from Brooklyn to the Philippines. And I can't help but wonder - what criminal harrassment investigation might he be trying to dodge?....
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:12 PM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

I like how all those goofballs could talk about was eeeeevil SJWs trying to enact change. Nary a mention of the party line on ethics in journalism.
posted by palomar at 2:13 PM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

Sometimes it's okay to risk knocking few candidate members into the enemy camp in order to better drive home the truth the organization is an anarchic minority that should be squished.

The counterinsurgency article I linked to calls that "Spreading Democracy." Normality will be restored

So are you proposing that no mainstream press outlets should mention the existence of gamergate?
posted by Going To Maine at 2:14 PM on October 27, 2014

So are you proposing that no mainstream press outlets should mention the existence of gamergate?

That is a lovely straw man there. I said that articles like the NYTimes editorial are spreading the gg message more widely than gg ever could. There is a big difference between twits on Twitter and the editorial board of The Newspaper Of Record.
posted by charlie don't surf at 2:35 PM on October 27, 2014

Yeah, I'm thinking you read a totally different article than the rest of us did, dude.
posted by palomar at 2:44 PM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

There is a big difference between twits on Twitter and the editorial board of The Newspaper Of Record.

Sure, it's a bit of a strawman, & thanks for clarifying. But I guess I'm still muddled.
The FPP articlewas on Jezebel, and Gmergate has beenall over the Gawker sites. In the wake of the Brianna Wu thing and the USU threat there have been articles in NYMag, stories on NPR, coverage (finally) on the major gaming news sites, interviews on MSNBC.

When is it appropriate for something like this to get a passing mention in the New York Times, a paper that routinely covers video games in its Entertainment section? It seems like this is very definitely news, and something that should be reported on, and that it's good to get some op-eds about. I can't think you're saying that the Times shouldn't editorialize about hate groups. So when (if ever) would it have been right for the times to step in, & what should it have said?
posted by Going To Maine at 2:47 PM on October 27, 2014

Also, as a point of clarification, the op-ed wasn't by the editorial board. It was by by Chris Suellentrop, a reporter who covers games at the Times.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:52 PM on October 27, 2014 [2 favorites]

wow, that article linked by Theta States is, um... well it sure is something.

I mean, wow. The line from the girl "had the idea that most 8channers were misogynistic creeps. But so far, she’d found everyone “super, super nice" just drives it home. Yes, they are "nice" in person. But that does not stop them from threatening to rape or kill someone online, because the boards they "play" on are all about anonymity. Online, they believe "you are what you post."

That's just fucking scary. Reminds me of the Vonnegut novel Mother Night. Best quote from that book (and also movie, starring Nick Nolte): "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

There is so much truth to that statement, and these fools don't realize that.
posted by daq at 2:54 PM on October 27, 2014 [9 favorites]

Friday night at the Show Palace Gentlemen’s Club in Long Island City, Queens, a high school senior named Dieter wearing a striped blue button-down tucked into creased khakis slumped in a plush red chair, underwhelmed by his first-ever strip club experience. “I’m not as aroused as I expected. I pretty much had a woman shove a vagina in my face and it did nothing,” he said. “I guess all the porn got to me.”

in journalism school my professors said that if you're gonna lead with a quote, lead with a really effective quote

welp
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 3:24 PM on October 27, 2014 [6 favorites]

That's from Theta States's link, obviously. Sorry for not making that explicit.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 3:32 PM on October 27, 2014

Also, as a point of clarification, the op-ed wasn't by the editorial board. It was by by Chris Suellentrop, a reporter who covers games at the Times.

The bottom of that article says Chris Suellentrop is a former editor for the Op-Ed page. Op-Ed is independent of the news side, I haven't read any gg coverage from the news side.
posted by charlie don't surf at 4:55 PM on October 27, 2014

The bottom of that article says Chris Suellentrop is a former editor for the Op-Ed page.

So it was an opinion piece by their video games columnist, printed on page SR1, that is: the Sunday Review section which lets lots of writers write opinion / discursive pieces as part of the NYT's Sunday slab of a paper. Other similarly-classified "Opinion" pieces in that section on that day: "The Meaning of Fulfillment"; "The Dangers of Eating Late at Night", "Why I Lose All My Jewelry".

charlie don't pedant, because you're not pedanting very well.
posted by holgate at 5:06 PM on October 27, 2014

This is not just "a guy who writes about games" who wrote an OpEd. I'm not trying to make any "ethics in journalism" point here, I'm just noting that this is definitely a hot-button issue and it is not surprising that the Editorial Board would get one of their own to write it.
posted by charlie don't surf at 5:15 PM on October 27, 2014

I'm just noting that this is definitely a hot-button issue

Like "Why I Lose All My Jewelry"?

and it is not surprising that the Editorial Board would get one of their own to write it.

That's drawing conclusions about the Sunday Review's commissioning process right out of your gamergate.
posted by holgate at 5:37 PM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

Mod note: This whole back-and-forth is feeling really drawn out at this point, maybe let's just let it drop.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:42 PM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

AJ+ predicts the comments that would ensue from a GamerGate clip, and they're absolutely right.
posted by divabat at 7:26 PM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

Something just occurred to me about that GG strip club party... the article points out that with a few exceptions the GG kids ignored the dancers and just sat around talking about gaming and looking at their laptops. So... why'd they need to take up space at a strip club, if they weren't going to patronize the dancers? Were they actually trying to prevent the dancers from making money that night, or was that just an unintended bonus?
posted by palomar at 9:46 PM on October 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

So I would absolutely suck as a double agent, but you know what I'm really currious about? Imagine there was a game where you took "the most well respected female icon in video gaming" with half a dozen titles under her belt and then make her frail and brittle with daddy issues out the wazoo and have her "freak out at the sight of the recurring boss monster which she has killed about 50 squintillion times" but made up for all this with reduced scope and shallwor gameplay. Well, as luck would have it, we have such a game - Metroid Other M. But don't take my word on this iissue.

What I wonder is, if someone who was really well versed in the Metroid franchise wormed his (or her) way into the GG crowd by retweeting their BS for a while, and then started talking about how great Other M was and how the "feminazis" ruined it for everyone and made a big counter-factual deal about how faithful it was to the original series and all the expanded gameplay and so on what the response would be. What percentage of these hardcore gamers would get that they were absolutely being trolled and what percentage are actually Lindsey Graham trying to make more angry white guys.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 10:00 PM on October 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

Were they actually trying to prevent the dancers from making money that night, or was that just an unintended bonus?

Probably neither. My understanding is that with the possible exception of bachelor parties, groups of guys are always not super good for strip clubs. They tend to sit around and watch without buying dances. It's the singletons that go in to get lap dances. The article is just making them sound as dumb as possible.

Which honestly isn't that difficult. Kind of like shooting fish in a barrel of fish inside another, larger, fish barrel.
posted by Justinian at 12:31 AM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Stormfront or GamerGate?
posted by Going To Maine at 5:23 AM on October 28, 2014

Were they actually trying to prevent the dancers from making money that night, or was that just an unintended bonus?

The way they handled Zoe Quinn's history of sex work makes the answer to this pretty obvious, right? They don't see strippers as real people.
posted by almostmanda at 5:24 AM on October 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

HULK IS SO SORRY TO HAVE TO PUT IT LIKE THIS, BUT THERE IS LITERALLY NOTHING OF SUBSTANCE BEHIND GAMERGATE. THERE JUST ISN'T. HULK KNOWS YOU MIGHT DISAGREE, BUT THERE IS NO EASY WAY TO PUT IT. THERE SIMPLY ISN'T. AND HULK KNOWS YOU FEEL THAT THERE IS. HULK KNOWS THAT YOU MAY EVEN BELIEVE THAT THERE IS. BUT TO SAY IT ONE LAST TIME: THERE ISN'T.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:19 AM on October 28, 2014 [13 favorites]

Further down:

WHAT HAS ESSENTIALLY HAPPENED IS THAT WE HAVE TAKEN A CULT BEHAVIORAL APPROACH TO DISCUSSION AND PHILOSOPHY - NORMALLY A REALLY DIFFICULT THING TO INSTILL INTO PEOPLE AND REQUIRES ISOLATION, DIRECT PROGRAMMING AND FULL-ON CULTURAL SEPARATION - AND TURNED IT INTO SOMETHING THAT HAS BEEN CASUALLY LEARNED ON THE INTERNET'S PROVERBIAL STREETS THROUGH THE ORGANIC PROCESS OF BEING A PART OF VIDEO GAME'S MOST TOXIC SUBCULTURE.

THIS IS ONE OF THE SCARIEST THINGS HULK HAS EVER SEEN.
posted by rory at 7:34 AM on October 28, 2014 [14 favorites]

That Film Crit Hulk article was fucking awesome.
Like, I want to buy Film Crit Hulk a week of beers.
posted by daq at 7:46 AM on October 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

Read to the end now myself, and yes. Yes it is.

IN THE END, HUMANITY IS A GROUP PEOPLE WHO RUN TOWARD THE EXPLOSIONS TO HELP.
posted by rory at 7:58 AM on October 28, 2014 [3 favorites]

Ummm @OpGamerGate is looking pretty ominous these days.
posted by Theta States at 8:33 AM on October 28, 2014

Just a public service reminder, DO NOT look at @OpGamerGate if you are:

• At work
• around people who might be traumatized by images of sex with disemboweled corpses
• disturbed by sites displaying a preponderance of images that are calculated to transgress against fairly basic human proscriptions, such as sex with disemboweled corpses

posted by lodurr at 8:36 AM on October 28, 2014

Just a public service reminder, DO NOT look at @OpGamerGate if you are:
•around people who might be traumatized by images of sex with disemboweled corpses

What? They have 3 images: 1 from South Park, 2 from The Matrix.
posted by Theta States at 8:59 AM on October 28, 2014

The images weren't posted by OpGamerGate. Rather, don't search Twitter for #OpGamerGate
posted by Going To Maine at 9:03 AM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

They must really be upset if they're already deploying gruesome images before the account has even done anything.
posted by almostmanda at 9:18 AM on October 28, 2014

It's unclear who the "they" is here. As one of the people who saw the images, they were from some random accounts, probably hoping to just get in some appropriate, anonymous style trolling of people searching for the tag.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:27 AM on October 28, 2014

Not sure if this video has already been posted, but it's hilarious. It's a guy providing commentary over GG videos. Warning: utterly NSFW language, features the quoted racism and sexism of GGers.
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:31 AM on October 28, 2014

Rather, don't search Twitter for #OpGamerGate

Yes, better, thanks.

I'm not easily affected by that kind of stuff, and what was coming up a couple of days ago on #OpGamerGate was pretty fucking horrible.
posted by lodurr at 9:32 AM on October 28, 2014

New NYT article: It’s Game Over for ‘Gamers’ -- Anita Sarkeesian on Video Games’ Great Future

I like how hopeful and concise it is.
posted by Theta States at 10:11 AM on October 28, 2014

How to End Gamergate: "If South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission can do it, I don’t think I’m asking so much."
posted by rory at 10:26 AM on October 28, 2014

Wow, that's grandiose.
posted by lodurr at 10:44 AM on October 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

Ugh, that "How the End Gamergate" thing was full of fail. Like, bad analysis, accusations of "obtuse social theorizing" and all kinds of just utter fail on thinking through the problem.

1939 called, they need this guy to stand in for Chamberlain. Appeasement does not solve problems.
posted by daq at 11:33 AM on October 28, 2014 [5 favorites]

That article by David Auerbach is an interesting parallel read with this loooong piece on Medium by a Gamergater explaining to Jason Schreier of Kotaku what needs to happen for Gamergate to be sated.

(Although the Medium piece has the endearing characteristic of referring to staff members as "staffs" and what it sees as clickbait articles as "clickbaits", which is reminding me a lot of Clarence Beeftank's habit of refering to ounces of milk in the plural, as in "a glass of milks".)

