I’ve chosen who chooses AirPlay’s speakers.
I found four very different dudes — sadly, the gender just worked out that way — who share the most crucial qualification…
None of them wanted the job.
It took varying degrees of persuasion and promises to lure them into the controversial role of shortlisting the shortlist. I’ll explain more below. But first, here they are, in their own words.
ALLUM BOKHARI
I’m 24 years old and currently live in London, England. I graduated from Oxford in 2013 with a degree in History & Politics, and spent a year and a half working in politics. I now work as a columnist for Breitbart London.
I have been a gamer for most of my life, and I closely followed the increasing politicization of video games (and web culture as a whole) over the past 3-4 years. I was also active member of communities like 4chan and Reddit during this period, where I observed the growing tensions between “anons” and “SJWs” which since erupted into full-blown culture war. It is my hope that the conflict will be resolved without any chilling effects on creative freedom or open discourse on the web.
DAVE RICKEY
I’m an online game designer of 15 years, currently in a process of retrenching and rebuilding my career after a series of errors. Mostly self-inflicted and private, and not relevant to the case at hand, I certainly have no illusions that this is a “good career move.” At best, I’ll be able to avoid irreparable damage.
I’m known in certain sectors of the industry and the gaming community, but as a “B-list” level with no current projects (at a business level, I have some personal projects going). In other words, I have a reputation to protect but not one so sensitive and delicate that I need to tip-toe around this process.
JOHN SMITH
I’m 19 and live in Tampa, Florida. I’ll be graduating from high school within the next few weeks. I hope to go on and get a degree in Journalism, and start my own gaming Youtube channel. I help run the image board 38chan. Some of my first and fondest memories are of my family crowded around a small TV taking turns playing Super Mario World.
There has never been a time in my life where video game have not helped play a key role. I had been an active poster on 4chan and known about the “SJW wars” long before #GamerGate had happened. When things kicked off, I had lurked the discussions. Now this is really my first time speaking on these issues. I hope that this talk will help bridge the gap and start an actual conversation.
WILLIAM USHER
I’m a gamer and a freelance writer located in the U.S. of A. I’ve been covering the interactive entertainment industry for around a decade. Many years ago, I’ve designed a few games and studied computer information systems and programming. I’ve contributed to various gaming websites over the years (many of which no longer exist), with many of my notable contributions being present on Cinema Blend.
I’ve been gaming since as long as I could form memories and have loved the gaming industry my entire life. My basic goal is to cover games, play games and appreciate the creative ingenuity that artists and designers bring to the table in the world of electronic entertainment. Consumer rights are also an important facet of my coverage and is what led me to take part in #GamerGate.
Even though the committee turned out all male — a woman I invited declined — you can see how diverse they are in background, attitude, and age. (The high school kid should elicit intriguing responses of support and disdain.)
They’re acutely self-aware of their own biases and hyper-sensitive to any charge of secrecy. Thus, when we met for the first time on a Google Hangout last Friday and again on Sunday, they insisted on recording the lengthy conversations and publicly posting them.
For conspiracy theorists, I direct you to those links, where you can watch five hours of us fretting profusely about how to be fair. Among the questions the committee is asking itself…
- How do we collaborate with the GamerGate community to winnow the shortlist of speakers down to a kick-ass panel?
- How do we ensure both sides are represented by their very best people?
- How do we keep everyone civil and the trolls away?
These guys are investing long hours for zero pay, although if I ever meet them in person, I owe each a margarita. In a 55-gallon drum. With rock salt around the rim.
After my last update, I got an email from an anonymous GamerGater I’ve been corresponding with — because I appreciate his (her?) brutal honesty. The email began like this…
I don’t know what’s going on inside your head.
That got my attention. It continued…
The community is a bit anxious about the committee idea. … I wonder where you are in your general understanding of the community’s behaviour. They are pretty fast to respond and it seems you’ve been fairly light on explanations. … We’re a bit paranoid from past experience with figures in game journalism who lie to protect themselves or seem to omit information. … GG has been poorly represented by the media before. They just don’t trust you at this point.
OK, last things first…
I never asked for your trust.
How hypocritical is it for a journalist to say, “Trust me,” when journalists trust no one? There’s an old expression in my field: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”
Here’s what I am asking for: patience.
Organizing a live event while still working for a living takes time. I’m not going to rush and screw it up just because some folks are getting antsy. There’s another expression in my field that sadly isn’t always obeyed: “It’s better to be right than first.”
