My mom hates GamerGate.
On Mother’s Day, I rubbed her aching back — and joined a three-hour Google Hangout of the AirPlay committee.
I mostly listened as the four members pondered speakers who were both pro and anti GamerGate, as well as neutral observers who’d be acceptable to both sides.
I’ve always believed this…
If a journalist can’t explain a story to his mother, he doesn’t understand it himself.
So after two weeks of diving into GamerGate, it’s clear I still don’t know what the hell I’m talking about – because despite my best efforts, all my mom knows for sure is that GamerGaters don’t love their mothers.
Thankfully, I do understand journalists.
So starting now, I’m approaching GamerGate critics with the same time and attention I’ve given the GamerGate community.
My goal is to prove to both sides that SPJ is an honest broker in this debate. Everything I’ve offered GamerGate proponents, I’ll offer their opponents.
I’ve been working with a pro-GamerGate committee to choose that side’s speakers, but I also asked for a list of GamerGate’s very best enemies – because I had no idea who they are.
I’ll contact them myself, and I’ll hear what they want and need to make AirPlay fair for their side.
Many GamerGaters doubt their adversaries will show up. This comment from this blog sums up their feelings…
Can you confirm anyone whatsoever will show up to debate AGAINST Gamergate? Because our detractors are apparently ignoring this entirely.
…but because so many have been doxed, threatened, and harassed, their skittishness is justified. So here’s what I’ll tell the leading anti-GamerGaters…
AirPlay is a demilitarized zone.
Neither side will have home field advantage. AirPlay happens at an intimate and intense journalism conference called Forging the Future.
The conference is sponsored by two groups who couldn’t tell Gordon Freeman from Morgan Freeman if you offered them a Pulitzer Prize – the Florida chapters of the Society of Professional Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
As conference director, I can offer you security inside AirPlay as needed or desired. I’ll also notify Miami police about our plans, just as a precaution.
Bottom line: This is not a con. It’s a bunch of pros.
The moderator is a journalist.
That’s me in the morning, for the first two hours.
I don’t yet know who will moderate the afternoon debate – any suggestions? – but if you don’t dig them, leave after lunch. (Or before, but your meal is included, as is hotel and airfare.)
You deserve to know all the moderators’ biases, so here’s mine…
GamerGate deserves a debate, but it doesn’t deserve to win.
I don’t care who “wins.” I only care about a conversation. I’ve been surprised that some of GamerGate’s most prominent members really want their most articulate opponents at AirPlay. It’s almost as if they’re desperate to prove they’re not the stereotype of GamerGate nor the assholes who do the most evil shit.
Debate now or duck forever.
A politician once said something smart: “You negotiate peace with your enemies, not with your friends.”
One GamerGate critic I emailed about coming to AirPlay never replied, but she later tweeted…
Yeah, l’ll refuse for the same reason most scientists don’t debate creationists.
Except that’s exactly what scientists do.
Why do they even bother? No hardcore creationist ever changes his mind. Neither does any committed scientist.
Because those debates aren’t for them – you can’t budge someone whose feet are firmly planted. But for those leaning in one direction or the other, a gentle shove may be all they need.
If that sounds too GamerGate Ghandi, then let’s be blunt: This isn’t going away.
My little blog, which averaged 162 daily views in April and is known only to a handful of journalists, has averaged 5,099 views in the first 10 days since I mentioned GamerGate. That’s a lot of people who haven’t gotten bored after nine months.
If those months have worn on your soul, the solution isn’t to avoid AirPlay. It’s to speak at AirPlay.
Let’s talk to those who are leaning in to listen.
As a journalist, I’ve never believed blanket statements. In this case, every GamerGater can’t possibly be part of “a motley alliance of vitriolic naysayers” (Washington Post) leading “an orchestrated campaign of harassment against women” (New York Times).
Some? Sure. Many? Dunno. Most? I’ve come to seriously doubt it.
I’ve spoken with dozens of GamerGaters these past 10 days, and I’ve run across my share who I’m glad aren’t my neighbors. But I’ve also met thoughtful, passionate men and women who hate the harassment and want to wash off the stink.
Two days ago, I wrote a red-meat post aimed squarely at GamerGate’s softest target: I defended a transgender GamerGate critic who publicly described some jaw-droppingly obscene threats she received. Then I asked for public statements decrying her harassment.
Sure enough, I got some of this in the whopping 264 comments beneath my post: “You’re an asshole. And I’m out of patience.” But none of it was any worse than I heard while covering local bands back when I was an alt-weekly entertainment editor.
I also heard a lot of justification (“Nyberg and MIB are noted trolls”) and indignation (“I refuse to accept responsibility for what others have done”).
But I also got a lot of this…
Those sound like GamerGaters who are leaning toward rationality.
On Monday, I joined an impromptu stream hosted by GamerGate advocate Oliver Campbell. We talked for two hours about AirPlay.
At one point, I said clearly, “I’m not lying, I don’t care who quote-unquote wins. I care enough people can get into the discussion.”
Campbell didn’t object, which was a good sign. But later on, he mused that GamerGate’s critics would boycott AirPlay, and he feared for my online safety…
One of the things that scares many is that they aren’t going to show up, and I’ll be honest with you, as far as we’re concerned, many think you are going to end up next on the hit list for them, because that’s what they do.
I replied…
I’m going to give the opposition as fair a shake as I gave GamerGate. You are basically saying about your opposition what people told me about YOU.
“That’s so…strange,” Oliver replied, gathering his thoughts before concluding, “No, it’s not strange at all.”
No, it’s not.
I really really really want to see Airplay going to happen.
I don’t even doubt that aGG’s will show up….what I doubt is that the people who faced GamerGates harshest criticism won’t show up (like journalist Ben Kuchera).
They’ve been multiple times offered to just address some criticisms on neutral ground but they flat out refused.
But nonetheless, Airplay is an event that is 9 months overdue.
“but because so many have been doxed, threatened, and harassed, their skittishness is justified”
That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.
We are Gamergate supporters not Gamergaters. We told you so before but you don’t seem to listen.
Was getting caught part of your plan?
Mr Koretsky, I’ve done my best to present evidence, and will continue to do so. All we ask is this evidence is presented, and that people making claims about us as gamers present theirs.
You seem to be doing just that. If it feels like you’re not I’m sure you’ll hear from me and others.
I assume that evience of any claims will be needed for both sides?
@MegaMike
he is taking the claims of both sides at face value as of now.
It’s not for him to decide which side has valid arguments, even when presented evidence.
The time to decide will be in august.
@Patrick
I have no doubt of this. I just like to emphasise the point sometimes.
Can’t wait to see what happens.
I guess Koretzky is being quite fair even though I might not exactly agree on everything he said.
I have a Neutral for you as one of our dissenters who will show, and offer an honest look into his own opinions. @GrassGremlin I am personally working with this individual to develop a list of the most enthusiastic Anti #GamerGate individuals who would be willing to debate, show up and address the issues. You can contact me on twitter @SPGamesJourno I believe I can develop for you a fair, and passionate group of people opposed to #GamerGate who are equally concerned about the issues and intend to make every effort to do so.
“I’m going to give the opposition as fair a shake as I gave GamerGate. You are basically saying about your opposition what people told me about YOU.”
Regarding that I can only say, judging by happen to more neutral people, like Mark Kern, or Sthephanie Green (@@Sushilulutwitch) or Chris Mancil this assement has merits. Some people opposing GG or from “Anti-GG” are quick to make gerneral assesments and do attack people, who do appear to be neutral. I would actually ask you to goo ahead and research these people, before making claims that these statements are unfounded.
To be honest…I’m losing faith in this whole thing. Something feels off. I don’t know what it is yet but something feels off. My brain says something’s off & my gut says something’s off. I think equally logically & emotionally. It’s served me well in life. I’ve been in the music industry a long time so I have experience when deals come across tables.
A music executive once said to me at a studio party “Anthony, I fucking hate you because you’re a smart musician. There aren’t supposed to be smart musicians. They’re supposed to be easy to fuck over but you…you are not.”
I’m going to wait & let things play out before any more comments on my part.
I don’t know what anti-Gamergate has to gain by participating. Over the last 9 months they’ve made it clear that their only response to allegations of corruption is to change the subject and attack the messenger.
If airplay degenerates into an ad hominem battle about harrassment (a possibility that the previous update suggested might be the case), Anti-Gamergate has nothing to gain because this is already the status quo of the debate everywhere else. If airplay stays on topic and the anti-Gamergate panel has to respond to allegations of corruption–what can they possibly say?
Gamergate has a few weak allegations among the many, but for the most part the factual proof is there and at least among professional journalists, there is no doubt that the conduct violates ethical standards. So they can’t defend on factually or substantively.
As thrilled as I’ve been about airplay since it was announced, this has been my concern–that there is no reason for the other side to show. I was hoping this update would make the case for why they should, but I don’t believe that case has been made. I hope I’m proven wrong.
All I can really say here Mike, is that it did seem to me that after that conversation, they did start doing what many of us suspected they might do; start the character assassination of you as quickly as possible.
This is something that our opposition is commonly known for regarding people who are “neutral” on the subject, but are trying to foster understanding and get discussion going. What happened to David Pakman comes to mind. If you haven’t asked him about those interactions, I highly encourage you to. I think you may get some interesting anecdotes on that front.