Basically, the argument goes, if video games journalism just apologizes for being terrible and fires everyone who has been mean about Gamergate, while reassuring everyone in Gamergate that they are great people, all will be forgiven.
posted by running order squabble fest at 11:38 AM on October 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

No entirely sure of who Mister Forks is (seen him on twitter during these discussions), but his responses to all this is fairly well done:
posted by edZio at 11:48 AM on October 28, 2014

Another Slate Fail (and worse clickbait than a piece claiming "gamers are dead"), but it gave the site a chance to engage a few of its more entertaining habits, like false equivalency (Justine Tunney and Julian Assange are the same as Chris Kluwe and Suey Park?) and a chance to bash Gawker (do I smell ad revenue jealousy here?). The only way to "end GamerGate" can be summed up in 24 words: "Honest and sincere 'Moderates' who want to change gaming journalism MUST denounce GamerGate and create their own #hashtagmovement which enforces its ethical conduct."
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:54 AM on October 28, 2014

Gamergate will never end. There is no group or representative to negotiate with or even a coherent set of demands to serve as the basis of a negotiation. Consider the birther movement against Obama. They demanded documents, they got documents and then moved the goal posts.
posted by humanfont at 12:00 PM on October 28, 2014 [6 favorites]

Auerbach was right about one thing: The only path to resolution comes through splitting the movement.

Which eventually will happen, when the fellow-travelers realize (or admit to themselves) who's been driving the train.
posted by lodurr at 12:24 PM on October 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I think that's true. One of a number of odd things about that Auerbach piece is the argument that, if the games media (and Gawker) just offers heartfelt apologies and terminate all who have angered Gamergate, the movement (sorry, consumer revolt) will fragment. It's already fragmenting. Right now Totalbiscuit and "Mr Fart" are tug-of-loving over who gets to be the prophet of the People of the Gate. Totalbiscuit will win, because he has a greater media presence and is more useful to the cause despite his refusal to commit entirely, but the defeated champion will take a bunch of the more vehement and harassy types with him.

Over time I imagine Gamergate is going to reduce back to the people who harass Anita Sarkeesian, who harassed Jennifer Hepler and Jade Raymond and who will continue to harass women in games in the future.

At a certain point, having packed on members at the start and now shedding them, it reaches homeostasis. There is literally nothing that any single entity could do to appease the hardcore, and there is little chance that the AAA games industry will decide as a whole to expel all feminists and insist on total editorial control over the games media under threat of an advertising blackout, while the media compliantly purges itself - which would just be the start of the required changes.
posted by running order squabble fest at 12:26 PM on October 28, 2014 [7 favorites]

Mostly unrelated, but a review of the webcomic "The Last Halloween" reminded me that there was an early-in-the-story long-before-gg cameo appearance of Chris Kluwe facing a crowd of reporters first asking him if his interest in video games takes away his focus from football, leading to someone asking "how do video games work", immediately followed by swarms of wasps/hornets emerging from the heads of some of the most clueless reporters. No sign if Chris escaped the wasps/hornets, but still an odd foreshadowing in some ways of the whole #GG mess.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:48 PM on October 28, 2014

Brianna Wu might (might, MIGHT, maybe, gods be kind) making a game in which we can play our favorite women fighting monsters. 8D She was talking (on her podcast) about Unreal Engine, which apparently is something game developy, along with getting the permission of the women she wanted to include. Her Rev 60 game is completely awesome, so while I want the sequel to that (OMG WHUT HAPPENS??????) I'd be willing to wait it out for a completely fsking awesome game where I can play as some of my favorite heros. Better yet - four to a party! OMG, that would be so! awesome!
posted by Deoridhe at 1:02 PM on October 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

The Unreal Engine is just the technology used to build the FPS games under the Unreal banner (PvP version is Unreal Tournament).
posted by dhartung at 1:07 PM on October 28, 2014

A reminder that there's a newer thread where many of the same links and points are being posted. At this point I don't see a functional difference in topic.
posted by dhartung at 1:17 PM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

yeah. two threads and a meta
posted by twist my arm at 1:23 PM on October 28, 2014

#ThreadGate! Controversy!

I like to think of this as the OG thread.
posted by archagon at 1:38 PM on October 28, 2014

Re. Unreal Engine, it strikes me suddenly that might by why Wu has taken such a disproportionate amount of heat: She makes first-person actioners and appears to be a bona-fide expert on a platform that "core gamers" actually respect. For that reason, I suspect, they regard her as especially "dangerous."
posted by lodurr at 2:11 PM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

It could be? At least in her narrative, she seems to have really just picked up the heat after the Twitter thing. Also, apparently her podcast -which griped about Gamergate for some time- is very pro-equality in games. Going by this song-a-day song, she maybe has always adopted a "butch" public face. I think that that outward pose might have been a bigger deal.

Totally subjectively, I'd say that her up-front claiming expertise at Unreal can play into that because it can be interpreted as "stereotypically standoffish" and one aspect of that butch pose. That is, I don't tend to think of other designers emphasizing their skill at one particular toolkit -even though they may well do so- and that by doing so she isn't obeying the expected, abstract guru-ness that most designers have.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:26 PM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

A few articles I've come across recently (disregard if they've already been linked in this or one of the previous threads):

Ravishly: GamerGate's Economy Of Harassment And Violence
NYMag: It’s Not Censorship to Ignore You
RH Reality Check: How to Talk to Your Guy Friends About Not Threatening to Rape and Murder Women on the Internet
posted by Lexica at 3:11 PM on October 28, 2014 [6 favorites]

Uh... she just published a game on Unreal Engine. It's called Revolution 60, and it's awesome and fun and she's already said she'll address my one critique of it, so I am one happy gamer. According to the load up screen when I just loaded the game, it's definitely run on Unreal, as that is the first logo to load. It took her three years; she just finished a kickstarter to port it to other platforms.

I don't think she's being targeted, threatened with graphic murder of herself and her husband, and threatened with rape because she sometimes talks about Unreal Engine, though. That seems like reaching, a bit.

She is aggressive, and blunt, and enthusiastic, and a whole lot of fun on Isometric (I highly recommend the show if you want a more nuanced and longstanding understanding of how different women respond to the realities of gaming; plus, it's just a really fun show with engaging people who have strong opinions and a lot of chemistry; they covered Gamergate last week for a while, though you can skip that if you want; Wu gives you the timestamp to do so). While I doubt that is 100% of her, because people don't work like that, nothing in her presentation there indicates that she is acting "butch".

I also, frankly, don't read her as butch. As near as I can tell, she presents as "femme" with traditional feminine characteristics like long hair, cute dresses and skirt outfits, etc... but remains assertive because that's also who she is. This is NOT uncommon in women who have remained in gaming, since they are disproportionately abused and marginalized for years, and so the ones who remain can both tolerate that and give as good as they get.

Kinder and gentler women, like myself, simply drop out of anything multi-player competitive.
posted by Deoridhe at 3:46 PM on October 28, 2014 [5 favorites]

Jim Hines has been doxxed:

> Well, well. GamerGate has managed to find my address, phone number, and family info. Just got my first official doxxing threat.
> Ironically, the doxxing threat showed up just as I was posting this: http://www.jimchines.com/2014/10/gamergate-and-diversity/

In response to a question about how many rape and violence threats he's received so far:

> None yet, aside from the implicit threat in asking about my wife (by name) and kids in the email.
> I now have GG folks accusing me of making it up as book-related PR, and demanding to see the email with headers, and/or the FBI report.
> Keep it classy, y'all!
> Whether you agree w/me on stuff or not, what kind of sick person sees a threat to someone's family as an opportunity?
posted by Lexica at 5:13 PM on October 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

Unreal Engine is used by a ton of developers for a ton of genres, not just first person shooters. People have not been harassing her because of her choice of middleware.
posted by aubilenon at 5:18 PM on October 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yeah, My impression was that the Twitter kerfuffle about the gamergate meme with the autistic kid put Brianna Wu in the spotlight.
posted by misha at 5:27 PM on October 28, 2014

misha: " My impression was that the Twitter kerfuffle about the gamergate meme with the autistic kid put Brianna Wu in the spotlight."

It was a stock photo. Let's avoid uncritically repeating the goobergummers' propaganda if we can.
posted by Lexica at 6:43 PM on October 28, 2014 [8 favorites]

The whole Brianna Wu controversy^* is an excellent example of people reacting too quickly on social media and things spiraling out of control.

In addition to the image she shared, there was also some fake tweets sent out from another, now suspended account. The account was convincing enough to fool Brianna Wu into thinking her account was hacked.

This is the reply to the now deleted tweet. Notice the spelling of account name she's replying too. It's @spacekatgaI, not @spacekatgal. Twitter's font rendering makes it difficult to distinguish the I from the l.

All the talk about the subject photo is just gator's trying retroactively justify what happened.

^*Not sure what the right word to use here is.. I don't want to diminish how horrible it was.
posted by papercrane at 7:21 PM on October 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

Ugh. Seconding the call for not thoughtlessly repeating GG propaganda. If you don't have time to fact-check something like that, you shouldn't be posting it.
posted by palomar at 7:30 PM on October 28, 2014 [8 favorites]

Ooh, look. A blog post from Adobe: When Anti-Bullying Efforts Backfire

We continue to receive questions, and because it appears that our silence is causing more harm than good, here is our position clearly articulated:

We are not and have never been aligned with Gamergate. We reject all forms of bullying, including the harassment of women by individuals associated with Gamergate. Every human being deserves respect, regardless of gender, orientation, appearance, personal hobbies or anything else that makes individuals who they are.

posted by palomar at 7:44 PM on October 28, 2014 [3 favorites]

Sorry, I didn't know it was a stock photo! I do know that Brianna Wu didn't even come up with the meme, anyway, just responded to someone on her Twitter feed. And then all hell broke lose.

I'm going to flag my own comment anyway because yeah, I don't want to spread gg propaganda.
posted by misha at 8:19 PM on October 28, 2014

FOcusing on Unreal was probably not a good way to frame my point, which I could better rephrase thus:

The fact that she builds solid FPS and is simultaneously an exemplar of what they most fear could make her particularly dangerous, since she basically comprises a human wedge. She's basically the living example of why feminism won't spoil your fun -- so she has to be stopped.
posted by lodurr at 3:04 AM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

I look forward to a "boycott" of Adobe that involves continued use of MS Paint for all conspiracy images.
posted by almostmanda at 5:43 AM on October 29, 2014 [9 favorites]

This is a bit of a an aside, but Revolution 60, the game released by Wu's studio, isn't actually an FPS. Unreal Engine is used for a lot more than FPS these days, especially on mobile platforms - Apple and Epic are pushing it as the engine of choice for premium iOS action-adventures.

Revolution 60 is third-person, with a mix of QTE-style gameplay and a grid-based real time combat system. It's pretty fun!
posted by running order squabble fest at 6:36 AM on October 29, 2014

Point of note: I have seen a number of gaters on twitter who gloat about the Adobe statement, chalking it up as a WIN FOR GAMERGATE.

The logic goes something like:
1) Adobe is NOT advertising on Gawker. (despite the fact they weren't advertising before)
2) Adobe denounced all bullies, and people bullying using the gamergate tag aren't part of gamergate, because gamergate denounces all bullies too. So Adobe is really just aligning with gamergate.


gamergate gamergate gamergate gamergate gamergate gamergate gamergate wow it's lost meaning.
Did it ever have any?
posted by Theta States at 7:40 AM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

Man. It takes a really special brand of stupid to see a statement from a corporation that flat-out says "We are not and have never been aligned with Gamergate. We reject all forms of bullying, including the harassment of women by individuals associated with Gamergate " and take that as a win for Gamergate.

Conclusion: you guys, these kids are hella stupid.
posted by palomar at 8:01 AM on October 29, 2014

I'm a masochist I guess and still can't stop reading stuff about this - if you want to raise your rage levels, go check out the wikipedia talk pages for gamergate and related pages. It's like 2 or 3 reasonable editors fighting off swarms of single purpose and long-inactive-but-recently-resurrected-for-the-purpose-of-gamergating accounts who are trying to push their invented and gossipy version of the truth. i'm not an active wikipedian so I'm hesitant to actively jump in the fray, but it's really scary to see how enough of them just being present can mean a consensus and alter the truth in tiny bits. it's a very visible aspect of the whole 'gamergate is the new face of the culture wars' thing.