As for choosing speakers, I asked several GamerGaters how they would’ve handled it. Their response: “Crowdsource the committee members like we’re crowdsourcing the speakers.”
Problem is, the crowdsourced speaker list is too long, which is why we need a committee to pare it down. A crowdsourced committee list would likely be too long, too — and we’d need another crowdsourced committee to choose the committee to choose the speakers. Where would it end?
So I made a dictatorial decision to give myself less power: I chose people to do the choosing.
Starting this very day, the committee will very publicly commiserate with the community. Don’t hate them for being anointed by an itinerant and ignorant journalist. Hate them if they suck at their brand-new unpaid part-time jobs.
On the remote chance they do suck, I’ll issue a thunderous mea culpa, blow the whole thing up, and start all over again.
I seriously doubt that’ll happen. But if they do, let me have it. Journalists dish it out, I’d like to think we can take it.
THURSDAY: All about the other side.
Who the fuck are John Smith and Dave Rickey? They weren’t on any polls or anything, they were never bought up at all. If you wanted to rig it at least rig it in a way people won’t call bullshit straight away.
Your committee idea is good, and it seems to me to be a thoroughly good selection. If I were to offer you any personal advice it’s to just be transparent, and do what you think is best. Also try and learn to separate reasonable criticism from insatiable backlash.
That’s all you need to do, really.
Just a short comment. Nothing else to add. Full confidence in your dedication to this process and your fairness.
Thanks for everything.
@Anonymous: Just because they aren’t famous, doesn’t mean that they can’t do the job at hand. Good luck to the committee and I hope it gets sorted out.
calm your tits anon.
We don’t know them but that’s not necessary a bad thing. Gamergate is built on the backs of anonymous people.
I’m first going to listen to the streams before I make myself an opinion.
We have to start somewhere I guess, but keep in mind we will be loud in our discourse if this gets fucked up
Are members of the committee allowed to be part of the panel of speakers? Because I would definitely pick Allum and Usher.
Given that its the same 8-10 people that the community generally repeat, it shouldn’t really be that hard to choose 5 of them. Don’t see why there’s such a song and dance, nor why responsibility is being dissembled to 2 people we have heard of and 2 complete randoms.
A little note on: “sadly the gender worked out that way”
Hey, we are here to deal with corruption in journalism, not tokenism in identity politics.
If anything, women in GG already had a lot of public podium:
– Jennie Bharaj spoke to Huffpost livestream
– Mercedes spoke to Pakman Show (twice)
– Lizzy now works at the Escapist
– Sommers weighed in on GG on a few media and Pakman show
The males in GG haven’t been heard at all so far, with the exception of a minor appearance on Pakman by Sargon.
We’ll pick the SPJ speakers according to their knowledge on journalistic corruption.
Good job setting up the committee, If they have the chance to look up Mark Ceb as a speaker they should, he seems well informed and available.
This is fair. I assume since Usher is on this committee he won’t be a speaker. If that’s so, I am disappointed we’ll be missing his direct contribution at the event, but glad he’s still part of the project in this way.
You like old expressions? I’ll trust, but verify. You and the people you are directly associated with haven’t screwed us yet, so you get a clean slate. You also have my patience, of course, as I understand how real world projects can barely keep up with instant internet sharing.
Anons wondering who John Smith and Dave Rickey are should watch the videos and, oh I dunno, lern2dig. Their introductions here are quite enough for this context. If you want more, get searching.
In response to the email you received. Gamergate’s mantra has always been trust but verify, it bit us in the ass every time we forgot it and we need to stick to it now. There’s nothing wrong with questioning everything about this, just don’t go over board and turn those questions into personal attacks.
Nice, this assured that the polls did not end into a popularity contest. Interesting decision you made here.
Hahahaha you picked four openly pro-gamergate people to choose the panel. Nice to see this is already off to an embarrassingly transparently useless start.
That’s fine I guess. It really doesn’t matter in Humiliation round.
Dear AntiGamergate advocate WhatAnIdioticIdea,
I suggest you watch the two video conferences discussing this process.
And I suggest you stop being intellectually dishonest and admit that a guy who runs a chan, a dude who has given pro-gamergate interviews, a guy who seems to base his entire journalistic career around writing articles about gamergate, and a guy who contributes to Breitbart probably aren’t actual neutral sources.