One of the things that comes with our opposition is a FIRM insistence that “no one is neutral”. They come with a very black/white dichotomy; either you are on their side or against, and never anything inbetween (and this is part of what we all saw David Pakman experience, particularly in the case of his Arthur Chu interview). If you even entertain a conversation with #Gamergate, you ARE considered with it, whether you like it or not, according to our opposition (you can ask Mark Kern about this as well). This is beginning to happen to you.
Sadly, the reason that I said, “That’s not strange at all” is that I remembered the fact that these people have basically been character assassinating #Gamergate from the start. Hence, it’s not strange or surprising that they would potentially say such rubbish like #Gamergate never wants to entertain a debate (and the IGDA’s Kate Edwards also claimed such nonsense).
To be blunt, I think that you’re going to have a far more difficult time with this than you think you will. With the exception of a few people (Chris Kluwe & Mercedes Carrera come to mind), getting #Gamergate and its opposition into one place at once to talk has been a tree that often bears practically no fruit. The conversation that you have been trying to foster with AirPlay? We’ve been wanting that conversation to happen for months. A significant majority of #Gamergate DOES want to talk about ethics.
Curiously, I’ve seen very little commentary from you regarding #NotYourShield, the video projects we have done, and more. In fact, that is stickied to the top of my twitter feed. Considering the conversations that you’ve been having with our opposition, I would think that it would come up. I wonder what your thoughts are on that.
Finally, what we haven’t heard (and I think many of us WOULD like to hear), is what you plan to do if our opposition won’t show. I, for one, would still like AirPlay to continue even if the extension of good faith is for naught. These people deserve to be heard and given a fair attempt to tell people what is going on. Practically everyone has denied them that in favor of a narrative that is provably false.
I hope anti-GG sends their best but after 9 months of them refusing to talk about ethics and pretending only they have received threats and doxing I don’t know who that is. Most of us think they won’t show up because any attempt to talk to them has resulted in claimes that asking for evidence of harassment is harassment and/or being blocked. Until someone proves otherwise the 2 blockbots they use is all the evidence I need that anti-GG isn’t interested in a discussion.
you want to go to our “critics” with “critics” do you mean the one accusing us of being a hate mob, the extremists? That’s like asking westboro baptist church about christianity. If there’s an antiGG’er who knows what we’re about and criticizes the movements tactics, flaws, facts w/e but knows we’re not what the SJW accusations say, go to them, they’ll have insight and critique I want to hear, but they are drowned out by anti-gg’ers screaming “WIMUN HURASSMINT”
You have my sincere and continuing thanks for putting this together, Koretzky. The reason so many of us on the pro-GG side are skeptical that the opposition will show is that we firmly believe that our side has nothing to fear from the truth.
I think it unlikely that you wouldn’t have come across this little fact before, but Milo Yiannopoulos has a standing offer of $10,000 to a charity of choice if Anita Sarkeesian agrees to debate him (http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/04/20/anita-sarkeesian-debate-me-and-i-will-donate-10000-to-feminist-frequency-or-a-charity-of-your-choice/). Needless to say, she has not deigned to respond.
I wonder what your take on this might be: Our opposition, the aGGros, tend to be very prominent and defined individuals. Both the people being harassed and those committing harassment on their side are very easy to point to.
GG supporters on the other hand are a much more nebulous lot. As has been mentioned many times, we do not have a membership list (perhaps to our fault). Mark Kern has been attempting to establish something more concrete in the League 4 Gamers, but that has yet to come to fruition.
It is incredibly difficult for aGGros to point to any specific person who has committed harassment on the GG side (excusing of course, instances where harassment is defined to include mere disagreement or discussion). Similarly, many GamerGate supporters who feel attacked feel so because the movement was a whole was attacked, and not them specifically.
“but because so many have been doxed, threatened, and harassed, their skittishness is justified.”
You actually believe this?
They are clearly using those things as an excuse to avoid confrontation, because they perfectly know their narrative crumbles in front of our evidence.
There is a reason they hide behind a blockbot: no one who has an honest point would hide behind a wall and toss hatred to the other side from there.
All AGG wants to talk about is how they are poor victim and how GG is to blame for it, yet can’t provide any evidence that a real GG person was behind any of that.
For those reasons I don’t see why AGG shitflingers should even partake debates, why not invite someone like Ben Kuchera? Sam Biddle? A journalist, not twitter faux-victims.
I’m sorry, but I don’t believe anti-gg is going to show up. They have never come to conversation ever throughout this entire debacle and the only time they make appearances is to give one-sided speeches where nobody questions anything and they have free reign to say whatever they want (not saying they don’t have the right you know).
Also, there isn’t a reason aGG would want to come to the table on this. You want a conversation about journalism ethics. aGG’s story for almost a year now is “Gamergate isn’t about ethics, it’s about harassing women”. Why would they come to the table to talk about ethics when according to them gamergate isn’t about ethics?
Also, I (we) do fear for your personal safety. Just yesterday there was a rumor that a developer was going to go public as pro-GG and even before he even said anything (or if we even knew if it WAS him). Notable anti-GG Briana Wu starts dropping his name and demanding that nobody work with him.
What are you going to do if aGG does show up and during the debate part something goes horribly wrong for one side? What are going to do if the aGG looks like clowns and the internet hate machine sets its eyes on you? What are you going to do if someone calls in a bomb threat like they did to #GGinDC? What are you going to do if a full on protest at the site on game day?
I want to be clear that I love the idea of discussion. Been begging and praying for it for going on what, like 9 months now. I just don’t think that aGG will come to the table, because they have everything to lose by debating and we (GG) have everything to gain by finally having a voice. Whats their incentive?
Long shot, but maybe you could invite Will Wheaton. He is vocal against us (wrote articles in wp and nyt) and pretends to represent nerds.
He is a somewhat mainstream public figure and if you make a PUBLIC invitation is harder to refuse.
“Yeah, l’ll refuse for the same reason most scientists don’t debate creationists.”
They don’t even realize, in this mess, they are the creationists. We have relevant concerns and demonstrate collusion has taken place. Journalists have written articles about people without disclosing their relationships/financial ties. These are demonstrably true claims and instead of arguing on that ground they go to, “It’s harassment you stupid sexist racist nazi neckbeards”
I look forward to seeing “anti” GamerGate, but I do worry that instead of having a panel about the ethical issues in the industry it’ll get hijacked to become another gender politics shit flinging contest accusing anyone that wants to talk about the ethics issues of being sexist misogynerds. All I know is it seems if they can’t talk about “harassment” and identity politics, they have nothing to talk about.
No journalist we oppose has even claimed to be doxed, and that’s who we want to debate us about ethics for fuck’s sake.
No one is scared, they’re utterly pretending to avoid being crushed in a debate about a subject they know nothing about and have insisted we do not wish to discuss for 8 months in a row
This has been a wild ride Mr. Koretzky. All I can say is I’m glad you’ve joined us for it. I look forward to Airplay and hope it will live up to your expectations.
If the sjw’s won’t show up to defend themselves, that speaks for itself. These people have relied on every trick in the book to block debate, to censor, to create echo chambers to completely insulate themselves from reality because that is the only way their narrative survives, it simply doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
Even professors at MIT have to resort to this behavior.
https://archive.is/http://cmsw.mit.edu/podcast-citron-brianna-wu-hate-crimes-in-cyberspace/
Just look at the archives of deleted comments through the days, eventually leading to closing and deleting of all comments, which were civil and the only objection they could have had was that it made them look bad, that it questioned their narrative.
The problem is anti-GG has nothing to gain form this and everything to lose. The best they can hope for is to continue the hate group narrative they’ve been driving home for 9 months and already have some in the MSM believing but if GG can prove that’s not true they are done. Without that narrative GG has already won and they are reveled for the horrible human beings they truly are. Would you show up to a debate where you have nothing to gain?
What I find odd is that one ‘side’ must condemn anonymous abuse, while the other needn’t condemn known abuse by its supporters. Seemingly just because of their fear act.
I’m interested in whether or not you could you prove, for example, that anonymous threats weren’t made by you?
All the threats I’ve been receiving have been into my YouTube private messages. And they’re anonymous. I wouldn’t try to connect it to some ‘side’ I’ve made up and smeared people as being part of, because I consider that to be abusive and immoral.
And to be honest, if you are going to take false, unproven allegations against GG as “sure” like you say in this post, I’m not interested in SPJ anymore.
Democracy is funded on the principle of innocent until proven guilty, if you do not stand for this basic human right I can’t see a healthy debate taking place.
The dictionary definition of “member” is “part of a social group”, and so far nobody part of this social group has been found guilty of harassment to women.
If the debate is funded on the premise that a part of GamerGate group is already guilty of criminal allegations, it’s not a debate that I want to be associated with.
“I’m going to give the opposition as fair a shake as I gave GamerGate. You are basically saying about your opposition what people told me about YOU.”
Well, yeah. Because the opposition is projecting. That’s all they do. They’re people like Arthur Chu who has no idea how to live as a decent human being (like when he said he knew rapists but didn’t report them to the police because he “thought it was normal”), so they project their lack of common sense and lack of decent reasonable thought onto their opponents. They always think Gamergate as a whole will do crazy evil things and they never do, but when they do evil things (like the Justine Sacco incident) they don’t give a shit that they’re being bad people. Or maybe they don’t know they’re being evil, they just figure everyone else acts like they do.
