"We have to choose between silence and the acceptance of risk."
July 11, 2016 6:20 PM Subscribe
Even Doing Academic Research On Video Games Puts Me At Risk: On managing personal information in a risky field.
The internet is now the perfect home for bullies and sociopaths. And it's only going to get worse.
posted by happyroach at 8:41 PM on July 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by happyroach at 8:41 PM on July 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
Who knew that the handles and screennames of the early net was a good idea after all? Shame there's so little chance of putting that toothpaste back in the tube.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 8:52 PM on July 11, 2016 [11 favorites]
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 8:52 PM on July 11, 2016 [11 favorites]
One of the ideas I've been pondering is gamergate seems a piece of the surveillance state to me. Part of the reason the spooks think it's ok to collect all the data is because folks freely give it away. (I have less issue with free labor for this site as it is much more like a co-op.)
There are ways to restrict information companies would rather retain - financial and health institutions are good models to learn from. Gamergate and the serveillance state could be brought to heel somewhat this way.
It certainly wouldn't be a perfect solution. Folks would stop having to announce in public all their private lives. It would be a lot easier to track and remove personal info though, and that would be a good start.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 9:11 PM on July 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
There are ways to restrict information companies would rather retain - financial and health institutions are good models to learn from. Gamergate and the serveillance state could be brought to heel somewhat this way.
It certainly wouldn't be a perfect solution. Folks would stop having to announce in public all their private lives. It would be a lot easier to track and remove personal info though, and that would be a good start.
posted by Strange_Robinson at 9:11 PM on July 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
While Jack Thompson himself was just a con-man/opportunist, even when I was becoming a flaming lefty on most issues, his arguments against videogames rang true for me. And now I can say it: Jack Thompson was right.
The bullied have grown up to be the absolute worst bullies I've ever seen.
Not necessarily true, I was severely bullied as a kid, and when introduced to video games (admittedly at an older age, I am SO old), I had trouble winning - or even enjoying - without feeling I was turning myself into a bully, which took most of the fun out of it for me. Even now, every 'first person shooter' just makes me cringe. So I don't think this"new generation" of bullies were necessarily "formerly bullied" - they were just not musclebound, militarily trained or sons-of-real-estate-millionaires enough to have been bullies themselves. The Bully Wannabes. Technology: Empowering A Generation of Biif Tannens and Bill O'Reillys.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:25 PM on July 11, 2016 [6 favorites]
The bullied have grown up to be the absolute worst bullies I've ever seen.
Not necessarily true, I was severely bullied as a kid, and when introduced to video games (admittedly at an older age, I am SO old), I had trouble winning - or even enjoying - without feeling I was turning myself into a bully, which took most of the fun out of it for me. Even now, every 'first person shooter' just makes me cringe. So I don't think this"new generation" of bullies were necessarily "formerly bullied" - they were just not musclebound, militarily trained or sons-of-real-estate-millionaires enough to have been bullies themselves. The Bully Wannabes. Technology: Empowering A Generation of Biif Tannens and Bill O'Reillys.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:25 PM on July 11, 2016 [6 favorites]
stoneandstar: "God, this is so fucking stupid. The bullied have grown up to be the absolute worst bullies I've ever seen."
I think that assholes are generally spread evenly throughout society. They're not just white people, not just men, not just the rich, but everyone. It just looks like assholishness is the domain of some privileged group because people with power can put their assholishness into action while those without power can't. Give any group a bunch of power and there are going to turn out to be a ton of assholes among them. So I can't really say I'm surprised when gamers, or sci-fi fans, or comic readers, or knitters, or any other group, turn out to be full of assholes. Disappointed, sure, but not really surprised.
posted by Bugbread at 10:38 PM on July 11, 2016 [30 favorites]
I think that assholes are generally spread evenly throughout society. They're not just white people, not just men, not just the rich, but everyone. It just looks like assholishness is the domain of some privileged group because people with power can put their assholishness into action while those without power can't. Give any group a bunch of power and there are going to turn out to be a ton of assholes among them. So I can't really say I'm surprised when gamers, or sci-fi fans, or comic readers, or knitters, or any other group, turn out to be full of assholes. Disappointed, sure, but not really surprised.
posted by Bugbread at 10:38 PM on July 11, 2016 [30 favorites]
Fuck Gamergate forever. Truly vile pieces of shit.
posted by EatTheWeek at 12:13 AM on July 12, 2016 [11 favorites]
posted by EatTheWeek at 12:13 AM on July 12, 2016 [11 favorites]
now I can say it: Jack Thompson was right.