This is already a complete joke and will accomplish absolutely nothing except some meaningless upvotes on KIA, probably wedged between a post whining about SJWs and another post whining about SJWs.
@WhatAnIdioticIdea :
That’s just to choose the people who will select the pro-ethics side of the panel, from what I understand. I’m sure a similar committee will be set up to decide on the anti-ethics side. Maybe you could volunteer for said committee!
Thank you for putting up the time and organizing all this.
Bokhari and Usher are good choices for the committee, both covered gg and are pro-gamergate. I never heard about other two guys, but they look fine from quick look.
Good one, Banana.
@WhatAnIdioticIdea Committee is supposed to choose pro-gamergate speakers. It would make zero sense to put someone who is anti-gamergate to speak for us. It also make much more sense to choose those who wrote a lot about gamergate then one who did it only a little.
Also, a “guy who runs a chan” is likely to have experience with anonymous crowd which definitely is relevant – most in gamergate keep their identity private.
@WhatAnIdioticIdea
You fail at reading comp: “THURSDAY: All about the other side.”
As long as the people chosen know what they are talking about and can be civil why does it matter who chooses them? If anti-GG wants to be well represented they need to be giving the committee names they should be looking at instead of complaining because according the the last post I saw on twitter these 4 are picking everyone.
I think this was a fine idea, with at least one name I recognize (William Usher), it helps legitimize the choices. Having the host pick the people to pick the people I find to be a fair way of doing this.
“None of them wanted the job.”
You, motherfucker, I LIKE you. You know your shit.
I grew up on internet forums. I’ve seen countless boards run into the ground. You know who’s responsible? The mods. The people who get to decide what the rules are, when to enforce them, etc etc.
Any forum can start out great, but as people move on or the forum grows, more mods are required. The people who often apply are people who want power. People who WANT power, are people who should not be trusted with power. They’re the ones who are most likely to abuse it.
There’s a reason politicians are almost universally scumbags. Power corrupts.
You get that. That’s pretty awesome.
Now we just hope it works. Ha ha.
This is good.
I like this.
Proceed.
Clearly you are already pissing off Antis, so you must be doing something right.
Just a quick reminder, the term GamerGater is actually derogatory and I am sure you have been informed about this already. I know you are not on anyone’s side, but could you possibly start using an alternative term like pro-GG or whatever that didn’t originate in the Anti’s side? I’d rather have them (us) called just gamers, but that’s just me.
Sad Mr. Usher and Mr. Bokhari probably won’t end up speaking, but these are good choices for the voluntary roles. I’ve never heard of the other two, but as long as they aren’t trolls, they will do fine.
Reason being? They are the average joes of GG and should be represented. Looking forward to future progress. Let’s hope you’ve better luck getting some aGGs to the table to defend some of the deplorable practices that some of these journalists/not journalists (they can claim they are bloggers, but I do believe the SCUS ruled that they are journalists under the eye of the laws iirc) have done.
I have a big problem with Usher being on the committee. He NEEDS to be on the panel, and I’m assuming committee members can’t be, or at least shouldn’t be for “ethical” reasons. He has appeared at the top of every “who should be on the panel poll” that GG has put up. Please push for him to be on the panel.
I’ve listened to the first discussion, got 3 hours ahead of me to listen to the second one and figured I’d leave a comment before all my thoughts dissappear.
My first thought when reading the list was “who are these people?”, I didn’t recorgnise any name till I reached Usher, but after a quick google search I realised who Allum was as well. No idea who Dave and John are. But watching the stream and reading the mails it looks like they were good picks.
Onto the points of the stream, I have to dissagree a bit with William (I’ll be sending him a mail about this as well as I’m not sure if he’ll be reading this) regarding Milo and Christina. Yes they are probably the two names that gets mentioned the most, but not always in the best of ways. They get mentioned a lot because they’re slightly controversial wether to send them or not, and a lot of the commentis mentioning them is against it. Why? Because as (I think it was) Oliver Cambel mentioned on stream, MIlo isn’t always the one to follow the best of journalistic practises, and I’m guessing more than a few journos will have an inherrited bias against Breitbart (sorry Allum), which won’t reflect well on us. And I do think the “other side” might actually see his comments such as “darlig” in the same way as we see Chris’ villanous comments in his debate with Mercedes. It’s easy to look past such things when it comes from “our side”.