You probably already saw the general response of “aGG” regarding AirPlay, at least on Twitter, and it’s pretty much all negative. Because they feel you’re trying to legitimize GG and they’re crazy people who still think GG is a campaign to harass women when it includes tons of women and multiple times it helped women in the gaming industry rather than pushing them out.
What I want to see at Airplay from “aGG” is gaming journalists, but they have, thus far, refused to talk honestly (or said things like “we should bully nerds” or “Gamers aren’t important to us” and such). They rushed to the “misogyny” angle right away without evidence and they’ve stuck to it, censoring comments that disagree with them even when it showed evidence. These people are not willing to talk. And anyone else from “aGG” would be useless to talk to because they have nothing to do with ethics in journalism (though personal ethics would be something they might want to work on). The GG “messengers” can be any gamer because anyone can find breaches of ethics and gamers are the ones affected by the bad and unethical journalism that permeates the gaming industry.
I was ready to leave the “red-meat” post alone as I did before this one, but that post and this one together show that you are (in my opinion) inserting yourself into the story and picking sides. I highly recommend you back into a more strictly neutral position (have you talked to Georgina Young yet?), because you’re coming across as very disingenuous. This still isn’t a matter of trust. This is just a matter of keeping GG’s attention. We will drop you and move on if you aren’t fully open and honest.
Also, I am deeply concerned for your security as well as the others on the committee, especially The Kid. Third-party trolls and anti-GG individuals have doxxed and sent credible threats to multiple people for far less than any of you have done so far. This isn’t a “they did some, we did some” false equivalency, either. Law enforcement agencies have weighed in on this subject, and stated some of the threats legitimate. Please take a look at which is which. I’m sure you, being a professional, have already taken security precautions, but what about The Kid? How long until his personal info is posted on Helldump and nasty objects sent to his address, or worse? These things have already happened to others.
I think the supporters of GamerGate is more concerned of your safety and well-being than painting their opponents in a bad light. Lizzy had to drop out of GG support because her kids were threatened. Grummz, a neutral game dev, was attacked just by asking a question.
It might take a month for you to wade through the data and pierce beneath the harassment narrative. It took me two months to see that GamerGate is not a hate group. Supporters of GamerGate actually helped people through charity. That is not hate. Even if their main goal is for ethics, they went out of their way to help people. People who actually need help.
I do hope the debate will be productive. Actually move past the harassment narrative and into ethics.
I have to say, I love the reference to a tweet of mine that got a lot of favorites and retweets regarding not accepting responsibility for the acts of others and then contrasted with “rational” responses. Not questioning if it was or was not rational, maybe it wasn’t (though I would argue it was) but I can’t help but find it funny.
That said I would like to re-emphasize what Oliver asked above – What happens during these hours if our favorite detractors fail to show? It has been a very real question since you first approached us with this opportunity and not in a mocking sense either. You are dead right – we do want this discussion. We have wanted this discussion. 9 months in, silenced behind no less than I believe has been three Blocklists at this point, banned from many forums and websites from discussing the issue and then while kicked down we are then slandered and painted as harassers, women haters, racists, rape apologists and more without the opportunity to respond back while the majority of media outlets pick up on the harassment narrative because it’s what they want to portray.
We are not afraid of a discussion, we have nothing to lose. We have 9 months of archives regarding our criticism of games media to back up our claims. We have somewhere around $150,000 in donations to good causes, much of which went to supporting women in games. We have hundreds of pictures of minorities who felt forced to prove that we are not all some terribly white-male oppressors but in fact a diverse group. We have 9 months of harassment against ourselves documented that as far as I am away has NEVER been reported on. We have what they are afraid of others seeing. We want this. I, want this.
I personally do not seek vindication, although I would love nothing more than to have this. What I want instead more than anything is for this opportunity to speak and be heard. To speak and confront the slander that we have been so criminally denied because – if I had to place bets – an issue of questioning the media doesn’t sell as well as emotional stories of harassment.
Now, coming back to the beginning of this comment – I’ll go ahead and state it; I do not condone harassment, threats or violence. Now what counts as harassment, threats or violence is another issue where our opposition is concerned. I will however also stand firm and continue to refuse to apologize for the acts of others.
even after watching things unravel from the very beginning…I somehow keep asking myself…”why did it have to come to all this?”
I’m sure you’re not a huge comic book fan, but there’s a point in time in which there’s a Civil War amongst the various super heroes in the Marvel universe. The way it plays out parallels Gamergate in many ways.
how did it end? with a lot of lives ruined, friendships betrayed, and with a lot of peoples rights infringed.
At the very end of it, the side that Gamergate would be on, Captain America’s side, was beaten and bruised but winning. At the last second when he has the chance to deal the killing blow to Iron Man, he stops himself and looks around at all the bloodshed, and the city which is in ruins. He stops, and surrenders to Iron Man. Because he realized the fight had no longer become about saving civilians. It was petty infighting amongst superheroes.
To me, Airplay feels like that final fight. I don’t know how it will play out. and I don’t see it ending the way it does in the comic. But…But I just hope Airplay helps people everywhere start looking at the city that’s in ruins around them…
It’s not strange at all that they are projecting. If nothing else, hypocrisy defines them.
Understand, they are essentially doing everything that they decry in their opponents. From the harassment, doxxing, open racism, even to targeting and slandering you.
They say that we’re the ones avoiding discussion, when they put up a blockbot and are actively sabotaging any attempt at an open platform. They even pushed Pakman into some one-sided business before they were open for another debate, and even then, they just threw Kluwe at it.
If by nothing else, see us for what we are and what we’ve done. Judge them the same way. Not just by what they say, but by what they are and what they’ve done. It’s not a very pretty picture of the Antis.
Why did you think they’d be interested? Why do you think people who play at journalism with no training or experience would be interested in a debate? Why do you think people who gave money to the patreons (not funding a product but funding their living expenses) of those they covered want to hash things out? Why do you think people who were happy to be flown to a developer, put up in nice places and given things they turned around and sold on ebay without a peep of disclosure want to clear the air on the issue?
Look, I’ve never worked for a trade press. I do understand that publications covering the gaming industry are absolutely beholden to publishers and developers who strictly regulate access to their products, both before hand with previews and first looks and with distribution of review copies near launch. I know they’re under pressure to not piss off a publisher so they get their review copies and can have content the same time as everyone else, rather than needing to buy a copy on launch and shit something out days behind the curve.
I also know that nobody I ever worked with scoffed at the notion that a $20 dollar t-shirt or other trivial piece of swag would sway them, not because it would anybody, but because my colleagues would rather have no appearance of impropriety than a shirt with a game’s logo on it. I know that I never heard anyone argue that since pure objectivity is an impossibility, they weren’t going to even try for it. This is something I’ve seen and read editors in chief and senior reporters in the game press say again and again and they’re not just talking about reviews.
They have their narrative. They’re happy with their narrative. Their narrative filled a wikipedia article with links from publications I wouldn’t source if I was on fire. The main stream media bought their narrative when they deigned to notice the kerfluffle. Law and Order bought their narrative. You’re buying their narrative. Go and find me all of this harassment and doxxing and threats LINKED to gamergate. Go and look up the threat that caused Sarkeesian to back out of a speaking gig at a school (in Arizona I think), tell me what the result of the police’s evaluation of the threat was and then point out the words gamergate, video games or gaming in the message.
Stop treating these people like they’re journalists in any sense of the word as you understand it. Stop thinking that a press who responded to accusations of impropriety by demonizing their opponents actually want to talk about the situation.
What many people don’t seem to know is that GamerGate have had a rule against doxing since the first operations directives was laid out. So it is actually against the rules to Dox when partaking Gamergate ops. So we have had an anti Dox stance since the early days.
I’d like to hear more about how the moderator(s) of these proposed debates are going to maintain order and fairness.
Second time you’re taken the “You’re an asshole” comment out of context, which was a probably-snarky reply to your challenge to “call me an asshole.”
I concur with both Doctor Ethics and Oliver Campbell
The only way that the other side will attend is IF they have full control of the narrative and the ability to make unproven claims.
Why? Because their narrative crumbles on inspection.
Why do so many of them have comments censored? Why do they hide behind the blockbot?
Their only strength is in control the narrative and not having it questioned.
Do not trust anything. Do not accept any statement or claim as truth.
Do not trust US either? Verify what we say as true. We are happy to back ourselves.
Watch closely what THEY do. Question anything and you will be victim blaming. You will be seen as unreasonable , AT BEST.
But THAT is what you SHOULD do. They say “X got death threats”
“That’s awful. Who sent them?”
“Gamergate. Wow, disgusting. Did you press charges?”
“No, it was done anonymously”
“Anonymously? How do you know it was them?”
“Of course it was. Who else would?”
“I don’t know. This is a big issue, polarised sides, high tensions and you are a big voice. Maybe, just maybe an individual troll or a troll group did….or some random”
“TRIGGERED. BLOCKED.”
THAT is what we are dealing with and have been dealing with for 9 months.
I have shown you already last update (check your moderated comments) of Brianna Wu blaming US for /Baphomet/ (a troll group targeting both sides) doxing her. She also lied about the dox appearing on Kotaku in Action on Reddit.
Its not her first lie.