(various feminism, sexism, etc. talk pages are kinda like that too to some extent, though not with the same set of new squabbly users - it's a stark reminder that wikipedia really needs more female editors. would that I weren't so damn shy!! argh!!)
posted by ghostbikes at 8:23 AM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

And in yet another example of Gamergate increasing the public prominence of their targets, Anita Sarkeesian now has a op-ed in the "paper of record", the New York Times, to put on her CV. Entitled "It’s Game Over for ‘Gamers’", it concludes,

As others have recently suggested, the term “gamer” is no longer useful as an identity because games are for everyone. These days, even my mom spends an inordinate amount of time gaming on her iPad. So I’ll take a cue from my younger self and say I don’t care about being a “gamer,” but I sure do love video games.

It'll be interesting to see how the GGer dead-enders spin that into a win for their team.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:40 AM on October 29, 2014 [3 favorites]

If you've already decided that the Times is in the enemy camp, it will serve as validation that the opposition wants to misconstrue you. If you're in the marginal camp, well... not so much.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:48 AM on October 29, 2014

It's obviously a loss for the GG-ers but that doesn't mean Sarkeesian is right about the term "gamer" no longer being useful as an identity. No more than "foodie" isn't a thing because everybody eats or "cinemaphile" isn't a thing because everybody watches film and television. Or capital-F "Fan" even though everybody apparently reads fantasy now.

She can be wrong about that single part and right about everything else like how the GGers are big assholes, of course. But "gamer" is going to continue to be useful for the forseeable future.
posted by Justinian at 8:53 AM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

The difference from "foodie" and "cinemaphile" is that, though people who self-describe with those terms are often obnoxious, they don't form hate-groups and get condemned by the NYT.
posted by lodurr at 9:12 AM on October 29, 2014 [6 favorites]

She can be wrong about that single part and right about everything else like how the GGers are big assholes, of course. But "gamer" is going to continue to be useful for the forseeable future.

Certainly if people didn't think "gamers" were a thing before #Gamergate, they certainly do now...
posted by Going To Maine at 9:20 AM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

Sure, lodurr, but that doesn't mean Sarkeesian is right that there will soon be no use for the gamer identity which was her assertion. That a bunch of gamers are out there being hateful misogynists doesn't change that. Hell, there are plenty of groups that are positively filled with misogynists and looking bad and they stick around.
posted by Justinian at 9:26 AM on October 29, 2014

apparently some giant brained guy in the gator movement has coined "misogamy" to describe their enemies. you know - miso, hate - gamy, gamers - except, misogamy is actually, the hatred of marriage.
posted by nadawi at 9:49 AM on October 29, 2014 [6 favorites]

I'm just saying the comparison is more instructive than apt.

In any case, 'no longer useful' is a pretty vague description. In Alexander's original coinage, it was a way of describing your prospective audience, and in that context, it's a substantially accurate characterization.
posted by lodurr at 9:54 AM on October 29, 2014

I think it will be like atheist where it's still a descriptive term, but if it's prominent in someone's twitter bio without any caveats, I won't feel bad pre-emptively blocking them. So it's definitely still useful as an in-group out-group designation.

But I think Leigh Alexander's point, and at least part of Anita's, was more directed at devs--"gamer" doesn't have to be your target demographic, because you can market games to everyone. And in that sense, yeah, I don't think it's useful anymore.

On preview, yeah, what lodurr said.
posted by almostmanda at 9:57 AM on October 29, 2014 [4 favorites]

I like to imagine that a GGer wished on a monkey's paw for there to be "no more girl gamers". Your wish has been granted, my friend: now almost nobody wants to be a quote-unquote "gamer" at all. Of course, more than ever they will still play and make video games...
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:08 AM on October 29, 2014 [8 favorites]

I think it will be like atheist where it's still a descriptive term, but if it's prominent in someone's twitter bio without any caveats, I won't feel bad pre-emptively blocking them.

This one smarted, because it hits close to home. Thanks to jackasses who self-identify as 'atheist' and make a habit out of being rude to a lot of people over it, there's a significant number of people out there who wouldn't feel bad pre-emptively blocking me if I happened to include the simple fact that I'm an atheist in a profile.
posted by lodurr at 10:57 AM on October 29, 2014 [3 favorites]

Christians that self identify that way are in the same boat.
posted by empath at 11:07 AM on October 29, 2014

Yeah, we can either not go there, or you can explain why in the world you think that's true, after remembering that atheists are less trusted than drug addicts, child molesters and politicians.
posted by lodurr at 11:14 AM on October 29, 2014

Also probably less trusted than gamers. Oof.
posted by Justinian at 11:18 AM on October 29, 2014

Song a day continues to slay: ♫ It's About Ethics In Journalism!! ♫

Meanwhile -no joke- the stickied top post on KiA right now is about how this is "Cultural Marxism"
posted by Going To Maine at 11:39 AM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

Not really familiar with the term, but from what I gather it's pretty much a right-wing conspiracy theory right?
posted by papercrane at 12:02 PM on October 29, 2014

Feh. I still consider myself a gamer, though I have nothing but loathing and contempt for GamerGate.

I grew up with the original Pong home console and my family had an Atari 2600 before we had a color TV. My dad was a regional manager for an arcade and I played free games every Sunday morning for years while he did the weekly collection. I gamed on the Commodore 64. I gamed on PC. I went to cons and played 8 hour Battletech sessions. I gamed on GEnie at 2400 baud when you had to pay by-the-hour connection fees, and started my 20 year long gaming industry career on GEnie too. I've built multiple gaming PCs over the years. I still spend more hours playing games than any other activity besides sleep and work.

I am vague and uncertain about my gender identity and my spirituality -- but I am absolutely certain that I am two things: a musician and a gamer.

And I fully believe that gaming should be able to be enjoyed, made, reviewed and critiqued by anyone who is interested in doing so. I think games have an important place in society both as a mirror to it and an influence over it, and the sort of critique that Anita Sarkeesian has been doing, and the sort of games that Zoe Quinn have been making, are crucially important.

I am not going to say "I'm not a gamer anymore" because (A) a lot of other people play games too and (B) some asshole misogynist crybaby-bullies are being asshole misogynist crybaby-bullies.
posted by Foosnark at 12:05 PM on October 29, 2014 [3 favorites]

I don't think this has been linked in the thread yet: the Downfall Gamergate parody that I, at least, was waiting for.
posted by jokeefe at 12:11 PM on October 29, 2014 [3 favorites]

That was the perfect place in the clip to use "feminazis."
posted by lodurr at 12:25 PM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

I was reluctant to mention this, since it's only semi-related and way too close to shilling for a product, but I put in an order for this shirt, which I am disappointed to see will probably NOT reach its goal to go into production. So much for "SJWs" taking over the world. The designer is webcomicker Chris Hallbeck, who had more luck with his "Hugs Bison" design (which I wear when I want to get confused stares), and whose only comment on this specific controversy is here.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:29 PM on October 29, 2014

Yeah, we can either not go there, or you can explain why in the world you think that's true, after remembering that atheists are less trusted than drug addicts, child molesters and politicians.

If you conspicuously identify yourself as part of a group which is adversarial to another group, it's pretty reasonable for them to basically ignore what you have to say. But it does cut both ways and non-Christians (and even 'moderate' Christians) will typically look askance at anyone who goes out of their way to identify themselves as 'Christian' online.
posted by empath at 12:44 PM on October 29, 2014

empath: OK, if you want to go there: Unless we're talking specifically about venues where you have to specifically go out of your way to identify as a christian or an atheist, I can see how, as someone who's never experienced being an atheist, you might think that.

But since Facebook, dating sites, and a lot of other places I could dredge up if I wanted to do in fact afford you the opportunity to specify your religion in a publicly visible and often even searchable way, I don't really think this critique holds much water.
posted by lodurr at 12:53 PM on October 29, 2014

I have considered it safer to identify with the Agnostics than the Atheists, which still applies even after my crazy-ex-wife's crazy-uncle attempted to build an organization called "The Society of Evangelical Agnostics".
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:20 PM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

Not really familiar with the term, but from what I gather it's pretty much a right-wing conspiracy theory right?

Pretty much! The kid's menu version is that the Frankfurt School created not just a number of disparate and often conflicting works on popular culture, but also an ongoing conspiracy to take over the media and use it to promote a Marxist agenda.

The full-size version is basically the same, but relates the Frankfurt School to an overarching Jewish conspiracy narrative.
posted by running order squabble fest at 1:21 PM on October 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

even after my crazy-ex-wife's crazy-uncle attempted to build an organization called "The Society of Evangelical Agnostics".

WE DON'T KNOW AND YOU SHOULDN'T KNOW EITHER!
posted by divabat at 1:27 PM on October 29, 2014 [14 favorites]

When I see someone proudly self-identify as Christian, I might roll my eyes a bit. When I see someone proudly self-identify as an atheist (especially an "outspoken atheist" or "unapologetic atheist") I assume they are a person who can't distinguish among discussion, debate, and abuse. I feel this way about "gamer" now, too.

I don't believe in God and I do play video games, FWIW.
posted by almostmanda at 1:30 PM on October 29, 2014 [4 favorites]

the right-wing nature of the idea of "cultural marxism" is funny to me because the basic notion of dealing with cultural issues in a way indebted to marx or later marxist authors does legitimately describe some people's scholarship. I didn't think much of the phrase the first few times because I figured it was a neutral description for that sort of thing.

The reality of what the phrase means is far stupider.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 3:23 PM on October 29, 2014

They're going around parroting Bircher language and can't understand why people think they're idiots.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:33 PM on October 29, 2014 [4 favorites]

Well, when you look up "red pill" on drugs.com, THIS is the first thing that comes up. So the #GGers are just following in the footsteps of Limbaugh.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:25 PM on October 29, 2014

Just heard from the goober in my little gaming circle, Anita Sarkeesian will be on Colbert tonight.
posted by Peccable at 7:40 PM on October 29, 2014

Here's Anita at the desk. (Squee!)

Redditors are going insane....insane! To wit:

Quote:
He should ask her what was the name of the last game she beat
Or what class she played in her last MMO
Or which Final Fantasy is her favorite/least favorite and why
Or which 16/32 bit system was her favorite
I mean, what credentials does she have to be on his show?

Quote:
I am praying they talk about us. Do it steven. Give us a national podium. I dare you. The truth will outshine your dark lies.

Quote:
So, boycott Viacom?
I'm sure we can have Operation Bump Colbert up and running in a couple hours. I think Coke and Toyota might be super receptive to the whole "hey, Colbert said unkind things about us on the air, can you please pull your ads from his show?" line.
This isn't a setback, this is just the beginning!
Respawn!
Respawn!
Respawn!

posted by dejah420 at 7:57 PM on October 29, 2014 [11 favorites]

"The truth will outshine your dark lies"? Oh, honey, bless your heart.
posted by palomar at 8:05 PM on October 29, 2014 [7 favorites]

I mean, what credentials does she have to be on his show?

This is my favorite, like somehow there is an Arbitrator of The Talk Show Chair that catapults guests away for being insufficiently in favor of an iteration of Final Fantasy.
posted by jetlagaddict at 8:09 PM on October 29, 2014 [9 favorites]

i fuckin' bet you that some of these idiots are the same fuckers who hurled abuse at the "sjws" who got #cancelcolbert trending. this schadenfreude is savory and delicious.
posted by nadawi at 8:48 PM on October 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

He should ask her what was the name of the last game she beat
Or what class she played in her last MMO
Or which Final Fantasy is her favorite/least favorite and why
Or which 16/32 bit system was her favorite
I mean, what credentials does she have to be on his show?

Is "gamer" these people's hobby or their full-time job?

Anyway, identity police much? If these people want to "defeat" feminists they might want to take five minutes to study it and stop bringing their intellectual knives to a gun fight.
posted by GuyZero at 9:16 PM on October 29, 2014

In case you missed the segment; The Mary Sue has you covered.
posted by dejah420 at 9:37 PM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

#gamerdorf?
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:38 PM on October 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

1939 called, they need this guy to stand in for Chamberlain. Appeasement does not solve problems.