This seems to ignore the fact that, as Bugbread indicates, every other opportunity to amass power, from the French Revolution to the Catholic Church, to the Peace Movement, has brought bullies and sociopaths to the fore. Blaming it on videogames seems unsupported.
posted by howfar at 12:37 AM on July 12, 2016 [18 favorites]
This seems to ignore the fact that, as Bugbread indicates, every other opportunity to amass power, from the French Revolution to the Catholic Church, to the Peace Movement, has brought bullies and sociopaths to the fore. Blaming it on videogames seems unsupported.
posted by howfar at 12:37 AM on July 12, 2016 [18 favorites]
I'm not inclined to let game culture off the hook for this either though. Like, okay, evil arising during the French Revolution is one thing, but these fucks turned evil over an imagined fear that someone might take their Xboxes away. Or say a thing they might not like. The gulf between the evil they've done and the reasons they think they have for doing it point to a lot of sorry shits utterly unmoored from reality.
The aggression and entitlement of a certain segment gaming culture incubated this disease - it didn't just sping out of nowhere. Using stuff like the Inquisition to handwave gamer culture's role in the rise of gg seems a little goofy to me, even if a lot of these shitheels probably would have been pretty stoked to burn a witch.
posted by EatTheWeek at 1:41 AM on July 12, 2016 [7 favorites]
The aggression and entitlement of a certain segment gaming culture incubated this disease - it didn't just sping out of nowhere. Using stuff like the Inquisition to handwave gamer culture's role in the rise of gg seems a little goofy to me, even if a lot of these shitheels probably would have been pretty stoked to burn a witch.
posted by EatTheWeek at 1:41 AM on July 12, 2016 [7 favorites]
Assholes will be assholes. And as that song goes, if we burned all of them, the earth would look like the sun. Spend any time on something people care about deeply you will find unrepentant assholes. Find enough assholes agreeing with each other, and you have a fetid critical mass. This is how you end up with fucked-up stories with demographics as different as "hardcore" gamers (and part of this started when around 2007 when people started making a distinction between what they called "proper" games and "casual gaming" like Facebook flash games, some Nintendo DS titles and Wii Sports/Eye Toy) and Steven Universe fandoms.
I have a few texts up on Medium that I wrote for a store community portal a few years ago. I finally got a working keyboard and was starting to translate them to English but then realised a substantial part of my audience are, well, people with very low acceptance of different points of view (following what I said above, in one of them I argue that a few titles that made history such as Simcity or Tetris would be called "casual shit" these days because the player is not mowing down waves of aliens. I'm sure it would go down well, considering I've seen the same people go apeshit if a AAA game gets 9/10 instead of a perfect score). I really don't have the patience to deal with the bullshit, because it used to be a lot easier to ignore assholes.
posted by lmfsilva at 2:21 AM on July 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
I have a few texts up on Medium that I wrote for a store community portal a few years ago. I finally got a working keyboard and was starting to translate them to English but then realised a substantial part of my audience are, well, people with very low acceptance of different points of view (following what I said above, in one of them I argue that a few titles that made history such as Simcity or Tetris would be called "casual shit" these days because the player is not mowing down waves of aliens. I'm sure it would go down well, considering I've seen the same people go apeshit if a AAA game gets 9/10 instead of a perfect score). I really don't have the patience to deal with the bullshit, because it used to be a lot easier to ignore assholes.
posted by lmfsilva at 2:21 AM on July 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
While Jack Thompson himself was just a con-man/opportunist, even when I was becoming a flaming lefty on most issues, his arguments against videogames rang true for me. And now I can say it: Jack Thompson was right.