Again, we can prove these things BUT if we make a big claim we must prove it.
Brianna “I was doxed by Gamergate”
YOU “Big claim, prove it”
Brianna “Wah”
US “Brianna lied over us doxing her”
YOU “Big claim prove it”
US “Ok wait a moment”
If you start letting these people plant false narratives unproven and unquestioned, then I question what we are doing in the debate.
Everyone seems to come in saying “so can you just condemn attacks on women.
Its BULLSHIT. I will tell you why. If you personally had an interview for TV and the interviewer said “Just to preface this, you are condemning ISIS, right?”
“Yeah, sure, I guess???”
“Okay, that is great that someone from SPJ condemns it and you are not all supporters of ISIS and their tactics”
YOU would be insulted and rightfully so. NO it does’ make us nicer or more moral to condemn death threats or doxing. It is actually insulting to put it to us in the first place.
I REALLY hope you get it.
I would like to see you to ask other side going to apologize to gamergate people too. I would like to see them say that they understand gamergate people who have seen their friends doxxed, harassed or unfairly accused.
It would be disappointing to see this to turn out to be another event that frames gamergate in terms of harassment only, ignoring what we say, and other side as victims only.
I think this is the second time harassment, threats, doxxing have been used as if they have some weight, which they do not. I mean, they do, but it’s equal on both sides, so it cancels itself out. Harassment in this mess has become a weasel word – it can mean anything from somebody respectfully letting you know why you’re wrong or why they dislike you, to them obsessively making sure you can’t have peace online. From what I’ve seen, most claims are people experiencing the former, and wanting their audience to see them experiencing the latter. Often, it’s been random trolling by people who never used the hashtag attributed to #gamergate. I don’t even know why.
Recently, Wu’s been accusing #gamergate of credit card fraud. With no evidence to present, just handwritten note with some costs or something. This is the level of accusations leveled against #gg. In this polarizing environment, all accusations from either side must be taken with a grain of salt.
We’ve seen it happen – people saying antagonizing things about #gamergate, get 3 GGs to respond to them, and after these 3 tweets, they’re crying how all of gamergate is harassing them, and blocking people. That’s what harassment is in this discussion. Even when Women Act Media is smearing #gamergate, saying we are against women and minorities, they still pretty much clear GG from being a harassment campaign in their twitter abuse report. This is from an organization with anti-gg slant, judging by the way they describe it.
http://womenactionmedia.org/cms/assets/uploads/2015/05/wam-twitter-abuse-report.pdf
The difference between #gamergate and the anti- side is that #gamergate does not use threats and doxing they’ve received as an argument. It’s happened. People in #gamergate have lost their living over their support of the revolt. Game developers were threatened for supporting it. When Lizzy was doxed, all she did is say goodbye and disappear until she made sure she’s safe. It should be telling that GG is not using the horribleness they’ve received as an argument.
I know the antis are trying to make the argument that #gamergate is a harassment campaign and they have to talk about that, but if we’re gonna have this debate, we should also talk about what they have done to people within #gamergate or the people on their side, who dared step out of line. Randi Harper and Brianna Wu both have felt the wrath of these people. If they refuse to own up to the things they did, their argument that only one side in this is harassing the other should be dismissed and if they don’t have a pertinent #gamergate argument, they should be dismissed overall.
Harassment is unacceptable. Crying wolf is unacceptable. Calling acceptable human behavior and disagreement ‘harassment’ is unacceptable. Not adult people’s fault some parents failed to raise their children and released them to the world unable to handle being told they are wrong.
I am sorry to say this, but I’m very worried about how many ways Airplay could go wrong. I won’t ask you to believe me but from what I’ve seen from Anti-GG, some of them are capable of doing anything if it is in the name of ‘Justice’. They (some not all) have no empathy for us because they consider us evil, The phrase “No bad tactics, only bad targets.” suits them perfectly. I hope you’ve taken some serious safety measures. I will pray for the safety of everyone who attends this event. Stay safe everyone.
Hey Michael, good morning!
I loved the Mom reference – it is very difficult to explain this if you haven’t been involved (on either side) since the very beginning, especially when trying to remain neutral. Thankfully I don’t talk to my parents about politics because I’m not a journalist.
For some reason I thought today was going to be “anti-GG” day – but all I see in your post is fair, reasonable statements. I have some thoughts on them – turns out I agree with everything you stated 100%!
GamerGate deserves a debate, but doesn’t deserve to win.
—–
Yes, yes, yes to this statement! All I want is to begin a discussion/conversation. I feel that most of AGG honestly, actually believes we are either hateful, horrible, people – or we support the actions of these people via bad cop, good cop. Both sides of their antagonists as well – so it is quite ugly.
I think that both sides would realize they share some of the same thoughts (Ethics are good, harassment is bad) and perhaps disagree with others. Alas there are too many bullets flying in the air for anyone to poke their head out and begin talking – though Gamer Gate has certainly tried to do this!
Debate now or duck forever.
—–
A friend of mine used that exact line of reasoning – and I was flabbergasted. The debate isn’t necessarily FOR the debaters – it is for those listening. For me though – if I am backing the equivalent of a creationist movement I am hoping to be shown that this – PROVE to me I am wrong! Every such debate may sway someone’s beliefs – even if it isn’t those you’re debating. PROVE TO ME that what the media has been saying about gamer gate is correct because I DON’T SEE IT!
In either case – as you stated – I feel this will never go away without reaching out. Perhaps you read David Auerbach’s take on Gamer Gate back in October (link at the bottom of this post). If what he had suggested, as someone on the neutral-leaning AGG side, had occurred this would probably have ended months ago. Note the comments of that article as well (always read the comments!).
Let’s talk to those who are leaning in to listem.
—–
I too disagree with all Guilt by Association – and this is one of the largest reasons, I feel, that gamer gate has lasted as long as it has and the reason for the separation between the two camps. I’ve done all I can do to stop those who would hijack the message (please be more ethical) to cause suffering for others – I condemn all such actions.
I look forward to this event (assuming it will happen) and thank you for, if nothing else, listening for even a few days to us.
By the way – just in case you want something to listen to while at work – I feel this may help explain the differences between AGG and GG perspectives. It is from a pro-GG person, but I feel he did an excellent job being unbiased with his presentation/statements – it covers the different ideologies that seem to be held by both sides. It is just an opinion piece as well – but it helped me understand AGG a bit more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzhJo2Hg2Vw – Pro/Anti Gamergate – A Summary of Social Ideologies. (16 or so minutes)
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/10/how_to_end_gamergate_a_divide_and_conquer_plan.1.html – David Auerbach “How to End Gamergate A Divide and Conquer Plan for dissolivign a toxic online movement.”
My, my. If you aren’t able to explain something that has happened since last August, you probably haven’t done enough research.
I could explain to my mother what Gamergate is in one sentence. Watch.
It’s a gaming scandal that sparked a revolt after discussion of said scandal was buried with claims of harassment from the gaming press.
Fuck, I rule.
But Gamergate is really about removing women from gaming by harassing them, right? Just ask the anti-Gamergate guys on Gamerghazi reddit board if you want the other side of the story. They will happily tell you that while regurgitating the accounts of the three media darlings. Go watch the ABC Nightline video. It’s a hoot. Or watch the Law and Order SVU episode “Intimidation Game”. Shit, it’s practically a documentary of Gamergate.
You say that Gamergate doesn’t deserve to win. I agree. Because it has already won, and not on your terms either. It won when the games media were dragged kicking and screaming having to update their ethics policies along with having to disclose relationships and native ads. It won when one of the large tabloid brands writing stupid shit got hit with a loss of seven figures with ads being taken off their sites. Those were victories celebrated by the people within Gamergate.
However, each person in this revolt has a different win condition. For me? It’s seeing the truth slowly get revealed, day by day, with the press slowly being stuck having to write half-baked opinion pieces to a small group of idiots that only swallow what they want to hear, while losing their credibility because nobody else cares what they write about other than any worldly events that are happening. Who knows, the other win condition might be when one of the media darlings gets outed as a liar and/or wins some well-deserved prison time.
And I will be sipping my champagne when it happens. Cheerio!
Koretsky, what is the point of this debate? I thought it was about ethics in journalism, yet you keep posting about, for lack of a better expression, ethics in consumer revolts.
I see little to no mention of the ethics violations GamerGate supporters bring up: cronyism, blacklisting, reviews for sex, journalists giving money to support game developers they are friends with, etc.
It seems to me this is heading the way every other discussion in the media has headed: we want to talk about ethical improprieties in games journalism, etc., while the “neutral” party just asks us about harassment and parades carefully selected victims in front of us (the irony being said victims have almost always engaged in shitty behavior themselves yet are painted as innocent).
Will the first question be that old chestnut: “GamerGate supporters, did you stop beating your wife?”
Then instead of any salient points coming out about how multiple journalists were in sexual / romantic relationships with someone they gave a positive review to without disclosure, people on our side spend an hour defending themselves – and us – against the tactics of a vast few.
Why? Well, you know why. The CBC pretty much admitted outright why they did it that way: stories of harassment, misogyny, etc., sell whereas talking about a bunch of journalists who write about games and their ethical indiscretions, not so much.
I was excited about this debate at first, because I thought, finally we’re going to talk about ethics in journalism with journalists, and these people are interested in that topic. But the more you write, the less I believe that, and the more I believe this is just more of the same.