Hey, don't talk shit about Chamberlain.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:41 PM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

#gamerdorf?

Spectacularly wrong, of course, but slightly amusing nonetheless.
*feels so very, very old*
posted by dhartung at 10:51 PM on October 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

This is is both tortuous and really interesting.

1) Anita Sarkeesian says a whole bunch of games treat women poorly
2) That somehow is received as a direct attack on people who ... like some of those games
3) But if she doesn't play games enough the things she said somehow don't count
posted by aubilenon at 12:59 AM on October 30, 2014 [2 favorites]

Final Fantasy VI is obviously the best one and anyone who answers otherwise is not allowed on my talk show.

It's about Espers in games journalism.
posted by Metroid Baby at 5:06 AM on October 30, 2014 [7 favorites]

#gamerdorf?

Ganondorf, surely?
posted by running order squabble fest at 6:01 AM on October 30, 2014

I've also seen a lot of these same kids FLIPPING OUT over Anita's recent tweet about how we need to address toxic masculinity and help men and boys to prevent more school shootings. They don't have basic reading comprehension, they're unwilling to use Google to look up a simple phrase to see if it's a legit thing before they go on the attack, and the irony is that many of them whine so damn hard about the effects of toxic masculinity on their own lives -- but their knees are jerking so hard, they just go on the attack.

Link here
posted by palomar at 8:28 AM on October 30, 2014 [3 favorites]

The Top 22 Most Ridiculous Things Said by 8channers About Anita Sarkeesian's Appearance on the Colbert Report [NSFW]
posted by rorgy at 8:35 AM on October 30, 2014 [4 favorites]

Arthur Chu: I’m not “that creepy guy from the Internet”: How Gamergate gave the geek community a bad name

Another excellent essay by Chu. It also feels like a better argument for persuading the GG "moderates" to leave the movement than that Auerbach piece. Rather than conceding to whatever "demands" GG is making, we need to show them that it's possible to be loved and accepted as a gamer without buying into the misogyny that underpins the GG movement. As someone who also struggled with not being creepy in his early twenties (albeit not as a gamer), I know that being shown that there's another way--and that it's accessible and not the preserve of an elite--can be really valuable.

Note that I am not talking about the "irreconcilables" in GG: the griefers, the MRAs, the redpillers, etc. Obviously, they're too far gone for persuasion. But if there is a non-trivial number of people who take refuge in the gamer identity out of loneliness or awkwardness or whatever, then I think getting them to abandon GG means addressing that awkwardness and loneliness. In this respect, the gamer identity may not in fact be dead; not because games are no longer limited to a specific subculture (which is true), but because the passions that have helped fuel the gamer identity are still there, and are still in dire need of a healthier expression.
posted by Cash4Lead at 8:49 AM on October 30, 2014 [3 favorites]

Kerfuffle over Anita Sarkeesian daring to deploy the concept of 'toxic masculinity' reminds me yet again of the reaction to Susan Faludi's Stiffed, which was mostly about how late capitalism has in some ways begun to treat women the way it's traditionally treated women. There are particularly sympathetic chapters on men in porn, on Rambo and the life of Sylvester Stallone*, and most powerfully, for me, on Promise Keepers. (She paid particular attention to how the Promise Keepers organization continually exhorted un/underemployed men to spend more and more money on rallies, workshops, tapes and workbooks on how to be more in control of their households.)

But for years if you read the reviews on amazon, she's a man hating c**t. (Most of those seem to have been purged or show up on earlier additions; I couldn't find them. But they were basically about a book other than the one that I read.)

Can't win.

--
*who wasn't too happy with the book -- but I've met a number of people who say they view him much more sympathetically after reading it.
posted by lodurr at 8:51 AM on October 30, 2014 [2 favorites]

Ars has a brief piece about The Colbert Report. Nothing really new, but I decided to try the comments (always a risk I know.) I found this comic, can anyone tell me where it's from?
posted by papercrane at 8:55 AM on October 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

I ran it through Tineye and got this.
posted by palomar at 8:58 AM on October 30, 2014

rorgy: The Top 22 Most Ridiculous Things Said by 8channers About Anita Sarkeesian's Appearance on the Colbert Report [NSFW]

Good God. It's like a message board populated entirely by clones of Baghdad Bob.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:46 PM on October 30, 2014 [2 favorites]

I was reluctant to mention this, since it's only semi-related and way too close to shilling for a product, but I put in an order for this shirt, which I am disappointed to see will probably NOT reach its goal to go into production. So much for "SJWs" taking over the world.

You can, however, get a Gaming's Feminist Illuminati or a Social Justice Cleric shirt.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:48 PM on October 30, 2014 [2 favorites]

i seriously had the bestest time last night reading all the reactions to colbert. i ugly cackled for like 20 minutes straight. it's hilarious to me that they keep coming back to her not being a gamer - as someone who follows her twitter she talks about games she's playing for fun all.the.time (possibly as a reaction to this) and the other day showed off her enviable collection of video game plush toys. it's like, no, dudes, she just has no desire to associate with you.
posted by nadawi at 12:52 PM on October 30, 2014 [3 favorites]

GTM, it's actually kinda close... 6 shirts to sell in 6 hours... (and hey, if it goes through, it's $5 less than the shirts you linked... shipping not counted).
But then, returning to the "Social Juctice Classes" previously discussed somewhere around here, what I really want is "Social Justice WIZARD", with "ROGUE" a second choice.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:09 PM on October 30, 2014

5 to go now (I succumbed).
posted by Lexica at 1:20 PM on October 30, 2014

I'm not TRYING to sell them here, honest. I get no kickbacks...
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:30 PM on October 30, 2014

well they sold 6 in the last hour to crack 50, so relax and take a little credit, eh?
posted by lodurr at 2:14 PM on October 30, 2014

(Actually it's about ethics in Metafilter product shilling.)
posted by lodurr at 2:17 PM on October 30, 2014 [18 favorites]

The Top 22 Most Ridiculous Things Said by 8channers About Anita Sarkeesian's Appearance on the Colbert Report

I love the term "redpill" as a verb because it demonstrates that those using it regard badly-made YouTube videos about women in exactly the same way that Jack Chick regards the Good News.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:33 PM on October 30, 2014 [4 favorites]

When they say "red pill", show them this.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:32 PM on October 30, 2014

Every time they say they're going to redpill someone, I think of trying to get a deworming pill into a dog who totally knows what's up and is having none of it.
posted by palomar at 5:48 PM on October 30, 2014 [7 favorites]

So, it looks like OpGamerGate was shut down and disappeared. The page is gone.
posted by dejah420 at 7:29 PM on October 30, 2014

Well, at least it taught some of us something about the horrible, horrible images on the internet.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:39 PM on October 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

Anita Sarkeesian received death threats simply for announcing that she wanted to make a series studying the sexual objectification of women in video games

Imagine how much worse the reaction will be when she actually completes the series.
posted by Tanizaki at 1:20 PM on October 31, 2014

Just came across this (probably not the original of it):

Gamers: "We want games to be considered Art!"

Public: "Fine, they’re considered art. Now, as any piece of art is open to, let’s turn a critical eye to this art and examine it’s impact and depiction of issues of our society and what they are reflections of."

Gamers: "Hang on…wait, I don’t like the implications of this. I want games to be considered Art, but I also want them to be immune from any serious critical social analysis like art is normally subject to."

Public: "As we can see here, the depiction of women…"

Gamers: "Shut up! Shut the fuck up, I’ll fucking kill you!"

posted by Lexica at 1:23 PM on October 31, 2014 [23 favorites]

The current rumor on Twitter is that users that include #gamergate in tweets are getting their accounts banned.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 2:27 PM on October 31, 2014

Zoe on BBC. What struck a real chord with me were her comments starting around 1:45 or so about how she used to be like the women and girls who are supporting Gamergate.
posted by lodurr at 4:13 PM on October 31, 2014 [2 favorites]

Elementary Penguin: "The current rumor on Twitter is that users that include #gamergate in tweets are getting their accounts banned."

That's fascinating. It's like emergent self-sabotage. It fits the Gator narrative that they are oppressed and censored, and it has the reproductive hook that you need to spread the message to save other Gators from being banned. So at least some percentage of Gators will immediately forward it without the slightest moment of critical thought. But unlike other things like "Brianna Wu hates autistic kids" the consequences of believing it fall only on the Gators themselves. So they can't externalize the cost of correcting this ignorance. (Though they will have the advantage that their fellow Gators haven't been primed to distrust everything they say.)
posted by RobotHero at 1:16 PM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]

I hadn't thought of it that way; you have a point. My first thought in response was 'yes, and the absence of evidence will be reinterpreted as evidence to form a positive reinforcement cycle,' but I think that's just another way of restating your last sentence.
posted by lodurr at 1:33 PM on November 1, 2014

I think that rumour will lose momentum quickly, not form a "positive reinforcement cycle," since the Gators that do recognize the rumour as B.S. have a pro-GamerGate motive to stop it. Unlike rumours that a "SJW" doxxed herself or hates autistic kids or DDoSed TFYC, where the people with the strongest motive to stop the rumour are in the hated anti-GamerGate crowd.
posted by RobotHero at 1:59 PM on November 1, 2014

Both pro- and anti-GG Twitter users are reporting suspensions.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:10 PM on November 1, 2014

In my defense, a Tweet with no specific verifiable details is usually a very good heuristic for "baseless rumour."
posted by RobotHero at 9:07 PM on November 1, 2014

running order squabble fest: I think that dressing as Gamergate for Hallowe'en would probably involve dressing as something else entirely, and when people say "Oh, nice Michael Myers costume", angrily insisting that you are dressed as ethics in video game journalism.

I communicated this idea to a friend because of how funny I thought it was. He dressed in a perfect Hagrid costume, including beard, boots, and pink umbrella. I'm not sure if he did it all day, but I can report that at least once when complimented he responded with, "Actually…" It made my day.
posted by ob1quixote at 11:00 PM on November 1, 2014 [9 favorites]

Only one person noticed the sticker on my shirt (which is unfortunately slightly cut off in the photo).
posted by Lexica at 8:41 AM on November 2, 2014 [6 favorites]

Gamergate launched in my apartment and internet, I'm sorry (not that sorry)
posted by Strass at 10:47 AM on November 4, 2014

Two more pieces on GamerGate of possible interest.

* David Kernohan, a MOOC evangelist from English academia, has a thoughtfully-considered piece on actual gaming journalism.

* The ICA (International Communication Association) newsletter has a piece on GamerGate and Academia.
posted by Wordshore at 10:50 AM on November 4, 2014 [1 favorite]

The Kernohan piece is worth reading, if you're actually interested in the prior history of movements to address ethical issues in game journalism. (Short version: It doesn't end super well.) Plus, it's got some Amiga love.
posted by lodurr at 11:25 AM on November 4, 2014 [2 favorites]

Re: strass' link: If everything in the original ZoePost was true, then it's unquestionable that she treated him really, *really* badly. If he'd posted to ask.metafilter, the comments would have started with DTMF right out of the gate. That doesn't for one second excuse the river of shit that has been dumped on Zoe Quinn (& other women in gaming) as a consequence & I think Eron has to bear a certain amount of responsibility for it, even if he never intended things to go as far as they did & the whole thing is clearly out of his control at this point.

If he'd made the post and walked away, that would be one thing, but he spent too much time in the #burgersandfries IRC channel to be able to be able to disclaim all responsibility for what happened afterwards.
posted by pharm at 12:33 PM on November 4, 2014

If everything in the original ZoePost was true, then it's unquestionable that she treated him really, *really* badly.

Setting aside for the moment the question of why we should still be entertaining this:

But it would be pretty extraordinary if much of it were true at all, at this point. We've seen what a gradiose personality he is, and he's admitted to embellishing the story significantly to make it more dramatic.

If I met someone who admitted to doing the stuff that Eron's done, I'd politely excuse myself and be as sure as I knew how to be that I never, ever had any further dependencies on that person.
posted by lodurr at 1:00 PM on November 4, 2014 [6 favorites]

But guys, "I consulted with a bunch of people — over a dozen [which approaches statistical significance]. Most of them women, most of them in tech fields, a few in games. We thought through the risks, the potential fallout, I made flowcharts of probabilities and possibilities. We debated, we considered, and we came to consensus."