I don't know that I've ever seen a statement on this site that was more ignorant than this. Congratulations, I guess.
Jack Thompson absolutely was not right. His claim that violence in video games trains people who play the video games to be more violent relies on the idea that we are now, in a period with video games, more violent as a culture than we were before video games were invented, which is an idea built on a deep, deep ignorance of our history. Even if all you know about is the first world's very recent history, the idea is still ridiculous on its face.
This is, of course, the same Jack Thompson who described the popularity of video games sold by Japanese companies in America as a second Pearl Harbor attack (which is especially ridiculous considering that the particular game he was railing about, Grand Theft Auto, is a British creation), who tried to sue Facebook for not removing users' factual posts about his legal misconduct, and who was disbarred for his complete inability to engage in an argument without lying and leveling constant personal attacks against everyone else in the room. (Frankly, the guy would probably fit right in with the Gamergaters.)
Jack Thompson literally never made even a single argument against video games that was based in fact or reality. The only sense in which he was ever right is the same sense in which Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, and other people like Thompson are always right: they evoke the "right" feeling of disgust and hatred in people who really want to feel justified feeling hatred and disgust for a thing. With Thompson it was mostly video games rather than minorities (although based on his Pearl Harbor argument I bet five minutes of talking to him would reveal he has some pretty strong feelings about the Other), but his arguments are composed entirely of the same kind of grandstanding and argue-from-feelings nonsense. The man couldn't put two logical ideas next to each other if his life depended on it.
Gamergate is a horrible bunch of assholes, but the way they're being assholes has nothing to do with video games. Their methods are not new and their behavior is not unique. They're just men (and boys) with inferiority complexes feeling slighted and lashing out at whoever they think they can dominate, which has been the recipe for roughly every culturally conservative movement of violence in human history.
posted by IAmUnaware at 2:30 AM on July 12, 2016 [34 favorites]
I don't know that I've ever seen a statement on this site that was more ignorant than this. Congratulations, I guess.
Jack Thompson absolutely was not right. His claim that violence in video games trains people who play the video games to be more violent relies on the idea that we are now, in a period with video games, more violent as a culture than we were before video games were invented, which is an idea built on a deep, deep ignorance of our history. Even if all you know about is the first world's very recent history, the idea is still ridiculous on its face.
This is, of course, the same Jack Thompson who described the popularity of video games sold by Japanese companies in America as a second Pearl Harbor attack (which is especially ridiculous considering that the particular game he was railing about, Grand Theft Auto, is a British creation), who tried to sue Facebook for not removing users' factual posts about his legal misconduct, and who was disbarred for his complete inability to engage in an argument without lying and leveling constant personal attacks against everyone else in the room. (Frankly, the guy would probably fit right in with the Gamergaters.)
Jack Thompson literally never made even a single argument against video games that was based in fact or reality. The only sense in which he was ever right is the same sense in which Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, and other people like Thompson are always right: they evoke the "right" feeling of disgust and hatred in people who really want to feel justified feeling hatred and disgust for a thing. With Thompson it was mostly video games rather than minorities (although based on his Pearl Harbor argument I bet five minutes of talking to him would reveal he has some pretty strong feelings about the Other), but his arguments are composed entirely of the same kind of grandstanding and argue-from-feelings nonsense. The man couldn't put two logical ideas next to each other if his life depended on it.
Gamergate is a horrible bunch of assholes, but the way they're being assholes has nothing to do with video games. Their methods are not new and their behavior is not unique. They're just men (and boys) with inferiority complexes feeling slighted and lashing out at whoever they think they can dominate, which has been the recipe for roughly every culturally conservative movement of violence in human history.
posted by IAmUnaware at 2:30 AM on July 12, 2016 [34 favorites]
What I always figure about Gamergate, etc, is that it's less about inferiority complexes than the fact that mob violence is fun, for a certain value of fun. It feels good to be part of a group, you feel powerful when you can shut down events, a lot of people enjoy sexualized bullying of women, it's fun to feel like you can hurt others and get away with it while others get punished for doing things you don't like.