As for Christina, the fear is that it’s going to become a self-fufuilling prophesy of it derailing into her field, which is not what we’re here to discuss. We’re here to discuss ethics. And we have plenty of other speakers who can deal with the harassment narrative while still having more insight on things directly related to GG.
They have both done great things for GG, and I wish I could have been at GGinDC to thank them for it. But I’m not sure if this is the arena for them. And I hope you can go back and look at the comments regarding them, and see both the comments for and against them going, then re-evaluate your stance. If you still think they’re the best choice, go for it. Honestly, I can’t think of 1 name that on the shortlist that would be a bad choice, but I think some choices are better than other for this situation, and i hope that the committee don’t let their pre-concieved notions of who should be on the panel affect them to much.
(Disclaimer, I haven’t been following the discussion on 8chan, if their voices are overwhelmingly saying Milo and Christina then they should of course have a say in it, I’m only commenting based on what I’ve seen on KIA and twitter.. and even there I can’t possibly have seen everything)
On the discussion an which antis to send, I think Kris might be a good choice if the antis want someone who know nothing of journalism (to my knowledge) and want to debate the harassment narrative, but only if Michael speaks to him beforehand and tell him that tactics such as sniggering or outright laughing at other panelists while they’re speaking, nor interupt them while they’re making a point.
As for Brianna, if we go by what Michael said about not wanting people to make it all about them, I think she might be a bad idea. I dissagree with Michael when he say that we should judge her on the interview she’s done with the MSNBC, because she was more comfortable there than when she actually got any critical questions. On MSNBC she had her friend on there with her backing up everything she said. And the person doing the interview did no critical questioning at all. If we are to look at how she reacts “under pressure” I think it would be better represented in the interview with Pakman or at huffpost liv, because as Dave said, she doesn’t take being critizised well. In the Pakman interview she accused him of doing a hitpiece on her because he were asking critical questions. But to be honnest, I think she’d say no anyway, she prefers the “listen and believe” crowd over an actual debate. Also, Zoe don’t want to debate, remember how she freaked out over huffpost live wanting people on both sides talking about it. And Anita wouldn’t even debate if it meant 10k$ to a charity. So that’s them out of the picture.
good committe, i just hope the two randos are who they actually claim to be. if they are then great and i fully embrace some anon’s getting a voice in this.
i will say this however, the internet moves fast and it’s hard to ask a group to be patient, sure i’ll be patient but someone else won’t be, and that shit will slowly spread because that’s how group dynamics works.
i think everyone reasonable will try to keep everyone not so in check and wait for the final decision but there’s going to be some shit posting no matter what the committee decides so just prepare for that and don’t act surprised, it’s just how shit works.
I don’t get this, are there any anti-gg who’s not an SJW? That’s the only way you could have somebody with valid and fair criticism for this panel otherwise this will be a waste of your time
I don’t understand why you are assigning a commitee to select attendees. It seems irregular and against the spirit of GamerGate.
The committe will use their first hand knowledge of gg since they are long time supporters and Both Usher and Allum are good choices to go themselves. Its looking very promissing. But will any game journalist under scrutinity come to a fair debate? Since they have basicaly hid under a epic smear campaign, I seriously doubt it.
Usher was a favorite as a panelist from GG, so this might get a bit awkward in the near future.
GG itself is continuing to trim the nominee list, results are here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1COHPIvKFD62yf_NBaNyqJ0iwE-0OTKWEo9m3z5R_O4c/viewanalytics?usp=form_confirm
@InvisibleJimBSH
There’s a committee to decide who is on the panel because if it was left up to us to decide Airplay wouldn’t happen till next year.
I’d prefer Allum Bokhari and William Usher to be on the list of speakers rather than be confined to the committee, honestly.😦
Not sure if you’ve discussed this yet but one thing that should be made clear before proceeding further is whether this will be a panel to represent GamerGate or a panel to discuss the ethical issues concerning the games press raised by GamerGate.
This will fundamentally change the potential roster and goals of the panel. Myself and a few others have received some votes in (unofficial) community polls, but stated they’d only attend as a neutral party. This goes both ways, as I wouldn’t want to represent GamerGate because I don’t stand behind it 100% and they wouldn’t want me to represent it because I’ve kept distance between us to the point I’m disconnected from some of the conversations that go on.