They had flowcharts!
posted by Strass at 1:06 PM on November 4, 2014 [3 favorites]

Oh yes, because making flowcharts based on one's undergraduate parsing of utilitarian moral philosophy is totally the right way to decide whether there exists a deontological imperative to destroy someone's life, so they don't become a false idol and hurt someone else's feelings.
posted by lodurr at 1:10 PM on November 4, 2014 [5 favorites]

He’s been issued a restraining order by Zoe including a prior restraint on free speech. On September 30th, this restraining order—and gag order on speaking about his own abuse—was upheld in Massachusetts courts for another year.

Eron is an obsessive (hyperfocused!!!!) stalker, and men like him kill the bitch who wronged them with some frequency. A restraining order is flimsy protection indeed, but hopefully he gets the message and moves on - she wouldn't have succeeded in getting it if he weren't clearly unhinged.

As someone who was actually abused, I'm sort of offended that he calls himself "abused". A 9000 word screed on a breakup ? WTFGAS, dude! Obsess much ?
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 1:29 PM on November 4, 2014 [6 favorites]

METAFILTER: because making flowcharts based on one's undergraduate parsing of utilitarian moral philosophy is totally the right way to decide whether there exists a deontological imperative to destroy someone's life, so they don't become a false idol and hurt someone else's feelings.
posted by symbioid at 1:45 PM on November 4, 2014 [2 favorites]

That doesn't for one second excuse the river of shit that has been dumped on Zoe Quinn (& other women in gaming) as a consequence & I think Eron has to bear a certain amount of responsibility for it, even if he never intended things to go as far as they did & the whole thing is clearly out of his control at this point.

If you make a website dedicated that is literally intended to destroy your ex's career, I think you bear more than just "a certain" amount of responsibility for the fall out. Especially given that...

• The zoepost is still available, in full, in its original form.
• The only mention of the ongoing harassment on the post's site is the delightfully hand-washy note in the "tl;dr" section that reads: "primer: I DO NOT STAND BY THE CURRENT ABUSE AND HARASSMENT OF ZOE QUINN OR FRIENDS. STOP DOING THAT. IT IS NOT IN ANYONE’S BEST INTEREST."
• Just before that ritual hand-washing you have another explanatory post that both says that "[The Zoepost] exists to warn you to be cautious of Zoe" and that states that she "ruined" the Fine Young Capitalists, a claim that the group itself later disavowed.

posted by Going To Maine at 2:12 PM on November 4, 2014 [5 favorites]

More simply: Eron Gjoni is a man who made a website, that website has had some very bad consequences, and he knows about them. He has done almost nothing with that website to make it have better consequences. Until he does, it says more about him than about Zoe Quinn.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:16 PM on November 4, 2014 [4 favorites]

and, lets not gloss over - actively associated with the people who were/are harassing her and gave them tips to do it better.
posted by nadawi at 2:22 PM on November 4, 2014 [8 favorites]

Or, more bluntly, that "don't harass" disclaimer is a bold faced, self-serving lie.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 2:37 PM on November 4, 2014

also, unless i've missed something, zoe quinn still can't go home.
posted by nadawi at 2:41 PM on November 4, 2014 [1 favorite]

The only mention of the ongoing harassment on the post's site is the delightfully hand-washy note in the "tl;dr" section that reads: "primer: I DO NOT STAND BY THE CURRENT ABUSE AND HARASSMENT OF ZOE QUINN OR FRIENDS. STOP DOING THAT. IT IS NOT IN ANYONE’S BEST INTEREST."

This is the equivalent of those gun shops that sell you a partially completed lower receiver for a rifle, and then let you use a CNC right there pre-programmed to grind it the rest of the way.

Which is to say it's a fig leaf, and a really gross fig leaf.

I don't believe for even a second that he didn't want harassment to occur. I think what has occurred was beyond his wildest dreams, but he pretty much called for air support and got a nuclear bomb dropped instead. I can't for even a second imagine that there's anything but glee in that, after he got over the initial "oh god am i going to get in trouble?" jitters.

Hopefully at some point in the near future i'll see some tweeted photo of him handcuffed doing the perp walk screenshotted off the news or something. I'm beginning to doubt it will happned, more and more, but this is no different than the guy who posted a craigslist ad like "everything in house free, front door unlocked!" and got his old roommates(maybe it was exes?) house completely ransacked to the point there weren't even windows.

It boggles my mind that there's people who don't think he wanted this. He got more than he asked for, but it's the equivalent of a kickstarter blasting past the cap.
posted by emptythought at 6:39 PM on November 4, 2014 [8 favorites]

Gamergate launched in my apartment and internet, I'm sorry (not that sorry)

The piece by Rachel M does an okay job of trying to turn the tables and make it seem like Eron is the suffering one, and that by publishing the post he was attempting to speak out against the abuse. But there's a passage that stood out;

PennyArcade had banned the post immediately. Then SomethingAwful did, while Eron was working on his laptop on his way to my apartment. Or, SomethingAwful did some bizarre SA-specific thing and put his account on probation. And then banned the post.
“Okay. It’s up. Can you look it over? Layout? Whatever?”
I got the URL and checked it for the first time of dozens. “It looks like a massive helldump, dude.”
“Aside from that.”
I kept skimming. “Solid.”
We went back to our respective Internet bubbles. “Fuck.”
I looked up.
“4chan found it.”

While the piece covers the history of the zoepost, and loosely sketches the paranoia that Eron went through before deciding to "take on" Zoe Quinn, what did Rachel M think about the post? Did she think it made him sound obsessed? Did she do a double-take when she heard that PA and SA killed it? Did she think that was because they were afraid of Quinn? How long did it take 4chan to find a random Wordpress blog? Did that make you suspicious. So much portrait painting, so little information.

I want to attempt to set the record straight, here: Eron broke up with Zoe, that last time. If anything, Zoe was jilted. Words mean things, y’all.

So, arguably, the word to use here is "cuckolded", not jilted, but why is that semantic wrangling important to you? Does a cuckolded person have the right to lash out like this?
posted by Going To Maine at 7:26 PM on November 4, 2014 [1 favorite]

Gamergate launched in my apartment and internet, I'm sorry (not that sorry)

I'm really confused as to what this piece is trying to say. It doesn't really help at all with establishing him as some figure we should have sympathy for, and seems to sort of reach for the "see she's crazy and inconsistent!" thing.

All i could really think reading it, is that every abusive or just, neurotically fucked up guy i've known who would try and character assassinate and draw harassment to someone they had shunned like this, even on a small scale of just a local peer group doing it, had several women they were friends with who always defended their actions and talked shit on the women they had dropped and started to shit on.

I know this almost sounds like i'm describing some weird PUA "social proof" thing here, but it's totally true in my anecdotal experience. The guy gets to say "see i don't hate women and i don't treat them like shit, some of my best friends are women!" and then the women go "oh he doesn't hate women, he just hates dumb bitches like so and so. and she's way terrible anyways and did X Y and Z!".

it's like a really toxic force field. and this apologia is similar to what i've heard about several outed rapists and abusers from .

Pretty much, if she lived with him, is friends with him, and is defending him, whatever she says might as well be coming from his mouth. She's basically his PR person.

I really don't buy that this guy is some socially inept neckbeard. He's a manipulator. What he wrote is ridiculous and delusional, but he has just enough self awareness to keep an inner circle of people who prove he's not a piece of shit.
posted by emptythought at 1:09 AM on November 5, 2014 [5 favorites]

More simply: Eron Gjoni is a man who made a website, that website has had some very bad consequences, and he knows about them. He has done almost nothing with that website to make it have better consequences. Until he does, it says more about him than about Zoe Quinn.

I agree with this completely. The double negative at the end of my last comment was too passive in retrospect.
posted by pharm at 1:30 AM on November 5, 2014

“4chan found it.”

This is almost certainly bollocks - see, e.g., this archived /pol/ thread, complete with complaints about your man spamming /v/ with links to his creepy rantings.

GamerGate folk will believe absolutely any old wibble at this point, including rewriting history they witnessed first hand themselves!

(See also the Denton Facebook screenshot doing the rounds - it clearly references an earlier faked screenshot used to troll that frothing juice salesman/lawyer bloke on Twitter, but they're taking it as absolute proof that Gawker has been paying people to infiltrate GamerGate and promote 'tone policing' to foment discord in the rank and file.)
posted by jack_mo at 4:47 AM on November 5, 2014 [7 favorites]

The Denton screenshots are hilarious when you consider the person doing the most shrieking about it (kingofpol) is a Holocaust denier.

"All that evidence pointing to systematic murder? Meh, I'm skeptical. What's this? A single screenshot that could never ever be faked outlining a conspiracy written in a tone that totally doesn't sound like someone trying to emulate a Bond villain? BURN THE SINNERS!"
posted by PenDevil at 5:04 AM on November 5, 2014 [6 favorites]

Meanwhile, it seems like Mozilla's "Open Standard" is publishing pro-gamergate stuff and trying to maintain the fiction that there are 'two sides' to this.
posted by rmd1023 at 8:54 AM on November 5, 2014

Yeah, the comments thread on the 'yes it's about edtech' was weirdly reactionary.

It's starting to look to me like gamergate is an excuse for a lot of people to treat this as a watershed moment, where they get to make a final valiant stand against the unholy cause of social justice.

Against that they offer the vision of a brave new world where social order is guaranteed by a war of trolls against all.
posted by lodurr at 9:14 AM on November 5, 2014 [4 favorites]

Meanwhile, it seems like Mozilla's "Open Standard" is publishing pro-gamergate stuff and trying to maintain the fiction that there are 'two sides' to this.

They already issued an apology, but just blurrrrrrghhhhhhhh.
posted by sparkletone at 9:22 AM on November 5, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yeah, they've just walked it back on twitter. Still... Congrats on making it out of the mudpit, but who thought it was a good idea to dive into that in the first place?
posted by rmd1023 at 9:23 AM on November 5, 2014

Also, wow, that's a pretty wishy-washy apology.
posted by rmd1023 at 9:27 AM on November 5, 2014

There was a period, relatively early on in GamerGate, where I hoped that the sudden appearance -- from the perspective of an outsider, effectively from nowhere and in an unignoreable form -- of a virulently woman- and minority-hating faction of total weirdos who are impervious to sensible conversation and see themselves as maximally harmed by any and all attempts at conversation would lead some of the tedious "the truth is in the middle" argumentarian halfwits to reconsider their automatic assumption that in all things the rational space is exactly equidistant between the woman being screamed at and the people screaming at her.

Sadly, nope.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 9:56 AM on November 5, 2014 [26 favorites]

That's really embarrassing for an organization at Mozilla's level. Even ignoring the disgusting "examining all sides" of a hate movement stuff--maybe make someone look at a Powerpoint that says "Don't mock or bicker with anyone" before handing them the keys to a 2.6-million-follower Twitter account?
posted by almostmanda at 10:38 AM on November 5, 2014

This is almost certainly bollocks - see, e.g., this archived /pol/ thread, complete with complaints about your man spamming /v/ with links to his creepy rantings.

As i said, she's literally his PR flack. I honestly think people like that are more despicable than the actual shitheads for repeating this kind of crap and giving them credibility and supporting the "two sides" and "it's all drama" sort of narratives.

She's basically parroting whatever he says, and whatever his new fictional dramatized narrative is. I can't believe this even gets the time of day when he himself admitted way earlier on in this that he basically made up the story so it would sound cooler and be more attention grabbing/outrageous.

What's to say that this isn't a complete work of fiction too? i mean yea, that part you pointed out is obviously bullshit, whats proof that it ALL isn't basically fanfiction?

There is none. Oj simpson levels of bullshitting are going on here.
posted by emptythought at 2:44 PM on November 5, 2014 [2 favorites]

What's to say that this isn't a complete work of fiction too? i mean yea, that part you pointed out is obviously bullshit, whats proof that it ALL isn't basically fanfiction?