I think that the pleasure that it is possible to take in ganging up and hurting others is a neglected factor in all kinds of mass violence. I think that pleasure in cruelty is a common human character trait that many of us mostly defeat in ourselves as we grow up (and that's not to say that kids, for instance, don't have empathy or pleasure in kindness - it's the empathy and pleasure in kindness with which we do battle against the cruelty), but some of us just roll with it.
posted by Frowner at 5:18 AM on July 12, 2016 [13 favorites]
I think that the pleasure that it is possible to take in ganging up and hurting others is a neglected factor in all kinds of mass violence. I think that pleasure in cruelty is a common human character trait that many of us mostly defeat in ourselves as we grow up (and that's not to say that kids, for instance, don't have empathy or pleasure in kindness - it's the empathy and pleasure in kindness with which we do battle against the cruelty), but some of us just roll with it.
posted by Frowner at 5:18 AM on July 12, 2016 [13 favorites]
Maybe games provide some uniquely attractive entertainment possibilities to people with bully / power trip / domination tendencies. Maybe would-be bullies really are overrepresented in the ranks of "gamers" (ugh) even if the games themselves don't change people.
posted by Western Infidels at 5:25 AM on July 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Western Infidels at 5:25 AM on July 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
Using stuff like the Inquisition to handwave gamer culture's role in the rise of gg seems a little goofy to me, even if a lot of these shitheels probably would have been pretty stoked to burn a witch
The specifics of the culture matter. Gamergate is clearly, at least in part, a misguided defence of a deeply problematic culture and many deeply problematic works of art. There's no doubt that what is happening wouldn't be happening (in this form) if the culture around games were different. But that's no reason whatever to invoke Jack Thompson's nonsense about videogames. It makes as much sense as saying that there must be something wrong with the medium of cinema because of the role that The Birth of a Nation played in the resurgence of the KKK. Videogames are not uniquely empowering or stimulating to bullies, is the point, they are merely one place where such empowerment and stimulation occurs. That doesn't make the culture blameless, it just means that we need to think about it as part of a larger trend. Invoking Thompson seems like the opposite of what anyone who wants to understand the actual cultural causes of gamergate should do.
posted by howfar at 5:51 AM on July 12, 2016 [6 favorites]
The specifics of the culture matter. Gamergate is clearly, at least in part, a misguided defence of a deeply problematic culture and many deeply problematic works of art. There's no doubt that what is happening wouldn't be happening (in this form) if the culture around games were different. But that's no reason whatever to invoke Jack Thompson's nonsense about videogames. It makes as much sense as saying that there must be something wrong with the medium of cinema because of the role that The Birth of a Nation played in the resurgence of the KKK. Videogames are not uniquely empowering or stimulating to bullies, is the point, they are merely one place where such empowerment and stimulation occurs. That doesn't make the culture blameless, it just means that we need to think about it as part of a larger trend. Invoking Thompson seems like the opposite of what anyone who wants to understand the actual cultural causes of gamergate should do.
posted by howfar at 5:51 AM on July 12, 2016 [6 favorites]
Some of this isn't new. Some parts of medieval Europe reacted to the popularity of Chess by regulating it in order to prevent gambling and violence.
But there is a certain ideological bend to game systems and how they're presented. Traditionally, games and sports were embedded in social rituals that were intended to put boundaries around conflict. There's a ceremonial opening and reconciliation. But in the design of many electronic games, the antagonist is dehumanized to varying degrees, either literally presented as monsters or given plot dialogue that puts them on the other side of a moral event horizon. This is so routine, that exceptions (like Bastion) stick out.
In addition, if you wanted to get aggressive with another player, you usually had to cross the court in a social space to do so. Fights between players were an exception to the rule, and there are often consequences. Taking that fight to a player's home required work. The internet makes online harassment ridiculously easy and largely free of consequences. A harasser can create any number of sockpuppet accounts insulated by proxies for the purpose of harassment. This is true across the board, not just for gaming.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:23 AM on July 12, 2016 [5 favorites]
But there is a certain ideological bend to game systems and how they're presented. Traditionally, games and sports were embedded in social rituals that were intended to put boundaries around conflict. There's a ceremonial opening and reconciliation. But in the design of many electronic games, the antagonist is dehumanized to varying degrees, either literally presented as monsters or given plot dialogue that puts them on the other side of a moral event horizon. This is so routine, that exceptions (like Bastion) stick out.