Right now I predict that it will be several hours of aGGro calling us misogynistic harassing shitlords who are worse than ISIS and those speaking for our side will have to spend their time arguing against that. And nary a word about journalistic ethics will be had.
And I predict that because that’s what I’ve seen from you so far. Are you interested in talking about ethics in journalism or not?
“My goal is to prove to both sides that SPJ is an honest broker in this debate. Everything I’ve offered GamerGate proponents, I’ll offer their opponents.”
I’ll be level with you, currently you’re not doing a good job of that and that’s because you’re currently ignoring GamerGate proponents who have been targeted for months and giving far too much credit to the GamerGate opponents based on flimsy and almost non-existent and poorly sourced proof.
There’s a term some of us use to denote them: Anti-Intellectual GamerGate Revisionist Opposition (aGGro), they don’t stick to facts, they constantly revise facts to suit their narrative and they want nothing but complete submission.
All of that sounds harsh when you know nothing, but as some people have pointed out Katherine Cross has already labeled you a doxxer even when you obviously didn’t do so and there’s no middle ground for such blatant lies that have been affecting GamerGate proponents for months simply for wanting ethics.
You’re not going to look honest by glossing over evidence, and we’re tired of having to say repeatedly that we don’t condone harassment. People are wisely wary of the panel now and if you want to turn this around you’re going to have to prove to us gamers (And please call us that, it’s very irksome to be called Gamergaters) that we will be able to discuss ethics in gaming journalism constructively.
This is why we want to get to the panel, it’s not because we want to win but because such attacks on people by corrupt journalists must end:
Brad Wardell is a pro-GG dev critical of media because of their hit pieces on him:
https://archive.today/ZZxEe
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/23/How-sloppy-biased-video-games-reporting-almost-destroyed-a-CEO
http://www.gamepolitics.com/2014/11/11/long-overdue-correction-and-apology-brad-wardell#.VGKBm_nF9S3
This is the sort of proof that we collect to show that we’re serious about being against harassment. No one should be harassed, it’s awful when it happens, but you’re not going to get very far if you take both sides at face value because one side has more than the face while one only has a shallow face and hides behind malicious lies.
Here’s another one. A GamerGate meeting in Washington DC had a bomb threat sent to the bar they were gathering in, after GamerGate opponents failed to get the participants kicked out: https://twitter.com/Scrumpmonkey/status/594253463036567554
http://www.gamepolitics.com/2015/05/03/gamergate-dc-gathering-targeted-bomb-threat
Pay attention to this line: “On Friday, May 1, 2015 at 9:30 pm the Metropolitan Police Department received information from the FBI in reference to an individual posting on Twitter that a bomb would be detonated inside of 1602 U Street, NW”
That’s right, the bomb threat to Gamergate proponents was considered credible by the FBI no less, and we’ve known for some time that
Now compare it to this statement received by Anita after her USU talk was threatened:
http://www.usu.edu/ust/index.cfm?article=54178
“After a careful assessment of the threat it has been determined it is similar to other threats that Sarkeesian has received in the past”
You’d think that a bomb threat in the capital of the US would get more publicity. In reality this is what happened:
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=Sarkeesian+bomb+threat+usu
You’ll see that some reference GamerGate when 1) The statement never said as such and 2) The staff themselves concluded that the threat wasn’t all that credible.
“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize” So goes an old saying, and if you do not wish to have gamers suspecting you of wanting to rule, engage them in good faith and review the evidence they provide to you. There are so many of us who have watched cases like the UVA rape hoax unfold, and you must prove yourself willing to look at the facts if this panel is going to take off.
Tl;dr: We’re fed up of discussing any sort of harassment, and we’re not going to sit around for another three months leading up to this panel hoping to discuss ethics if you keep bringing in more discussion about harassment. There’s nothing new to be said, nothing to be re-hashed and implying that harassment of some people is more important than ethics would be ignoring the real threats that devs have gotten simply for being the wrong kind of dev, which would in itself be an ethical breach of not seeking the truth.
Thanks for your time reading this.
Well. I’m going to have to admit, I’m a little let down. When you asked GG to condemn harassment in your last post, I thought you were trying to start this off by having both sides condemn it. However, it has become pretty clear that you are buying into that bs that anti GG is full of victims. I’ve seen too many of the pro GG folks doxed, their workplaces called, their families called, people get fired because aGG was sending their bosses porn, devs threatened with “if you don’t change this character, I’m going to…”, directors harassed (take a look at the hell they gave Wheadon before he left twitter), ads in real life defaced (protein world, England), scientists brought to the point of tears (the guy who landed a probe on a DAMN COMET) because of a shirt a female friend gave him, neutrals harassed (Grummz, shuluuwitch), events interrupted because of a bomb threat, people kicked out of cons for having a pro GG poster, people being discriminated against for wearing anything pro GG (several cons now), and yet you don’t ask them to denounce any of the horrible ACTUAL stuff they have done.
This is starting to become a MASSIVE exercise in patience. You say you want to be neutral. Fine with me, don’t bother me a bit. But part of being neutral is treating both sides equally. I’ll be waiting for you to amend this post so you can ask anti GG to denounce ANYTHING I just posted above. They won’t. They won’t denounce it. Why? “There are no bad tactics, only bad targets”.
“but because so many have been doxed, threatened, and harassed, their skittishness is justified.”
Many GamerGaters have been doxed, threatened, and harassed too, but they didn’t stop saying what they think is right in a public forum.
Also should be noted that in this day and age, being “”””””harassed”””””” while politically correct can be incredibily lucrative.
“…but because so many have been doxed, threatened, and harassed, their skittishness is justified. So here’s what I’ll tell the leading anti-GamerGaters…”
No it’s not justified. If GamerGate was a harassment campaign and they are like you said “GamerGate’s very best enemies” then they would be being doxed/threatened/harassed right now, but they aren’t.
One thing to note here is that many of the GG supporters here – myself included – feel like you’ve already made up your mind by taking their claims at face value and putting all the burden to “behave better” on us.
I notice that you talk about how the other side holds us in similarly low regard as we hold them – and I can’t say that I’m surprised. As Oliver mentioned earlier, yeah that’s how they operate. Their entire charade is about portraying us as evil. But that’s not even what I want to talk about here. I want to say that I hope you understand why we hold them in such low regard: We’re nine months into this. We’re nine months into a mess that could’ve been prevented in a day. We’re nine months into being insulted and attacked day after day – the very same harassment they’re claiming we’re doing to them. So yes, we don’t think they’ll show up. We don’t think they’ll treat you any other way than they treated Mark, Stephanie, David, or even Oliver when he first looked at this. And we do think they’re despicable people. Like they think we are. Because we’re all entrenched after nine months.
And a final note, perhaps the most important one I have: You will have to put GG opponents under the very same scrutiny you put us under, or the result will be the same as all the times before that we have tried to get them to the table on neutral grounds. If they are given a free pass on the claims we make, while we have to bend over backwards to meet demands because of their claims, this whole thing will only extend the trainwreck even further. We want to have a rational talk about ethics. That won’t happen if we’re presented as “the hate group”.
The relationship between gamergate and its critics isn’t a “debate”, and you aren’t going to get any high profile feminists to sit on a panel with apologists for harassment, Michael. It’s that simple. Targets are not prone to have sit-downs with their harassers. If you want to interview gamergaters, fine. Get their side of the story. Pretending that this is a two-sided debate in the normal sense of the word is naive, and sends you down a time-wasting path.
“…but because so many have been doxed, threatened, and harassed, their skittishness is justified.”
Absolutely not. It’s not “justified” at all.
It’s understandable. It’s understandable that they’re afraid when all they hear about interactions with GamerGate supporters is this vague “harassment”, the boogeyman.
But it’s certainly not justified, because the claims are not backed up by anything. Threats and harassment are crimes. You said this in the AirPlay5 update: Report crimes to the authorities. Why hasn’t this happened? Why haven’t GG critics reported this – and if they have, why is the result absolutely no decisive action taken by the authorities? We know they’re watching, we know they’ve contacted people on both sides. Why has nobody been arrested? To me this screams that there’s a load of horseshit in the claims GG critics make.
But even if we give them the benefit of the doubt, the harassment is on both sides. Yet many GG supporters stand with their name attached in this mess. Many GG supporters are not skittish at all and actually eager to go to this event. To me, this fear seems oddly one-sided. With the vile shit that GG opponents have gotten away with already, I think GG supporters being afraid would be a lot more justified.
We stand tall and strong because we know this is worth it, and because we know that the harassment narrative is a massive exaggeration.
“The gamergators that dont love their mothers”
There are people in Gamergate who are mothers
But you ignore their voices because some straight white male said they were harassing women
How in the right world does that make sense?
How could you just sit and go “yeah thats right, i should ignore the minorities in Gamergate and instead listen to the overprivileged white rich straight people who say that the people in Gamergate are harassers, because THAT MAKES SENSE!?”
When are you going to talk about the black man in Gamergate who lost his job because he supported Gamergate?
When are you going to start talking about the woman who had her daughters name’s leaked because she supported Gamergate?
When are you going to start talking about the gay man who was sent a syringe to his home because he supported Gamergate?
When are you going to start talk about the woman who had people call her school to have her STEM scholarship removed because she supported Gamergate?