The core narrative is probably true, but who cares? Going nuclear on your ex because they treated you badly (from your point of view) is always tempting but never, ever a good idea. As Going to Maine pointed out upthread Eron has defined himself not so much by his initial writing of that post (I'm sure lots of people have been tempted to do write something like that) but by his subsequent actions, which are simply reprehensible.

As an aside, I was tangentially involved in a Facebook discussion on he topic where one of the GG participants referred to Zoe as "The Adulturess", as if she's solely defined by her sexual activity. These people appear to have magically transported themselves back to the 1850s (or maybe 1950s US suburbia) where public shaming for women who stepped over sexual boundaries (which didn't apply to anyone with power naturally) was the norm. The fact that the rest of the world doesn't give two shits about their bleating on and on about Zoe et al just seems to be making them worse and worse unfortunately.
posted by pharm at 2:30 AM on November 7, 2014

The core narrative is probably true, but who cares?

1: The thing about narrative truth is that it's so very strongly dependent on perspective. That's both its great power and its great weakness.

2: Outside of disciplines that rely on clear boundary conditions, "core" is a pretty fluid concept, and regarding narrative truth it's more or less a thing of convenience. A core narrative truth can re-form into a new shape very quickly if that makes it more useful.

3: In general, narrative truth is functional in that it serves a purpose. It's rare that people consciously use it as a means of clarifying or exposing deeper truths; more often it's used the way Eron used it, and the "core" gaters are using it, to construct a new reality that's more satisfying than the one they were dealt.

Re. 'the adulteress': I'll bolster this with a similar observation, that when I find myself engaging a GG supporter who doubles down, it's almost inevitable that it eventually comes back around to Eron's story. If they're trying to preserve the 'Actually...' narrative, it's usually Nathan Grayson.* If it's "ethics" in general, it's often a more direct fixation on Zoe.

This narrative of 'being cuckolded' is very powerful, and its trope-ic roots run really deep. In one prevalent myth of manhood, the relationship between men is more significant and important than that between men and women. Relationships between men and women are secondary and fundamentally draining. (See: "Bros before Hos," or that scary old joke about the guy who went to jail after finding his wife with his best friend. "You shot him," the listener fills in. "No way! He was my best friend! No, I shot her.") The world is full of even more toxic variations on that myth, with even more toxic consequences than we see in gamergate -- look into Australian aboriginal subincision rituals sometime, or their inversion in female genital mutilation. (Or don't. I'm becoming less convinced that knowing a lot of detail about awful things is very helpful in preventing them.)


--
*And such an unfortunate name! It's a red flag to a red-meat kid. His last name might as well be 'Fauntleroy.'
posted by lodurr at 4:47 AM on November 7, 2014 [2 favorites]

Apparently, #Gamergate is proving to be quite profitable for its more notable personalities. They're making enough that it's worth it to keep the movement going.
posted by almostmanda at 8:58 AM on November 7, 2014 [2 favorites]

I don't mean to derail, but CAN PEOPLE JUST GET A FUCKING BLOG ALREADY AND STOP TRYING TO TREAT TWITTER LIKE IT IS ONE??? GODDAMNIT.
posted by symbioid at 9:39 AM on November 7, 2014 [8 favorites]

Not gonna happen. That would be way too straightforward.
posted by lodurr at 11:31 AM on November 7, 2014

Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime condemned GamerGate during his speech at the opening ceremony of BlizzCon this morning. WoW Insider blog confirms that he was speaking specifically about GamerGate, which is an important distinction as the GG kids immediately started trying to spin this speech as a win for themselves on Twitter and KiA, claiming that he was actually talking about the SJWs and not them.
posted by palomar at 12:40 PM on November 7, 2014 [5 favorites]

Almostmanda's Spotify link is fascinating and explores an area people really haven't talked about much: how these internet conflicts make money for the Internet-famous types participating in them, thus motivating them to keep the fires burning. I know this is a long thread, but it is definitely worth a look.

I wonder who that Spotify user, A_man_in_black, is? He seems to be covering gamergate related stuff from all angles.
posted by misha at 6:11 PM on November 7, 2014

total biscuit was being an ass (huge surprise) about the blizzard thing and threw in a little potshot suggesting that calling gg harassers is like calling all muslims terrorists. saddest part for me personally is that previous to this i only ever interacted with his reviews and enjoyed them quite a bit.
posted by nadawi at 6:39 PM on November 7, 2014

Me too, nadawi.
posted by misha at 6:58 PM on November 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

Most of my exposure to him has been his casting of Starcraft 2 tournaments, but thankfully I haven't had to listen to him at an event since this started.
posted by Corinth at 9:58 PM on November 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

saddest part for me personally is that previous to this i only ever interacted with [TotalBiscuit's] reviews and enjoyed them quite a bit.

If anyone is still on the fence about TotalBiscuit, I think this tweet pretty much puts to bed any possibility of a charitable interpretation of his stance on GG.

Quoted:

TotalBiscuit: “I’m also not going to claim they [death threats] were credible, because, well, to put it bluntly, Anita is still breathing.”

That's right, people; TotalBiscuit's stated belief is that since nobody has murdered Anita Sarkeesian, none of the threats against her were credible.
posted by tocts at 6:29 PM on November 8, 2014 [6 favorites]

It would be nice if he could go ahead and become the leader of Gamergate, because it's tiring to see his name keep showing up and not being to say that yep, he's in charge.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:48 PM on November 8, 2014

I hate it when people give me evidence that they really won't believe women until we're dead - at which point their belief is useless to us.

Perhaps that's the point...
posted by Deoridhe at 10:59 PM on November 8, 2014 [6 favorites]

I actually listened to that entire interview between TotalBiscuit and the guy from Kotaku (more fool me). I thought it was incredibly weird the way TB carefully stepped around the whole "abuse of women" issue the entire time. It was the elephant in the room - never explicitly discussed in detali, but occasionally mentioned in passing. A Kotaku journalist giving $10 to someone they wrote about in a Kotaku article via Patreon was more important to TotalBiscuit than the months of shit poured out on AS, ZQ et al in the name of GamerGate. Even when it was mentioned, he used a weird "mistakes were made" style of passive voice that was completely out of keeping with the rest of the interview.

NB, it seems pretty clear from both that link above and the interview that "being censored" (ie having the Reddit threads deleted en masse) matters more to TB than preventing any amount of abuse.
posted by pharm at 1:04 AM on November 9, 2014 [4 favorites]

pharm: "A Kotaku journalist giving $10 to someone they wrote about in a Kotaku article via Patreon was more important to TotalBiscuit than the months of shit poured out on AS, ZQ et al in the name of GamerGate"

This just in: buying games to review them (or buying a console to review first-party games) is unethical because it's giving money to developers.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 2:05 AM on November 9, 2014 [5 favorites]

... because, well, to put it bluntly, Anita is still breathing.

I've been thinking about this aspect of it a lot, and I actually think it has a lot to do with the nature of games.

I used to joust on Plastic with a guy who had as his .sig "The only thing a free man can be forced to do is die." I argued about that with this guy on at least two occasions, extensively. To him, this edict seemed self-evident and profound. To me, it was trivially true for certain not-very-useful definitions of 'free', and was in turn not at all useful or even very interesting in itself. I used to argue with him that you could only really believe something like that if you either had never had to deal with real coercion, or had very little imagination.

But at a deeper level, I saw the real problem (and still do) as being that it took this trivial and absolute rule (freedom is preferable to any form of capitulation, no matter how trivial or how strongly coerced), and then assumed it had a bearing on actual, human life.

Put another way: It was treating life like a game.

To me, a comment like TotalBiscuit's illustrates that he's internalized a basically similar attitude (incidentally an attitude I find in a lot of people who believe in free market economics).

'Gamification' comes with a huge attached elephant: Games are not real. I'm not worried about anything as silly as someone thinking someone they hurt will just recharge their health or anything literal. I'm thinking about things like a mindset that privileges the outcome of semantic games (whether it's 'threatened person still breathing ergo death threat not credible' or 'she will give other Beautiful Minds butthurt ergo i must destroy her').

Certainly there's a subset of people who are more susceptible to that kind of pernicious thinking. Currently it would be fashionable to pathologize those people onto the autism spectrum and in so doing trivialize the problem. I actually think the thinking is quite within normal range for humans, and that it's even been adaptive in the past. It's not adaptive now.

I don't see this discussed in conversations about gamification, except obliquely, and I think the real reason for that is that the only way to address it is to work really hard to make your game account for the risk. (FTR there are lots of ways of doing that and I'm not going to go into them, but they all take work and thinking and are far too easy to set aside when your product manager is looking for a place to cut cost in the development process.) To me it's a risk that gamifying approaches always have to deal with, and it gets greater the more you valorize 'gamification' as a paradigm for accomplishing things out in the world. And it exacerbates a normal human (and especially adolescent, and in practice given traditional gender roles especially adolescent male) tendency that's pretty toxic to complex civil societies.

Fun fact of the moment: neither 'valorize' nor 'pathologize' are in Google's spell check dictionary.
posted by lodurr at 4:37 AM on November 9, 2014 [7 favorites]

I think that TB's comment, while misguided, should be read with the context that he has received numerous death threats in the past, and has learned to deal with them by ignoring them. In fact, I first started to become aware of this sort of wide-spread abuse when boogie2988, another YouTube personality, talked about how people came to his house and put dead animals in his mailbox. It's apparently not uncommon. This was months/years before any of this GG stuff.

He's still wrong, but I think without this context, the comment just seems plain evil — which I don't think it's meant to be. Just bullheaded.
posted by archagon at 11:57 AM on November 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm saying this because I think it's important to differentiate the real GG agitators — the people who do it because they actually, actively hate feminists — from the people who are just stubbornly wrong and have probably never had to face their privilege.
posted by archagon at 12:00 PM on November 9, 2014 [3 favorites]

I'd assume that the notion of sucking up and taking that kind of harassment without going to the cops is more common among male Youtubers is actually because, well, they're dudes, and that's how dudes roll in the modern culture.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:30 PM on November 9, 2014 [5 favorites]

NB, it seems pretty clear from both that link above and the interview that "being censored" (ie having the Reddit threads deleted en masse) matters more to TB than preventing any amount of abuse.

This was clear from way back when Fuckface first posted his screed against Zoe Quinn. TB's Twitlonger was all about how evil Youtube takedowns, etc are and if I remember right didn't mention the harassment against Quinn at all.

(This is also why I'm pretty disappointed Rhianna Pratchett engaged with him at all on any topic.)
posted by kmz at 6:25 AM on November 10, 2014

Eron Gjoni gets liquored up and has a cry on the internet.

H/T
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 9:54 AM on November 10, 2014 [5 favorites]

Good grief.

(From what I gather he's not legally allowed to say anything regarding ZQ because his personal behaviour was egregious enough for ZQ to obtain a restraining order against him. But now ZQ is responsible for "Killing ppl!!OMG!WTF!" because he isn't getting to work on surgical robotics after spending months on end concentrating on harrassing her instead. Have I got that right?)
posted by pharm at 2:17 AM on November 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

Don't forget the part where he explicitly calls out people who fail to properly consider the collateral damage of their online activities as "sociopaths."
posted by structuregeek at 2:59 AM on November 11, 2014 [7 favorites]

Don't forget the part where he explicitly calls out people who fail to properly consider the collateral damage of their online activities as "sociopaths."