But, if this is really only about ethics, I would come well informed and researched on the topic. I’ve covered games for print and online since 2008, witnessing firsthand many of the grievances GamerGater voiced . Then you have people like Derek Smart and Total Biscuit (who said he can’t come but who knows) who have an abundance of insight due to years in the industry but they aren’t exactly part of GamerGate. We are just allies bonded by a common enemy who it seems you also share: shitty journalism.
Well, I’ve not heard of two of them so I’m a little concerned to say the least. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and keep my fingers crossed though.
One thing that I BEG you reconsider is not having a female figure. There are so many strong women who support GG, if we don’t represent them in any shape or form then we will play right into the oppositions hands. The opposition’s biggest ploy is to call us misogynists, online we’ve had to prove time and time again that this is not the case, with little change in their opinion. Kluwe went on and on about it in his first Pakman interview, then when Mercedes was his opponent he refrained from using the word because he realised how stupid that would sound with a woman sitting in front of him. We absolutely NEED fair representation, there are plenty of women. Please, please, please reconsider adding a fifth representative.
Oh right, this is just the committee. By bad, I jumped the gun a bit there.
You’re a pretty hilarious individual, thanks for making these updates entertaining. I’m looking forward to seeing how this all unfolds.
One thing i feel needs to be pointed out here is that this will be every bit as polarized between the sides as a political debate is, so any tricks you have for getting dems and repubs to a sitdown might be applicable.
This seems fair enough in my opinion!
I do have to say I wish William Usher and Allum Bokhari arent now dismissed to appear on the airplay discussion plus I actually don’t concern myself with appearing diverse.To me that seems to play into the SJW mindset so even though we have female speakers etc to pick from I hope the committee focuses on who is most capable to discuss our ethical concerns.
I care about it being done by those most capable and I hope these 4 can help pick them out even if I’m not familiar with 2 of them yet.
You should really clarify one thing; will people on this committee be allowed on the panel? William Usher has a lot of personal experience with this stuff, and I absolutely want to see him on the panel.
Clearly, I’m not the only one. This warrants clarification.
Are William Usher and Allum Bokhari allowed to take part in the panel discussion even though you (dictatorially) gave them this job? Because they are both among the most popular choices to get shipped off to Florida come August.
Also what about non-GG people interested in similar issues, like Pinsof above? I’d think Pinsof would be a pretty valuable addition to a panel on games journalism.
I respect the decision to pick the committee based on merit, not to satisfy a diversity quota. I hope that’s the kind of approach the committee takes. GamerGate is a very diverse group to be sure, and our opposition will be looking to make a panel of straight white dudes into a talking point, but I’d rather we select the best speakers possible. But knowing us, and knowing some of the leading personalities within GamerGate, I trust that any panel chosen will naturally contain people of different types and backgrounds.
Ok, listened to the 3 hours as well now and things are looking good. Was at first a bit sceptical about having things at 38 chan (and I’m sure people will still dissagree with it), but I think it’s a pretty fair compromise where no one have “homefield advantage” (compared to if the main debate would take place on 8chan or KIA, even htough these things will be discussed there no doubt).
http://pastebin.com/Qi2g9yuk
The list is looking pretty good. My only dissagreement of names would be the lack of David Auerbach who didn’t outright say no to the question, but said no when asked to represent GG. So he is possibly someone Michael could talk to.
Other than that, good work all of you. This committee can go really well, or really badly. But as long as everyone is aware of their biases and work accodingly as well as being as transparent as you currently are, people can’t complain TO MUCH (they will complain no matter what). Thank you for taking on this thankless job, the benefit of GG is that people will tell you exactly what they think and want.. the problem is that people think and want different things. So good luck, I think you might need it!
As mentioned before, you need to make clear exactly what parts of GamerGate will be discussed:
-the problems within gaming journalism (ethics, how they treat their consumers and the changing market)
-the cultural atmosphere that caused GG (far-left ideology and authoritarianism)
-the identity of the gaming community (which has existed for decades) that does not match certain press outlets awful descriptions
-internet and anon culture
Again keep in mind there should be an emphasis on airing out facts. Most of the coverage of GG so far has been an overwhelming amount of deliberate misinformation.
Thanks again.
After looking through your videos and reading the correspondence logs that you have provided, I am glad that you chose the people you did to be on this committee. While we were already aware of William and Alum to some extent, the other two (previously unknown) members have proved themselves to be capable individuals and have provided valuable perspectives on Gamergate that would have not been covered if the committee was entirely comprised of E-celebs. Nice work Mike, I look forward to any more updates.