In addition, if you wanted to get aggressive with another player, you usually had to cross the court in a social space to do so. Fights between players were an exception to the rule, and there are often consequences. Taking that fight to a player's home required work. The internet makes online harassment ridiculously easy and largely free of consequences. A harasser can create any number of sockpuppet accounts insulated by proxies for the purpose of harassment. This is true across the board, not just for gaming.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:23 AM on July 12, 2016 [5 favorites]
I have an academic friend, a woman, who is studying GamerGate in her career. It's a natural continuation of her previous research. She's taking the tack of "listening to both sides" and "GamerGate people are not all monsters, let's listen to them." (Which drives me crazy, but she's a smart woman and I trust her basic moral quality). Right now the GamerGate folks like her, because she's genuinely engaging with them, she's not criticizing them, and that crowd craves the attention.
I fear for the day they turn on her.
posted by Nelson at 7:30 AM on July 12, 2016 [16 favorites]
I fear for the day they turn on her.
posted by Nelson at 7:30 AM on July 12, 2016 [16 favorites]
My last comment is based on the fact that I'm seeing young adults take up harassment, sockpuppeting, sealioning, doxxing, and in some cases, anonymous violence threats within both fandom and LGBTQ communities. So I don't see the problem as limited to just GG, (although GG has been one of the more toxic groups.)
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:37 AM on July 12, 2016
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:37 AM on July 12, 2016
Speaking of, does anyone know the status of Zoe's book? I got an email from Amazon yesterday about a change for my preorder, and the Amazon page for the book now lists it as _Untitled_, by Anonymous, due in 2030.
posted by hanov3r at 9:53 AM on July 12, 2016
posted by hanov3r at 9:53 AM on July 12, 2016
The specifics of the culture matter. Gamergate is clearly, at least in part, a misguided defence of a deeply problematic culture and many deeply problematic works of art.
One of the interesting/sad things about Gamergate is that this isn't actually true; it was never true. Gamergate was triggered by an ex-boyfriend attacking his game developer ex-girlfriend by stating she had sex with game reviewers for good reviews (something proven to be completely false; this review doesn't exist) for her game Depression Quest - a game subsequently released for free.
A shocking number of the prominent figures of gamergate never gamed, or even were insulting gamers shortly before going all in for Gamergate. It's been explicably misogynistic from the beginning, which is why it merged with the campaign against Anita Sarkeesian which predated it by 2-3 years (to keep the record accurate - she met her kickstarter goals before the harassment of her began), and why you often find harassers in common with the campaign against Rebecca Watson and other female atheists, which predates the anti-Sarkeesian campaign by another year or two.
The commonality between these abuse campaigns is not gaming - it's their dedication to driving women out of spaces of prominence and influence using harassment and abuse.
posted by Deoridhe at 11:38 AM on July 12, 2016 [15 favorites]
One of the interesting/sad things about Gamergate is that this isn't actually true; it was never true. Gamergate was triggered by an ex-boyfriend attacking his game developer ex-girlfriend by stating she had sex with game reviewers for good reviews (something proven to be completely false; this review doesn't exist) for her game Depression Quest - a game subsequently released for free.
A shocking number of the prominent figures of gamergate never gamed, or even were insulting gamers shortly before going all in for Gamergate. It's been explicably misogynistic from the beginning, which is why it merged with the campaign against Anita Sarkeesian which predated it by 2-3 years (to keep the record accurate - she met her kickstarter goals before the harassment of her began), and why you often find harassers in common with the campaign against Rebecca Watson and other female atheists, which predates the anti-Sarkeesian campaign by another year or two.