That's a harsh thing for him to admit about himself.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:28 AM on November 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

I love that somehow he's the only person in the world who could possibly do that robotics research and without him, people will die.
posted by octothorpe at 4:57 AM on November 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

Grandiosity like that is the basis for my suspicion that he's not right in the head. I really think the guy needs help.
posted by lodurr at 5:01 AM on November 11, 2014

... or to put it another way: He has a deontological imperative to seek counseling, so he reduces his negative impact on the rest of the world for the rest of his life.
posted by lodurr at 5:34 AM on November 11, 2014 [7 favorites]

Milo had his Twitter account suspended! On the other hand, Mattie Brice got chased off Twitter.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 5:56 AM on November 11, 2014

David Rosen of Wolfire Games and TotalBiscuit got into a big dust-up on Twitter and Skype over GG, and then issued a joint statement. So, I guess TB isn't the leader of GG after all.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:09 AM on November 11, 2014

So what it took to get TotalBiscuit to stop hashtagging GG was a RT conversation with a professional acquaintence? Who woulda thunkit?
posted by lodurr at 6:39 AM on November 11, 2014

I said in a previous thread that I'm using Blockbot, but I thought I'd mention that Randi Harper created a custom-to-Gamergate blocklist that blocks anyone following two or more of #Gamergate's big players. Blocktogether, the app the blocklist uses, also allows you to ignore accounts that are younger than 7 days old. The reviews are pretty great.
posted by almostmanda at 6:55 AM on November 11, 2014 [7 favorites]

I'm traditionally a free-speech maximalist who's really wary of echo chambers, and tend not to mute/block since I'm a random dude who doesn't personally receive harassment. After three months of actively following GG's nonsense I finally lost patience while wading through the Mattie Brice/IGF stuff, enabled Harper's blocklist, and hit F5. The difference is substantial; there's no way I'm going back.
posted by structuregeek at 10:14 AM on November 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

Wil Wheaton in the Washington Post today: "Anonymous trolls are destroying online games."

He advocates un-anoymizing online games to discourage the bad behavior that anonymity seems to entail.
posted by Gelatin at 1:36 PM on November 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

There is something to be said for that. I have historically come down in favor of anonymity, and I don't think total de-anonymization is necessary. But as bad as YouTube comments still are, they are significantly better than they were before the much-maligned G+ migration.

We've had lots of arguments about anonymity here over the years. And we have anonymity of a sort -- but we have stable personae, and a set of norms and expectations that are more or less rigorously enforced, so it's not total anonymity.

My fear is that we get a baby+bathwater scenario where people just can't imagine a way to get to de-anonymization without totally nuking the possibility of an alternate persona. To some extent, if people can't imagine it, it ceases to be viable. And given that anything less than a total chinese wall on anonymity is permeable by SOMEONE, bad actors will always be able to, say, out a Trans person or someone hiding from a stalker. I'm not sure how we deal with that, and that kind of scenario is why I'm so reluctant to totally get behind the idea of blowing away anonymity.
posted by lodurr at 1:54 PM on November 11, 2014

While baby & the bathwater situations are certainly real, I think that it's worth bearing in mind that the scope of the argument is online games, something that shouldn't be high-stakes. They're walled gardens, and arguing that people within some particular garden need to be known if they want to participate should be accepted as reasonable. If people are going to get on their high-horses about free speech because of what they want to say about a particular video game, something is going awry.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:21 PM on November 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

(Also, KotakuInAction hates the idea, so....)
posted by Going To Maine at 2:34 PM on November 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

I love Wil to death, and he misses the mark, here.

The problem isn't anonymity. It's accountability.

If I screw up here, the mods can land on my account - they may or may not ever know what my actual identity is, and to a large extent, from a site perspective, they don't even really need to. As long as they can ameliorate the offending behavior, they can achieve some accountability and they win.

This is labor intensive, though. Which is why Youtube and Twitter are such cesspools of moronitude.

And besides, all Wil needs to do is look at any local newspaper that uses Facebook for logins to see that a lack of anonymity doesn't stop much moronic behavior. I continue to be impressed at the thoughts some people are unafraid to attach their actual names to.

Anyway, what I think Wil ought to be agitating for is better tools to address harassment from the social media tools we use. Facebook has some decent blocking and privacy settings. Twitter... not so much.

Anonymity, or at least pseudo-anonymity is important for a whole host of reasons. Accountability, however, has been lacking, sorely.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 2:46 PM on November 11, 2014 [16 favorites]

Someone in the Washington Post comments (yes, I know) mentioned that the UK has an anti-troll law as of a couple years ago and suggested the US needs the same. I haven't heard anything about this. Anyone know how that's working?
posted by krinklyfig at 3:22 PM on November 11, 2014

Anyway, what I think Wil ought to be agitating for is better tools to address harassment from the social media tools we use. Facebook has some decent blocking and privacy settings. Twitter... not so much.

Very true, and it is no coincidence that the worst harassment we can point to publicly (through screenshots and followers also seeing and reporting it happening) is on Twitter. No accountability means it is far easier for people to troll there.

The cynic in me knows, too, that this is also the reason why so many public figures--including YouTubers; players, makers and critics of video games; and MRA types but also including social justice activists; prominent feminist voices; authors and artists--also choose to use Twitter, though.

Just as salacious headlines serve as clickbait for Gawker, Jezebel and other online tabloid sites, outrage on Twitter means more eyes on Twitter feeds. Public figures embrace Twitter because controversy sells. The more drama, the more publicity and, potentially, more Twitter followers. Whch, by extension, means more allies to their causes, more speaking engagements, more money in their pockets.

No one wants to be doxxed, though. No one wants to be harassed, to have that line between Internet ugliness and real world danger disappear. And no one should have to flee their homes because of explicit threats of violence against them or their families. No one should be afraid to open their mailbox in case someone sent them a syringe in the mail. No one should be subjected to the horrific rape fantasies of some internet troll and forced to wonder if this time the troll might actually make good on that threat.

So we really do need to work on the accountability, across the board. If we can make Twitter more accountable, it might mean a few Internet celebrities will lose some of their revenue in the short-term, but it will make the Internet a better and safer place for everyone in the lng run.
posted by misha at 6:03 PM on November 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

Public figures embrace Twitter because controversy sells.

This is bullshit. People use Twitter as a promotional/branding tool because it's where people are; there are no comparable platforms with the same reach; they use it as a conversational platform because there are some conversations that happen there that don't really happen elsewhere.

My dad is a western water wonk; he spends a lot of time on Twitter and some of it is talking to other water wonks. This is really neat, because it makes that conversation easier to enter, but also it means that people can get a better understanding of that world by watching people who know their shit, which enhances the brand of the people talking; both these purposes feed into each other. A lot of artists and writers I follow talk to each other, and you get really cool groups of people who wouldn't have met each other any other way, and you get overlaps between them that likely wouldn't exist otherwise.

Zoe Quinn is actually a great example of this-- I've been following her since way before this shit hit the fan, because she's a game developer I like, and I get to see conversations that are literally shaping the future of gaming happen in real time between her and a lot of other folks on Twitter.

The whole Mutual Admiration Society thing is huge on Twitter, and it produces collaborations and discussions and pieces of art and probably legislation and shit that would not exist otherwise. It takes a lot of time and attention, but by deciding not to participate in it, if you're a member of one of those groups, you're reducing your networking opportunities, your ability to self-promote, and opportunities to promote the work of other people you like, not to mention a social conversation and the ability to talk semi-casually about stuff that you find interesting. If you're a political or activist type, you're losing opportunities to spread your message and to fine-tune it, since you actually get feedback from users instead of sending messages into the void.

I seriously doubt anyone is eager for the extra followers that they get from trolls and assholes; if that was the case, there would be on to stop banning obvious spammers, instead of people generally blocking those when they see them, and spammers would stay up way longer. (Blocking someone removes them from your follower count.)

I suppose one could make an argument for Twitter benefiting from this, both through not having to pay for people to handle the sewage and through the extra clicks that those trolls provide (and maybe people looking at the trolls?), but I doubt many people chose to use Twitter because there's a low barrier to entry for randos to talk at them, and the whole "well you CHOSE to use Twitter BECAUSE of this" thing is pretty victim blame-y, or at least "well that's the price of free speech" reddit-y, in addition to being, you know, wrong.
posted by NoraReed at 8:06 PM on November 11, 2014 [9 favorites]

The whole Mutual Admiration Society thing is huge on Twitter, and it produces collaborations and discussions and pieces of art and probably legislation and shit that would not exist otherwise. It takes a lot of time and attention, but by deciding not to participate in it, if you're a member of one of those groups, you're reducing your networking opportunities, your ability to self-promote, and opportunities to promote the work of other people you like, not to mention a social conversation and the ability to talk semi-casually about stuff that you find interesting. If you're a political or activist type, you're losing opportunities to spread your message and to fine-tune it, since you actually get feedback from users instead of sending messages into the void.

Right. Making Twitter impossible for female/queer indie devs to use isn't just a social inconvenience; it's potentially career-limiting. Gamergaters are doing that both by the sealioning and mobbing, and by searching through people's entire history of visible online interactions to find dirt on them (which may not be actual dirt, but is something that can motivate an angry response).

To an extent this is why thinks like Blockbot and Randi Harper's blocklist are being resisted so fiercely - because anything that limits their ability to impact on targeted Twitter users is deleterious to those goals.
posted by running order squabble fest at 8:56 PM on November 11, 2014 [8 favorites]

NoraReed: This is bullshit.

It's not really bullshit. It's just not the whole story. In fact, it's one of a number of things that are implicit in the very salient points you make after this.
posted by lodurr at 4:02 AM on November 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

Agreed that the potential for abuse in Twitter is a feature, not a bug.

Again: What needs to change is not the technology so much as the ethos that drives its use.

I'm not taking the 'value neutral technology' stand, here. What I'm saying is that unless and until we change how people think and act (or act and think, I don't care how you get there), assholes will keep subverting technology to be assholes. Or, in the case of Twitter, using it as designed.
posted by lodurr at 4:05 AM on November 12, 2014

Agreed that the potential for abuse in Twitter is a feature, not a bug.

It's not, and there are ways Twitter can (and should!) ameliorate the ease with which their system can be used for harrassment.

WoW, for example had a similar problem - people would create level 1 toons for harassment and spam, and so they limited the ability of toons to chat and interact until they are level 10. Twitter could easily do something like that - new accounts can't say anything to other accounts until they've posted 200 things or something, and then rate limit how fast they could post - and otherwise add a delays to account creation.

Also, they could require the use of a real name and address and so on to create an account. Not that people have to use their real ID, but if someone posts a death threat something more than [e-mail] would be useful to the police.

That's just off the top of my head. I'm sure if I actually used twitter more, I'd have more, but the point is that there are reasonable and easy things they could be doing and they don't seem willing to do that.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 7:38 AM on November 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think when we talk about what Twitter in particular is 'willing' to do, we should consider the history (or at least the legend).

e.g.: If I think about some of the things Twitter has been very successfully used for (that weren't harassment of individuals), I can see rate-limiting as a real problem for doing those things. E.g., coordinating protest, communicating information about dissent. (It would curb the 'twitter as blog' phenom, though...)

If they use real name & address, it would be nice to know that they wouldn't turn that over to the local State Security Service on request.

So I think I know why they don't do those things. I think they may very well think they have good reasons.
posted by lodurr at 8:10 AM on November 12, 2014

Numbercrunching on the #gamerGate tag should provide a ton of insight into patterns of negative behavior and how they can be countered. Making eggs invisible by default, at least when they Sealion, would be a start.
posted by Artw at 8:26 AM on November 12, 2014 [2 favorites]

Some sites use rate-limiting only on newer users, so that might work, or autolimiting it on newer accounts with lots of reports, or accounts with lots of reports and few followers, or some other combination of automatic that computers could find out; some force you to verify information in some way in order to get around that and some let unverified accounts stay unverified after a certain amount of time or humanlike behavior. Most of these are techniques to counter spambots, not abusers, but considering the fact that significant portions of GamerGaters seem to fail the Turing test it might work on them too.
posted by NoraReed at 8:43 AM on November 12, 2014

I think part of the problem is that any measures to limit abusive actions by Twitter users must have oversight by human moderators, as most any algorithmic solution can and will be gamed.

For example, rate-limiting an account simply if it's been reported X number of times would not be effective by itself, as of course both sides in a Twitter fight could do that to each other. I can imagine more complicated criteria that take into account who is filing reports, but even those could be gamed by somebody invested enough to run a network of sockpuppet accounts.

I think giving new accounts special limits can help, but it wouldn't be a panacea. Considering how long #GamerGate has been going on, it would be easy enough for folks to build up a stable of new accounts that looked "normal" — until they started being used to harass. That at least might raise the effort bar, though.