When are you going to start talking about the rape victim who was told she was only supporting Gamergate because she wanted the men’s attention?
What about the thousands of times that Gamergate has been labeled as “straight white men?” there are trans women in Gamergate who do everything they can to stop reminding them of their previous gender.
When are you going to stop ignoring the large minority of female/LGBT/ethnic Gamergate supporters who say they are there because they want to make a difference and have people stop blaming them for something they never did?
If you want to talk about ethics thats fine, i can take the blame, being gay means that a lot of people label you something that you arn’t i can take it, i’ve gotten used to it.
But if you’re going to keep accusing my friends of something they’re not then you are not talking about ethics anymore, choose, take up the ethical concerns in gamergate, or stop ignoring us minorities.
No it isn’t strange AT ALL.
GG seems to be playing catch up, learning the rules to online Social Justice activism and repurposing them for their own cause.
The more time you spend looking, you will see nothing but similarities between both sides. They both have extremist who take every move made as a personal attack against their identity. They both have people who speak reasonably when talking with the opposition, but then fall back into the same rhetoric when talking with their allies.
These groups are very diverse, but contain ALL THE SAME ELEMENTS!
The only REAL difference I see, is the topic they want to discuss.
We have had 9 months of the EXACT same argument:
“What does online harassment have to do with journalistic ethics? What does journalistic ethics have to do with online harassment?”
Then repeat those two question until the internet explodes!
In fact it is so ridiculous that you will find that both sides ACTUALLY agree about both topic as well.
we have all agreed countless times that
A) Harassment is terrible and not acceptable behavior.
B)Ethical reporting on this 80 billion dollar industry is important.
At this point I am confused about WHAT there is left to say or argue about, but you can still hear the cacophony of those two question raging back and forth as though they are part of the same conversation.
Anyways, good luck. You have your work cut out for you!
The reality here is that each side had their own pre-conceived notions of their “opponent”.
For years, tech and gaming journalists have been pandering to an audience that viewed tech (and by extension, gaming) culture as misogynistic and anti-woman. To be fair, these same journalists call a lot of stuff misogynistic. The demographic they’re pandering to is convinced of that reality. Come August, there was what looked like standard drama regarding infidelity. This same drama also had implications that a game developer had been sleeping around to get good reviews on her video game. It happens, the drama was barely noteworthy, and I thought all talk of it was going to dissipate within a week.
But that obviously didn’t happen. The response to criticism of this game developer (who goes by the pseudonym of Zoe Quinn) was grossly disproportionate. News outlet after news outlet railed against us for daring to criticize her. People had their employers called with lies to get them fired. (Unconfirmed) rumors of approximately a dozen SWATings of those who’d later be called “pro-GGers” circulated around.
And then allegations came up against the “pro-GGers”. Misogynists. Afraid of inclusivity. Ultra-conservative bigots. Terrorists. The allegations kept getting more and more absurd, we all thought this was a grand case of mistaken identity. We spent months trying to engage in dialogue, but nothing came of it. The harder we tried to convince them we weren’t this evil caricature of everything they hated, the more vitriolic their attacks were against us. Various online communication outlets that let us speak had been sent death threats. More and more people had their employers called with clear slander to get them fired.
The communication platforms that did let us speak, primarily Reddit and 8chan, had people posting misogynistic statements followed by claims of “Hah! No one will believe that you Gaters didn’t make these statements! You shitlords are done for!” This was then followed by claims from “anti-GamerGate” personalities like Brianna Wu that we were making misogynistic statements as she posted screenshot of the Reddit and 8chan posts (minus the false flag bragging).
Then come October, when an (until that point) unrelated individual, Anita Sarkeesian, received death threats threatening to kill her if she spoke at Ohio State University regarding her criticism of video games. To my understanding, her rationale of blaming “GamerGate” was that she believed it was filled with misogynists and that because her talks were criticizing video games, it must have been someone associated with GamerGate who sent her the death threat.
And then comes the most bizarre part of all. The New York Times reported on this death threat about how it was done by GamerGate. I recall thinking to myself, why is the New York Times making such an absurd statement? There are thousands of people in GamerGate who, by that point, had been spending all their time defending themselves from attack after attack on their persons, and then suddenly thousands of us were blamed for some sociopath that sent death threats?
How is it that thousands of people were blamed for the actions of a single individual writing a death threat? Why did the New York Times make this absurd claim?
The reason GamerGate has persisted for so long as is that we perceive a great injustice has been done to the “pro-GGers”. We have so much archived evidence proving this. no one cares to listen, because how could so many mainstream news outlets all be making similar statements if it wasn’t true? Confirmation bias is a terrible thing, and its effects are amplified when media outlets fall prey to it.
Some thoughts.
I don’t subscribe to this notion of a controversy (or response to it) as some kind of identity or movement. If it should be called a movement, it’s unlike any other movement in history and would be a broadening of the term. The opposition to us is also overwhelmingly ideologically compromised. In their ideology, identity politics are standard faire. They have tried to make this an issue of identity.
It’s also not inherently political. They, of course, would have it be a political issue. This is why they continue to demand that we structure in the vein of a movement. That’s the battleground they are familiar with. That is where their emotional appeals will succeed.
In some sense, it is a political issue, but that’s primarily because our opposition is entirely of a specific political bent and ideology within that political bent. There’s nothing inherently political about ethics in journalism.
The past 9 months, we’ve been largely talking past eachother because we want to have the discussion about ethics and they will not have it. They want to have a discussion about “harassment” primarily and secondarily “misogyny” for some reason and we are largely uninterested in those discussions.
I can speak to why I am personally uninterested in those discussions.
First off, we cannot ignore the ideology at play here. The world view justifies itself and has no basis in fact. I can go into a lot more detail on this point, but in the context of the broader discussion, it means several things. It means that if they think you are wrong, they will not accept any argument from you. If they think they are right, they can do pretty much anything in service of that which they see as just. This is why they have called in bomb threats, that’s why they’ve gotten people fired, that’s ultimately why we’re still here. It means that it’s very difficult to say that discussion will be meaningful when they disregard you and then simultaneously do anything they want in service of making you go away.
Secondly, their definitions of harassment and misogyny are effectively meaningless. They think that the “victim” gets to define harassment, therefore, things like criticism fall under harassment. It makes it difficult to discuss real harassment when the definition means that anything can be and is harassment. Misogyny is bandied about like a broad cudgel. As far as they’re concerned, if you “harass” women (which, as we’ll recall, includes criticizing them), you’re a misogynist. It doesn’t have to be rooted in actual hatred of women. This makes it overbroad as well. Misogyny in particular is a disgusting accusation to throw at someone and they’re comfortable with doing that simply as a matter of course.
Thirdly, where’s the evidence that harassment is happening at any elevated rate versus general Internet discourse? The only thing I’ve ever seen them trot out are the 3 female puppets – Quinn, Sarkeesian, and Wu.
Quinn probably does get a lot of harassment, but that’s generally true of anybody that has allegations as heavy as The Zoe Post leveled against them. The issue we run into is: How is that associated to the controversy? How is that associated to us?
Sarkeesian goes out of her way to not respond to any criticism whatsoever and then takes the angry things that she gets and frames those up as “look at all this harassment I get.” Even then it’s a surprisingly small amount of significant harassment for a public figure; I suspect nobody wants to justify the stupid narrative. Sargon has a good video about this subject (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eQW-NvtAEs). In any case, we run into the same problem: How is that associated to the controversy? How is that associated to us?
Wu probably also gets a lot of harassment, but we have the same problem. Those tweets that got her on the mainstream media are sketchy and nowhere in them is #GamerGate mentioned. How is that associated to the controversy? How is that associated to us?
Fourthly, we have a vested interest in harassment not happening. They’ve used this dumb excuse for 9 months as some kind of scapegoat from talking about the issues. I don’t buy for a second that even if we somehow solved this alleged harassment problem that they would suddenly come around and talk about the issues.
Fifthly, assuming they are right and the harassment is off the scales, how do we fix that? Well, the controversy needs to end. How does the controversy end? Talking about the issues productively and freezing out the people doing harassment. The opposition should be dying to talk about ethics if their claim is true. But this is not what we see.
Sixthly, we come to solving this alleged harassment problem. What does denouncing it do? They’re just cheap words. I can say I denounce anything, but then not get off the couch and do anything real about it. It’s a distraction at best and if we’re decrying harassment on the Internet, we’re literally going to be there forever doing that.
Lastly, solving this alleged harassment problem would require us to organize and our strength comes from the fact that we are not organized. It’s a real chaotic marketplace of ideas. But it also does not give them any surface area to do the things they are best at, like picking out targets to play identity politics with. I don’t know for certain, but I suspect strongly that this is the real reason that they don’t drop the harassment stuff.
Given those things, I think the only reasonable course of action for both sides is discussing ethics. Eventually something has to give. I would be interested in what you think should give.
Repeatedly on other platforms (Pakman Show, HuffPost) AGG proponents have stated time and time again, that they would never debate us because in their eyes that gives us legitimacy. In other words we can’t be a lightning rod of pure evil if anyone, ANYONE listens to us and takes us seriously. If they debate us, we’ve ‘won’, to them.