I’m worried about Usher being on this commitee. The thing he was one of the top favorites, possibly the favorite choice to be on the panel itself. If there is such a rule that says commitee members cannot go to the panel themselves, then this is a terrible idea.
Allum is a fine choice. The other I have no idea.
I’m staying open minded on the whole deal. the fact that William usher is on there keeps me hopeful.
I would really urge the committee to consider names beyond just the most popular personalities within GamerGate. Just as this committee was made up of two well-knowns and two unknowns, so it should be with the representatives sent to the panel. Take time and look at the hashtag since its inception. See who the moderate, rational and well-informed voices are, regardless of follower count or number of subscribers on YouTube. I would personally suggest you check out the individuals under the Twitter handles @enjoy_murph and @whenindoubtdo. I don’t personally know these people but they have consistently made positive contributions to the hashtag and I think they would make great representatives. I’m sure there are plenty of others like them out there for you to choose from.
You seem perplexed at the apparent hostility from GGers on this shit. One obvious reason for this is that we’ve been burned before, which you’re aware of. There’s also a STRONG resistance to any sort of leadership, which is what some people think this committee is going to be.
Another part of it is that #GamerGate includes a fuckload of channers. For channers, calling someone an unbearable faggot is often genuinely a term of endearment. Unless you lurk for a while, you might not be able to tell the difference between genuine hatred and a typical chat on a Tuesday.
People don’t pull any punches. It doesn’t matter who it is, because identity doesn’t matter. For real, #NotYourShield was one of the first examples of channers trying to make their identity a statement of some sort, and it was a fucking disaster; channers are bad at it, and ignorant bigots assumed that every anon was a straight white male, so they took discussions about it on anon boards as proof that everyone involved was a sockpuppet. For some insane reason, this didn’t stop the worst of them from using our pictures to try to track down who we were and start contacting families and employers (several people have lost their jobs, and many more have been forced into uncomfortable conversations with their bosses).
You’ll see a lot of apparent hostility directed at John, since nobody knows who the fuck he is. Unless he’s freaked out, don’t be freaked out on his behalf. Despite his age, he doesn’t seem like a complete newfag, so he can probably tell a hot-tempered Tuesday from a furious shitstorm.
Looking forward to this panel, we have alot of interesting people that could represent our interests. It will be a good day when the mountain of ethics violations we uncovered get brought into the light, i think some people should be looking for another career.
Speaking as a generally neutral but left-leaning person who is highly skeptical and critical of several aspects of GamerGate, there really isn’t an “anti” when it comes to GamerGate as a purely “journalism ethics” movement.
There’s only a clear “anti” when GamerGate is acting as a force to counter what it perceives as a liberal/feminist bias in elements of the games press.
To the extent this is going to focus on “SJW colonization of games” as some of the kookier elements of GG call it, you will certainly find open leftists/feminists who frequently critique the games industry’s use of certain imagery and situations that they believe are regressive. These are typically the “antis” that get mentioned. But thats a discussion that is more broadly culture war and less a question of journalistic ethics. A significant contingent of GG believes that writing about such issues in subjective games reviews or other advocacy pieces in and of itself constitutes unethical conduct, but that’s not, in my opinion, a particularly weighty or serious claim. If it was, you’d need to sack every opinion page writer, book and film reviewer, Bokhari, Yiannopoulos, and hundreds of other openly partisan writers.
You probably could, and should, have a discussion about the “mountains” of ethics violations GG believes and claims it has uncovered. I’ve reviewed this aspect of their case in detail and think it is vastly overstated and itself biased in what it chooses to call a violation, but I do think there is some modest merit to some portion of this claim. For example, personal relationships in some cases seem to have gone undisclosed when they should have been. However, other aspects (giving a game a slightly bad review because the reviewer was uncomfortable with some of the allegedly sexist imagery, merely belonging to a listserv of games journos without more) are either outright silly or arguable at best.
Furthermore, GG could be asked to explain and defend its proposed solution, a website run by a deliberately anonymous person who writes his own definitions of what is ethical and what is not and chooses who he puts on the site. He also chooses which journalistic outlets are to be boycotted, and which to be supported.
You could probably find people to some degree “anti” to this vision and definition of ethics willing to raise some very cogent criticisms of what is being said and done by GG in this space. You might even walk away being some degree closer to consensus about what is actually ethical and what isnt, and what is an honest complaint about ethics and what is a disagreement on ideology masquerading as an ethics charge.