The commonality between these abuse campaigns is not gaming - it's their dedication to driving women out of spaces of prominence and influence using harassment and abuse.
posted by Deoridhe at 11:38 AM on July 12, 2016 [15 favorites]
I think I agree with you, although I've expressed myself badly. In my view what is being "defended" is misogyny, and the perceived right to be misogynistic within "gaming culture". I think I misspoke when describing it as a defence of a culture, rather than the behaviour for which that culture serves as a cover and an excuse.
posted by howfar at 1:56 PM on July 12, 2016
posted by howfar at 1:56 PM on July 12, 2016
There are huge embedded swathes of misogyny in games and gaming, of course. Which is what Anita Sarkeesian was taking about before all of this dreadful, puerile shit blew up.
posted by howfar at 1:57 PM on July 12, 2016
posted by howfar at 1:57 PM on July 12, 2016
it's less about inferiority complexes than the fact that mob violence is fun, for a certain value of fun. It feels good to be part of a group, you feel powerful when you can shut down events, a lot of people enjoy sexualized bullying of women, it's fun to feel like you can hurt others and get away with it while others get punished for doing things you don't like.
And in this day and age, they can now ruin a woman's life in every single way, forever! Short of actually raping and/or murdering her, that is (and I suspect that day will come at the rate we're going).
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:21 PM on July 12, 2016
And in this day and age, they can now ruin a woman's life in every single way, forever! Short of actually raping and/or murdering her, that is (and I suspect that day will come at the rate we're going).
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:21 PM on July 12, 2016
The most amazing thing about gamergate is that when Jack "literally tried to ban videogames" Thompson said he didn't approve of Sarkeesian, gamergate rushed to agree with him about how bad she was because she... tried to ban video games by releasing a bunch of videos that start with "it's okay to like stuff with problematic elements! I like lots of problematic stuff!" Why, if I didn't know better, I'd say that wasn't trying to ban videogames at all! /s
posted by sandswipe at 8:24 PM on July 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by sandswipe at 8:24 PM on July 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
The commonality between these abuse campaigns is not gaming - it's their dedication to driving women out of spaces of prominence and influence using harassment and abuse.
To see these campaigns in a context outside of the gaming field, take a look at the Rabid Puppies and the Bernie Bros- while one campaign was a reactionary movement from the Right, and one ostensibly a progressive/Leftist movement, both had similar tactics and culture. I don't see internet harassment as something having come from gaming- although a common core of online geekdom seems to be the focus.
I remember internet stalking, trolling and harassment going as far back as Usenet. What I think we are seeing, is waves of increased proficiency at using the internet for harassment (often in response to improvements in the technology), and groups coming together to do as much damage to enemies as possible. The problem, is that no adequate defenses against these tactics have been created, in fact most of the proposed solutions are less than useless.
posted by happyroach at 10:21 PM on July 12, 2016
To see these campaigns in a context outside of the gaming field, take a look at the Rabid Puppies and the Bernie Bros- while one campaign was a reactionary movement from the Right, and one ostensibly a progressive/Leftist movement, both had similar tactics and culture. I don't see internet harassment as something having come from gaming- although a common core of online geekdom seems to be the focus.
I remember internet stalking, trolling and harassment going as far back as Usenet. What I think we are seeing, is waves of increased proficiency at using the internet for harassment (often in response to improvements in the technology), and groups coming together to do as much damage to enemies as possible. The problem, is that no adequate defenses against these tactics have been created, in fact most of the proposed solutions are less than useless.
posted by happyroach at 10:21 PM on July 12, 2016
tried to ban video games by releasing a bunch of videos that start with "it's okay to like stuff with problematic elements! I like lots of problematic stuff!"
I'm guessing "woman does some low/mid level social analysis on tropes used by videogames" wouldn't be the best way to get a frothing mob.
posted by lmfsilva at 2:31 AM on July 13, 2016
I'm guessing "woman does some low/mid level social analysis on tropes used by videogames" wouldn't be the best way to get a frothing mob.
posted by lmfsilva at 2:31 AM on July 13, 2016
Would you consider the creators of Penny Arcade "Gamergaters"? Are they teaching their children well?
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:41 AM on July 13, 2016
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:41 AM on July 13, 2016
Would you consider the creators of Penny Arcade "Gamergaters"?