By offering us this debate, we’ve already ‘won’ also by their terms. They liken us to creationists/antivaxers (they must be mocked, ignored, fringe, illiterate), we tend to liken them to a cult/scientologists (groupthink, with us or against us, authoritarian, desctruction of the individual).
Excuse me now, I’m off to see the new Mad Max movie.
Its a discussion of ethics, not harassment, this has to be made clear because without ethics there is no basis for the charge.
Every main stream form of media has discredited itself on this issue
Larry Felton Johnson (@larryfeltonj)
“The relationship between gamergate and its critics isn’t a “debate”, and you aren’t going to get any high profile feminists to sit on a panel with apologists for harassment, Michael. It’s that simple.”
High profile feminists? Why would anyone expect or want high profile feminists to be the designated parties responding to allegations of unethical conduct by journalists? Why wouldn’t the journalists just speak for themselves?
Surely, gaming journalists don’t think that feminists (or any other group) are their shields. Right?
I know this isn’t a news article, but some journalistic standards wouldn’t go amiss in a post about journalistic ethics, don’t you think?
> all my mom knows for sure is that GamerGaters don’t love their mothers
I know this is snark, but it’s needlessly inflammatory.
> …but because so many have been doxed, threatened, and harassed, their skittishness is justified.
A claim with no evidence presented.
>Those sound like GamerGaters who are leaning toward rationality.
In what way shape or form is that an objective statement? Implying that only a small outlier of GG supporters are rational.
I can forgive the rest as snark, but then there’s this:
>I replied… I’m going to give the opposition as fair a shake as I gave GamerGate. You are basically saying about your opposition what people told me about YOU.
>“That’s so…strange,” Oliver replied, gathering his thoughts before concluding, “No, it’s not strange at all.”
This is just a total misrepresentation. I’m listening to that stream now, and the reason Campbell said it’s not strange is because he said that’s because games journalists and their allies want to represent GG as a complete harassment campaign so that they don’t have to answer to allegations about ethical improprieties. And yet you’re trying to present it as him tacitly agreeing with the allegations.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m looking forward to the debate and appreciate the opportunity for us to present our case, but a bit less snark and sniping would be appreciated.
Interesting… not a single comment from anti-Gamergate proponents so far. Take note, Koretsky; even when you allude to #Gamergate being somehow guilty of the horrible accusations these people make, they STILL don’t want to come here and say “Yeah you’re right!”, and you know why? Because they are wrong and so are you.
There is a simple solution to aGG not showing up. Make this event as public as possible (maybe even including the invitations) and guarantee safety, so if they don’t show up, they can be called out on not publicly and openly defending their stance, like gamergate is willing to. Also, to stop aGG from derailing the event, gamergate should get the first opening statement, starting with bringing up the recent WAM study and stating that any claims without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, basically ignoring unsubstantiated claims of harassment, instead focusing on ethics, and quickly tearing apart any claims with faulty evidence. Maybe even turn that into a rule of the debate, if a side doesn’t present evidence for their claims, call them out, and the other side gets to ignore it. A much more interesting though unlikely solution is to get a member of the police, judge, or similar public position to examine the claims of harassment as they’re made and whether it is actual harassment and if the evidence matches the claims (plus it would emphasize that the event is safe and put much more weight on showing up and proper conduct). Unfortunately, that is a very unlikely scenario, but it would be very interesting.
You need to consider that the actual ethical case, as a purely ethical case, is not very meaty and only a tiny minority of GamerGaters believe the “revolt” is about ethics alone. Milo Yiannopoulos, your likely GG panelist, is actually on record as saying that viewing GamerGate as an ethics-only is a minority and indeed “dangerous” view.
To have a real “debate” you have to accept that the real GG “ethics” charge is that radical feminists and their allies in the press are trying to “colonize,” change and censor games. That’s their true position. End of story. Is that really a thesis you want to spend time chewing over? I submit that it’s facially ridiculous but hey.
Consider the most recent kerfuffle that has GG striking out once again against Polygon’s advertisers. Why? Because a reviewer opined in a section of his review that The Witcher 3 had elements of racism and misogyny in its world. GamerGate, the “anti-censorship” movement, wants to shut that sort of opinion down.
Who wants to “debate” this sort of ideological, tangential, non-starter nonsense? “Hi, I’m representing the pro-not-chasing-social-justice-warriors-out-of-games contingent. Let’s debate whether they SHOULD be!”
Honestly, you’d be better off letting GamerGate lay out its mountains of evidence for knowledgeable persons and let them try to explain how most of it isn’t ethics-relared and just ideological pushback against what they perceive to be an unacceptable and growing leftist presence in gaming. I’d pay money to watch that house of cards get toppled by people who know better.
“You are basically saying about your opposition what people told me about YOU.”
One side has been proven to target individuals. One side has concocted special software to block and do what it can to ruin the lives of those who disagree with them. One side has factually sought to erase discussion, reason and debate from this entire controversy.
What Campbell said about the opposition is not unfunded, and can be factually demonstrated. What the opposition said about Campbell has no basis in reality. We will not gain a greater understanding of this if we do not look beneath the surface, beneath simple statements and rhetoric. I hope you AirPlay will delve deeper into the truth of the matter and not simply consider everyone’s opinions, leaving the most passionate ones to “win”. It would be a disservice to both sides.
This is either a debate about Ethics in journalism, OR harassment. If you try to do both you will get no answers. If you do it on harassment then be up front that THAT is what the debate is about and stop assuming one side or the other is correct out of the front.
If you are trying to go with good faith, and believe first, then ALL Anti-GG need to admit fault and decry ALL the harassment that the GG supportors have gotten, if you want ALL GG to do the same for the Anti-GG crowd.
This is shaping up to do nothing, because again it will be two different discussions that each side will have. You need to focus it down to ONE topic. Pick.
“because so many have been doxed, threatened, and harassed, their skittishness is justified”
Citation needed.
A more accurate statement would be “so many have claimed to be doxed, threatened, and harassed”… yet every time confirmation is sought, we get a repeat of the Rolling Stone’s UVA coverage: that the allegation itself is sufficient to establish facts.
Recently, Twitter brought in a womens’ activist group called Women Action Media (WAM) to investigate harassment claims and recommend policy changes. WAM discovered that despite nearly 10,000 #GamerGate accounts being listed on the anti-GG “Good Games Autoblocker”, only 65 were found to be engaging in any sort of harassment.
With 99.3% of its accounts engaged in ZERO harassment, #GamerGate likely qualifies as one of the more saintly hashtags Twitter has ever experienced. Certainly nothing like the “Age of Ultron” hate mob which recently resulted in Joss Whedon deleting his account entirely.
wormsby
“To have a real “debate” you have to accept that the real GG “ethics” charge is that radical feminists and their allies in the press are trying to “colonize,” change and censor games. That’s their true position.”
A frustration that I have, not only in the GG community but in Western thought in general, is the inability to distinguish the tactical from the strategic. Strategy relates to a side’s overall goals, while tactics are the methods employed in service of the strategy.
A major faction within Gamergate are people who love games and believe that games have become a front of a culture war that we’d rather have nothing to do with, but losing that war means that the content of games available in the future is going to be constrained by political correctness. Our strategic goal is defending the hobby we love.
Two of the of the tactics that Social Justice Warriors (the opposing side of this culture war) are using are Entryism and Narrative Control. Entryism is getting their own people in positions of influence who them promote others sympathetic to the cause. Positions of influence, in this context, includes the press, which then allows the clique to dominate the narrative in the media. These methods often involve breaches of journalistic ethics: personal relationships, financial ties, failing to seek truth, misrepresentation of a side’s arguments, etc. If gaming journalists can be made to create and abide by ethics policies, then Entryism in journalism ceases to be a viable method for SJWs to prosecute their culture war, and they risk losing control of the narrative. Thus, for the faction of Gamergate that is concerned about the culture war, promoting ethics in gaming journalism is a tactical goal that serves the strategic goal of protecting games.
There can be other tactics that Gamergate supporters use in addition to supporting ethics. If we are pissed off that certain publications are ideologically biased, then we can choose, as consumers, to take our business elsewhere with the goal of supporting more favorable publications. This in no way invalidates our argument that journalists should adhere to a code of ethics.
But once you start talking about issues that go beyond ethics in journalism, you’re no longer talking about Gamergate, nor are you talking about anything that would seem suitable for a roundtable discussion with the SPJ.
Dunno how many times I have to say this:
Bullies should not be given a platform to debate their victims
The bullied should not have to be coerced into debating their bullies
Gamergate, the reason people keep talking about harassment?
People’s wellbeing is always valued more than your entitlement or your campaign for ethics or your precious video games. The moment you attacked Anita for having an opinion and grafted yourself unto Eron’s revenge campaign, you lost all validity. And you have spent nine months losing it even.
This shit show is a powerplay for Koretzky, and a whitewash attempt by GG. Hopefully no one will be fooled by this ‘oh I’m just a mediator’ facade.
I fail to see why you’re reaching out to irrelevant people like Butts. She’s not a journalist, she won’t talk about ethical violations, she’ll talk about harassment from three-minute-old anonymous egg accounts on Twitter that she claims are Gamergate.
The threat narrative is relevant and needs to be debunked, but why don’t you reach out to a journalist, like Ben Kuchera, Senior editor of Polygon, or Stephen Totilo, Editor in Chief at Kotaku? They’re actual journalists, they’re the ones we have issues with.