But ultimately, I think Twitter will need to embrace some degree of human moderation and a shift in attitude towards supporting all existing users better, not just verified accounts.
posted by metaquarry at 9:54 AM on November 12, 2014

Jimbo suggests gator's write there own proposal for a wiki article for Gamergate on Wikia. Very first edit after Jimmy Wales page creation has a racial slur as the edit summary.

Something tells me this will be a failed experiment.
posted by papercrane at 1:49 PM on November 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

This is from a friends-locked Facebook post, so no links, but Mattie Brice did report that Twitter has decided not to act on the harassment and death threats she received on there.
posted by divabat at 1:57 PM on November 12, 2014

Going To Maine: "David Rosen of Wolfire Games and TotalBiscuit got into a big dust-up on Twitter and Skype over GG, and then issued a joint statement. So, I guess TB isn't the leader of GG after all."

It says "It seems that almost everyone on both sides agrees about these fundamental points," which in a weird way makes it feel like a GamerGate concession to include #3 and #4.

3 : Diversity is important among game creators, players, and characters, and this is an important conversation that must be encouraged, not punished.

4 : Variety of perspective and critique is important to the consumer.

So the "no subjectivity allowed! No politics! Objective things like mechanics only!" contingent of GamerGate, did I imagine them? Or I should have obviously realized they were an insignificant minority of GamerGate because "almost everyone" agrees with #4?

And since "almost everyone" in GamerGate agrees with #3 then when they see someone critiquing a video game for poor representation of female characters, their response is overwhelmingly going to be "this is an important conversation that must be encouraged"?
posted by RobotHero at 2:15 PM on November 12, 2014

RobotHero: I think it's the difference between the theory - the idea of diversity, if you will - and the actual practice of finding girl-cooties in your boys' club and actual real live black people.

The difference between theory and practice is bigger in practice than in theory. Theoretically.
posted by rmd1023 at 2:20 PM on November 12, 2014

I suppose. I had commented earlier that I think stuff like Vivian James and the Fine Young Capitalists are popular with them because with a fictional character and the hypothetical future female developers FYC is supposed to help, you can just imagine they'll live up to whatever standards of behaviour you demand from them, even if real life women keep failing to meet those standards (for some reason.)
posted by RobotHero at 2:36 PM on November 12, 2014 [2 favorites]

came to post j.wales' tweet about the gamergate wikipedia entry, but got beat. The work in progress is really hilarious to behold.
posted by ghostbikes at 3:43 PM on November 12, 2014

heh, they wrote the entire article and then in the comments are like "OK GUYS WE NEED TO FIND SOURCES FOR ALL THIS RIGHT NOW"
posted by ghostbikes at 3:52 PM on November 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

Honestly, it's impressive that GGers are throwing it together so fast, though it very much needs an editor. I'm wondering how much of it is being pulled from the extant Gamergate Wiki.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:44 PM on November 12, 2014

"OK GUYS WE NEED TO FIND SOURCES FOR ALL THIS RIGHT NOW"

DUDE, WERE TYPING AS FAST AS WE CAN!!!!!!!
posted by pyramid termite at 4:47 PM on November 12, 2014

"Citations OUTSIDE OF YOUTUBE are needed." pretty much says it all.
posted by Gygesringtone at 4:48 PM on November 12, 2014 [7 favorites]

Also "Cite sources that would make /pol/ proud"...
posted by Going To Maine at 4:58 PM on November 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

Going To Maine: "though it very much needs an editor"

From the first paragraph of that wikia (emph. added):

[...] Gamergate denouncers asserting that it is nothing more than a fringe, concerted effort to harass and marginalize women and other undesirables out of the industry [...]

Yeah, an editor might help. Although, with the "sources that would make /pol/ proud" comment, maybe not?
posted by mhum at 5:38 PM on November 12, 2014 [2 favorites]

The wiki article is a treasure trove of terrible attribution and outright falseness. You know when some smartarse submits and essay with a huge range of sources but when you are familiar with the source it's obvious they have never read it? It's like that. Or, charitably, they read the first sentence. The Kotaku article where they state that dude never wrote a review for DepressionQuest gets cited as proof of a relationship and then, somehow, they think it's then proof of every claim they've made about that relationship?
posted by geek anachronism at 7:06 PM on November 12, 2014 [3 favorites]

I am sorely tempted to step in to try and help them fact check the thing, but it seems to be evolving at lightning speed. It'll be interesting to see where it's gotten to by tomorrow morning.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:17 PM on November 12, 2014

from checking in on the article just now i'm getting the idea that Censorship is the new Ethics.
posted by ghostbikes at 9:02 PM on November 12, 2014

on Christina Hoff Sommers' harassment (you know, to show that both sides have been treated equally TERRIBLY!): "She has been threatened by 'bobby' on twitter, but noone has written about it."

d'awww
posted by ghostbikes at 9:04 PM on November 12, 2014

I've been watching the use of the word "alleged." Earlier, every mention of harassment was "alleged" harassment except for one that mentioned "both sides." Now that has disappeared, no harassment is called "alleged" but some of the journalistic "corruption" gets to be "alleged."

It also currently leads with the "consumer revolt" bit, even though I only remember that becoming a talking point in late October.


"The genesis of the movement was rooted in widespread censorship[2][3] that followed the attempted public discussion of allegations that a gaming journalist ..."

This is interesting, to phrase the "genesis of the movement" this way. The attempted public discussion, that wasn't the movement yet, it only becomes the movement if that discussion is "censored." I'm reminded of the Onion article where a white guy complains how unfair it is that he can't say the N-word, not that he would, but he's just saying, who's the real racist for not letting him say this word that he promises he didn't want to say anyway? They swear up and down it's not about trotting out the grievances of a game developer's angry ex-boyfriend, but isn't it incredibly unfair that they weren't allowed to trot those grievances out?
posted by RobotHero at 9:47 PM on November 12, 2014 [4 favorites]

I'm reminded of the Onion article where a white guy complains how unfair it is that he can't say the N-word, not that he would, but he's just saying, who's the real racist for not letting him say this word that he promises he didn't want to say anyway?

looks to me like you just found another source for the gamergatewiki article. someone should really help them out by adding it in for them.
posted by ghostbikes at 11:43 PM on November 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

geek_anachronism: You know when some smartarse submits and essay with a huge range of sources but when you are familiar with the source it's obvious they have never read it? It's like that.

I noticed that, too. I wonder if you don't find that a lot in Wikipedia entries -- it's got to be pretty hard to police that. In this case I think the article will probably get close scrutiny, so it will be interesting to see what goes down with it. Once it's out there, it will be fair game for addition of things like andy baio's research, or more objective and well-documented timelines.
posted by lodurr at 5:34 AM on November 13, 2014

... but then now that I think of it, would you be able to cite Andy Baio's research under Wikipedia's citation rules?
posted by lodurr at 5:34 AM on November 13, 2014

Andy Baio's research would fall under the self-published sources policy. So generally no, it's not really usable. In this case though you can find lots of reputable sources that cite Andy, so you could just cite those instead.
posted by papercrane at 6:18 AM on November 13, 2014

It's always struck me as weird that wikipedia does precisely the opposite of what's expected in academia in that regard.
posted by lodurr at 8:15 AM on November 13, 2014

So if Gamergate can submit their own wikipedia article (even though I have afeeling this is mostly a trick to get them to go away for a while so the wiki editors can do some work), why can't one of the other groups following this, like say, Metafilter or rpg.net, come up with their own contender?

Or would that be too much work?
posted by happyroach at 8:39 AM on November 13, 2014

I'm not outraged enough by the Wikipedia article to go to the trouble of creating an alternative.

And yeah, probably Jimmy Wales' real plan is letting the gaters argue among themselves for a little while.
posted by RobotHero at 9:01 AM on November 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

well they've probably pissed off a few core wikipedians by this point, so i'm sure they'll be getting a pretty thorough review.
posted by lodurr at 9:11 AM on November 13, 2014

Gelatin: "Wil Wheaton in the Washington Post today: "Anonymous trolls are destroying online games."

He advocates un-anoymizing online games to discourage the bad behavior that anonymity seems to entail."

So - the people who send death threats will start sending them to themselves? Or the people who don't send death threats will ... start doing so?

As Pogo_Fuzzybutt said : it's about accountability. I see plenty of hate and stupid spewed under people's real names. Maybe death threats would be less - but, I mean, how do you enforce this system wide across the network?

You can go join Russia and China's attempt at an internet, then.
posted by symbioid at 11:10 AM on November 13, 2014

Not you, specifically, Gelatin. Just to clarify. Just people who think real names are the solution.
posted by symbioid at 11:10 AM on November 13, 2014

I'm not sure how making it easier to find people's real name, job and home address online improves the whole death/rape threat situation.
posted by empath at 12:04 PM on November 13, 2014 [5 favorites]

It may be that one of the things that needs to happen is that gaming needs to embed into social media space, not vice-versa. Maybe that's how you get some modicum of accountability. Then you could leverage social media access controls.

Certainly it would change things. I'm imagining the consequences if you could block somebody in-world. it would be like one of those Facebook threads where you see people responding to someone you can't see, and after a while it occurs to you 'Oh! They're trying to have a conversation with that rabid moon-hoaxer I blocked six months ago because he kept insisting I was trying to oppress him by disagreeing with his conspiracy theory!'*

--
*true story
posted by lodurr at 12:29 PM on November 13, 2014

'm not sure how making it easier to find people's real name, job and home address online improves the whole death/rape threat situation.

Well, the Doxxers already can get the home information of people who use their real names on the internet. Right now it's a case that they can do so without being identified- even if they don't use Tor, it's a massive effort for police to trace and try to persecute these guys. And as police detectives have stated, a year's worth of work for six months jail time really isn't worth it. Maybe if harassment penalties were expended to 3-5 years it would be better, but even then you have the problem of isps and services that conceal their customer's identities.

The bottom line is right now if you had a public identity for business or any other reason, I could harass you online with complete impunity. What's your solution to that?
posted by happyroach at 1:04 PM on November 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

My solution is probably just to filter out rape and death threats from twitter and ban people that make them. The vast, vast, vast majority of them are meaningless spam, anyway.
posted by empath at 1:12 PM on November 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

As noted, without enforced consequences, both transparency and accountability are meaningless.
posted by lodurr at 1:14 PM on November 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

Has GamerGate finally burned itself out?
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:59 PM on November 13, 2014

Well, Intel has put ads up on Gamasutra again, so that has to be a kick in the pants.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 3:10 PM on November 13, 2014 [3 favorites]

The bottom line is right now if you had a public identity for business or any other reason, I could harass you online with complete impunity. What's your solution to that?

Consequences at the places they can do that and minimization of harm.

Seriously, this is how MetaFilter operates.

Demanding "real names" will just inspire people to use real seeming names - I did it for G+ once they took over YouTube and created a whole second (third actually) "realistic" identity with which to connect. I was thrilled when they let me use Deoridhe, my actual online identity, instead of Deirdre (I tried Jane for a while, but it was too different from Deoridhe and it made me feed weird; Deirdre was close enough, and what some people had called me trying to replicate Deoridhe quickly; I also have a Zoe floating around). It is passingly simple to get the name of someone who exists and use their details (or in my case, Deirdre's name and the address of Arena Stage in Washington DC) to make a plausible "real" identity that is as easily ditched as any "fake" pseudonym.

And, as referenced above and evidenced by Facebook and YouTube, people are often comfortable being vile with their actual, as opposed to constructed, identities when they believe there are no meaningful consequences. And by and large, consequences are incredibly individualized based not on degree of offence, but rather on amount of attention and approbation things receive.

Creation consequences and minimization of harm are possible, in some cases even easy, but I think both run contrary to a lot of Western Narratives about Individuality and Exceptionalism - where any sort of behavior is tolerated if someone is sufficiently important. And people see what Very Important people can get away with, and thus try to become Very Important themselves so they will be insulated from their own actions. It will take a cultural shift of holding even Very Important people responsible for their own behavior before that begins to shift. I have some hope it's beginning to in some areas, but it is a slog to be sure.
posted by Deoridhe at 4:51 PM on November 13, 2014 [4 favorites]