My impression is that many (but not all) GamerGaters believe their ethics case is completely airtight and any discussion about it is a gimme for their cause. It isn’t, IMO. Rather than focus on your usual crowd of “SJW” “antis” I challenge GamerGaters to use this as an opportunity to truly put their ethics case to the test and have an honest discussion about the real merits of their ethics charges with persons knowledgeable about what ethics rules apply, and where they have and have not been broken. I also challenge them to use this time to open to criticisms and suggestions about their chosen methods of crowdsourced ethics enforcement and to be prepared to listen to how it may be flawed.
@wormsby
You’re wrong. Arthur Chu specifically said that shilling for your personal friends is what good journalism should look like in regards to an indie scene, which (primarily due to the limitations of what we’re able to find without breaking laws) comprises a lot of the ethics complaints. When PCGamer changed their policies after some GG focus, several people said they were wrong to do so, pretty much purely because it was what we wanted.
They aren’t anti-ethics in a broad sense, but they’re definitely opposed to what most people in the GG (not-quite-a) community would agree are ethical violations.
There are other things that GG considers ethical violations (falsely attributing shit to us, editorializing without making the distinction between editorial and fact, and treating reviews as writing about a personal experience rather than making a claim of quality of a product for consumers to follow, etc.) that plenty of people don’t, so by a lot of GG folks’ definition, those people are anti-ethics too.
And just being real, people in games journalism that DO make concessions of various sorts to publishers (either to be rewarded with greater information or increased ad revenue from those publishers) sure as hell don’t want to lose the closest thing they have to a competitive edge. Unfortunately, that’s shit that we just can’t possibly find without either breaking laws, hearing from a whistleblower, or someone being so stupid as to blab about it in public (like with Polygon and $750,000 from Microsoft).
Nobody wants to phrase it as anti-ethics, but anyone with a vested interest in the status quo (IE most of popular games journalism) will oppose change. In this case, they did it vocally by claiming we were all white, neckbeard, misogynistic, racist terrorists.
“GamerGate supporters don’t deny this, but do they decry it? Some admirably do.” the more important question is: do they support it!
My simple Question to you is: Why do I, who actually never had a conversation with Nyberg, who doesn’t follow her, who doesn’t read her tweets and who usually doesn’t comment on her, activly AND publically need to state that doxxing her or harassing her is bad, when I already actively and publically state that it’s bad in general? Why?
“Here’s a true test of GamerGate’s commitment: Tell A Man in Black you understand. Calmly and politely tell this man you despise: l’ll do my best to prove you wrong.” ok, I’m now going to twitter and ask A Man in Black how I can prove it and what prove he is willing to accept.
Now to my criticism of you efforts: In my opinion you are trying to transform GamerGate into something that it’s not. With the commitee you are establishing at least a informal institution. With the speakers you are establishing a process to determin some sort of hierachy. I agree that both is necessary to accomplish your goal of a succesful Airplay: Now however you are actually centuring into regulatory terretory. By making it a necessety to “decry” the doxing of certain anti-GG figures in the future, even though you don’t really show any in us decrying what anti-GG people do to each other, you are tring to establish a community responsibility. Besid what I’ve already written, you attempt is based on a wrong perception of GamerGate.
There IS a community or to be more specific multiple smaller communitys within GamerGate like the #ColorCabal but specifically sites like reddit or 8-chan make it almost impossible to form communitys with a set of rules and standarts. At best you could say hat most people of GamerGate have common knowledge but vastly different stances. You yourself encountered a person with John Smith, who was pretty much unkwon and not a part of a cummunity in the traditional sense.
Seeing GamerGate as one big, unified Community is equally wrong as excpecting ANYTHING other than personal responsibility from people who consider themself “Pro-GamerGate” so my final question is: why do I need to specifically and publically condem
anything bad that happened to ANYONE eventhough I already made a stance regarding it?
[…] may be coincidence that AirPlay, a game journalist focused ethics discussion moderated by a SPJ member, appeared the same week as […]
When people get older the ability to get arouses and excited also take longer to happen but people continue
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For the past century more straight women have
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[…] reminded Campbell, “I have nothing to do with that. The GamerGate panelists were recruited by a committee of your peers. This is maybe the only time you can’t be mad at […]