The "Dickwolves" guys? While not part of GamerGate, they did facilitate the unhealthy atmosphere in gaming.
Other than that, I'm really not sure what point, if any, you're trying to make.
posted by happyroach at 9:54 AM on July 13, 2016 [3 favorites]
The "Dickwolves" guys? While not part of GamerGate, they did facilitate the unhealthy atmosphere in gaming.
Other than that, I'm really not sure what point, if any, you're trying to make.
posted by happyroach at 9:54 AM on July 13, 2016 [3 favorites]
@ObliviousWit: It's weird how fast this "internet threat" thing got figured out once people started threatening cops. Sorry, women. (links to this article)
posted by zombieflanders at 10:15 AM on July 13, 2016
posted by zombieflanders at 10:15 AM on July 13, 2016
Would you consider the creators of Penny Arcade "Gamergaters"?
I don't know if either of them have come out explicitly for it, the way some other male game creators have, but they have a long history of minimizing the abuse of women and tolerating unsafe spaces while using some progressive language at the same time. In fact, a game developer who has received a lot of harassment withdrew from Pax due to concerns about her safety, especially after one of the "enforcers" (staff working for Pax) tweeted a picture of her at Pax East with a death threat. At the time it was taken care of via removing the enforcer, but she ended up deciding that in the future it just wasn't safe for her staff to attend. This, by the way, disproves the gamergate claim that they are about game journalism; they had primarily targeted game developers, not journalists, and when they target journalists it is only the ones who are also women.
Many of the "good" and "not gamergate" men in gaming simply ignore the issues of harassment, abuse, and threats; it gets very little media coverage in general but even in gaming spaces, where you would think people who loved games wouldn't want other people to have to chose between sharing their game and possibly being murdered. This is the same sort of passive sexism that a lot of people - men, women, and other - engage in anyway, so it's pretty easy to maintain even in a subculture that uses progressive language.
For an outside example of just how extreme and persistent this kind of abuse can be, a woman who was in a single video three years ago was recently doxxed using store surveillance footage at a liquor store by a misogynist (info in link approved by the victim).
Personally, I'm a huge fan of how GaymerX has been handling everything; a dedication to safety for everyone, hiring people experienced with creating diversity to ensure said diversity along multiple axes, an explicit code of conduct which includes how to approach and photograph cosplayers, and simply awesome people in general. I wish more conventions would use them as a model.
posted by Deoridhe at 12:11 PM on July 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
I don't know if either of them have come out explicitly for it, the way some other male game creators have, but they have a long history of minimizing the abuse of women and tolerating unsafe spaces while using some progressive language at the same time. In fact, a game developer who has received a lot of harassment withdrew from Pax due to concerns about her safety, especially after one of the "enforcers" (staff working for Pax) tweeted a picture of her at Pax East with a death threat. At the time it was taken care of via removing the enforcer, but she ended up deciding that in the future it just wasn't safe for her staff to attend. This, by the way, disproves the gamergate claim that they are about game journalism; they had primarily targeted game developers, not journalists, and when they target journalists it is only the ones who are also women.
Many of the "good" and "not gamergate" men in gaming simply ignore the issues of harassment, abuse, and threats; it gets very little media coverage in general but even in gaming spaces, where you would think people who loved games wouldn't want other people to have to chose between sharing their game and possibly being murdered. This is the same sort of passive sexism that a lot of people - men, women, and other - engage in anyway, so it's pretty easy to maintain even in a subculture that uses progressive language.
For an outside example of just how extreme and persistent this kind of abuse can be, a woman who was in a single video three years ago was recently doxxed using store surveillance footage at a liquor store by a misogynist (info in link approved by the victim).
Personally, I'm a huge fan of how GaymerX has been handling everything; a dedication to safety for everyone, hiring people experienced with creating diversity to ensure said diversity along multiple axes, an explicit code of conduct which includes how to approach and photograph cosplayers, and simply awesome people in general. I wish more conventions would use them as a model.
posted by Deoridhe at 12:11 PM on July 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
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posted by stoneandstar at 8:05 PM on July 11, 2016 [8 favorites]