As always a little late to the party, but nonetheless. You probably already noticed, you’re making a mistake. You’re letting the antis derail the conversation. Is the SPJ code of ethics about protecting dishonest people from their projected persecution complexes, or is it about ethics in Journalism? Because it sure sounds like it’s the latter.
The antis are horrified of the SPJ. They are horrified of gamergate coming into contact with the SPJ and they are afraid of scrutiny. Hence much like how they treat us, you come along to the antis, want to talk about ethics in journalism, and they want to talk about harassment and how badly they’re harassed and harassment blah blah, infinite amounts of what surmounts essentially to “Please don’t talk about ethics and clean journalism please please for the love of god don’t hold our practises up to scrutiny.”
@LiveBeef: “Confirmation bias is a terrible thing, and its effects are amplified when media outlets fall prey to it.”
This is the single best sentence which sums up why #GamerGate exists and is a scandal.
Truth and better objective fact checked reporting should clarify matters significantly. And so should a fair well moderated debate. Clarifying the matter should be a victory for anyone who allegedly wants this debacle to end.
Journalistic ethics is a serious problem and a growing one, if journalism is too unreliable, most information distributed in the world today is also unreliable. Im pretty sure you know that better than I do. We all judge and are judged its the way it should be. No free passes no matter the “side” you claim to be on.
And please spare me of the term “Gamergaters” “journo” and leave our mothers out of this. Its bad enough as it is.
By all means, give them a fair shake. Again, the truth is on our side. The tactic of aGG has always been DARVO– Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.
I am confidant the truth will become obvious when you give them the benefit of the doubt.
Fuck you’re stupid:
http://8ch.net/gamergatehq/res/151553.html
There. There is what GG thinks of trannies. And you.
Mr. Koretzky,
The group we refer to, generally, as aGG won’t show up. #GG has tried to engage in good faith for 9 months, yet we cannot get a conversation going.
In 9 months, there’s been absolutely no ‘real’ danger to anyone. By definition, ‘assassination’ is the term for politically motivated killings, and let’s be perfectly clear: nobody’s going to get killed over gamer-fucking-gate!
The fear that exists isn’t about physical violence. A lot of the people who claimed #GG was some misogynistic hell-hole, a trolling paradise and the worst online thing ever – even as ISIS recruits westerners to join their movement, which literally beheads journalists.
I doubt they’ll come to argue the points. They’re not afraid for their safety; the worst that might happen is a few hurt feelings. No, they won’t show, in my opinion, because they know their arguments won’t hold up to anything resembling scrutiny. The fear is real, but it’s not physical. In my humble opinion, they’re afraid of getting exposed.
If you read this comment – and I hope you do, as I’m quite bright and my points are always enlightening – I hope you take a mental note.
At this point, as a sort of point of conclusion, I have to ask: Michael, have you ever been exposed to a corrupt politician, con-artist or delusional individual? At what exact point did your spider-senses start tingling? Can you recall the exact moments when you came to the conclusion, “Something’s really wrong here?”
I suspect you might have that sort of moment in the near future, and it won’t be towards the evil aligned forces of ‘Gators.
PS – Newsweek and WAM! both attempted to quantify this “#GG harassment” – the worst offense them evil ‘Gator types supposedly did. Neither could codify or quantify this ‘harassment.’ Neither could demonstrate that this issue exists.
We ‘Gators have been on a few ruse-cruises over the course of this. Oliver Campbell once mentioned a quote from Ronald Reagan, “Trust, but verify.”
Try to verify the claims that have been made against those using the #GamerGate hashtag to spread information of terrible media practices.
See if those spider-senses start a’tingling.
So far, we have seen three anti-GG folks chime in.
And all they have done is confirm that GG said they would say:
WORMSBY: “To have a real ‘debate’ you have to accept that the real GG ‘ethics’ charge is that radical feminists and their allies in the press are trying to ‘colonize,’ change and censor games. That’s their true position. End of story.”
Scoffs at the idea of debate, scoffs at ethics. Then seems not to notice that IF members of the press were trying to censor games, that would indeed be a major violation of journalistic ethics. The entire post is an exercise in goalpost-shifting.
IDEHENDO: “Bullies should not be given a platform to debate their victims… People’s wellbeing is always valued more than your entitlement or your campaign for ethics or your precious video games. The moment you attacked Anita for having an opinion and grafted yourself unto Eron’s revenge campaign, you lost all validity.”
Does anyone really need to point out how many presumptions this post relies on?
LARRY FELTON JOHNSON: “The relationship between gamergate and its critics isn’t a ‘debate’, and you aren’t going to get any high profile feminists to sit on a panel with apologists for harassment, Michael. It’s that simple.”
As with the other two, Larry here seeks to discredit the very idea of a debate as, itself, enabling harassment. All three dismiss #GamerGate arguments out of hand and replace them with harassment claims.
Mr. Koretzky, this has been what virtually anyone trying to talk about ethics in journalism has faced since last August, including non-GG people trying to act the part of neutrals in order to create avenues of discussion.
Most of those people are now pro-GG due to their exposure to anti-GG hatred. I hope you are better able to maintain a neutral posture.
Mr. Koretzky, first again thank you for even making the attempt. But I am mystified at what it takes to prove a case. I collected 9 months of trolling by Nyberg (@srhbutts) and Allen (@a_man_in_black). Admittedly maybe it was lost in the sheer volume of replies but the tweets speak for themselves. The condemnation of harassment and attempts at reconciliation have already happened.
And to echo Oliver’s point, you are dealing with an opposition to GamerGate which tolerates no middle ground and delights in personal attack of ANY neutrals
As others have noted, it is very telling what we are NOT talking about:
* What are the ethics of a private mailing list where the blacklisting of journalists or game developers was allegedly discussed?
* What is the propriety of journalists covering the products their spouses work on or sleeping with those they cover?
anti-Gamergate believes this is “criminalizing normal relationships”
* What is the media response to a compilation BY AVERAGE CITIZENS of alleged ethical violations?
anti-Gamergate calls it a hit list
Do you remember the phrase frequently levied against the Republicans post 9/11 that “facts don’t matter?” I’m getting that impression here.
I understand that you have an uphill tide to battle against given the dominance of a very lucrative, visceral damsels in distress narrative repeated uncritically by news outlets that, due to economic reasons and media fragmentation, have far less incentive to do real investigative journalism than in the past. That the news media and individual reporters on social media have been dismissive or outright hostile to direct evidence contradicting this narrative speaks volumes about the business. I don’t envy you.
But to echo others, this is either going to be a discussion of ethics or a discussion of alleged harassment. It cannot be about both as the issues involving fear and alleged personal danger are existential and as such completely eclipse ANY other concerns.
It is a tricky tightrope to navigate, but let me give you a hint.
Look no further than reviewing the people that are willing to discuss and debate, and those that shy away from any discourse.
You might want to ask Kate Edwards for one of the antiGG spots.
She has repeatedly claimed that GG didn’t want discussion, which to me suggests that she would be interested in discussion.
“Sarah fucking Butts, being a tranny is the least offensive thing he’s ever don.”
“this guy is a piece of shit”
“A win is getting to shit on Polygon, Kotatku without having to pretend we give a shit about Sarah Butts getting Baphed due to her trolling the board.”
http://8ch.net/gamergatehq/res/151553.html
And for extra fun, GG is so proud of you, its useful idiot:
“this is the most delicious of bait I have ever read – masterfully done. There is a great deal of mind games in that post”
“I actually found more worrying the previous update where he said GG should come out and denounce harassment because he talked with Butts and Man in Black.”
“Also – it’s not about redpilling Koretzky (though I think he already knows what’s what) but to get a debate going. Let him play his mindgames!”
http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/361yij/the_latest_spj_update_from_today/
Totally not a hate-movement using you for legitimacy tho.
Totes.
Your efforts are valiant. Thank you as always for your time. I really hope the antis show up, but they have so much to lose if they do. Their narrative relies on misrepresenting and suppressing GG’s voices.
Will this be a discussion about journalistic ethics or not?
If yes, then please try to get editors from Gamasutra and Kotaku on the panel. Their articles are a major reason why this controversy has blown up. Especially Leigh Alexanders stunningly hateful article “Gamers don’t have to be your audience. Gamers are over” on Gamasutra. Since Alexander doesn’t work at Gamasutra anymore and is most likely not willing to participate in the panel, either Gamasutra’s editor-in-chief, Kris Graft, or any other editor should represent their position. For Kotaku, you should get Stephen Totilo or Jason Schreier.
Then stick to the topic:
– Is it ethical for games journalists to cover the games their friends and flatmates developed, without disclosing their relationship?
– Is it ethical to insult gamers as “obtuse shitflingers”? To deride gamers with “They don’t know how to dress or behave”? To express burning hatred towards gamers on a website that is supposedly for game industry professionals?
– Is it ethical to make it a news item if the player character of a specific game is male and not female? Is this newsworthy? Why? Or is this propaganda instead?
– Is it ethical to report on unproven allegations of sexual harassment against public persons, without giving the subject a chance to respond, all while displaying the allegations as factual?
And all the other issues of journalistic ethics.
Or hopelessly muddle the discussion with back-and-forth accusations about unverifiable claims of harassment. Your choice.
I hope Mr. Koretzky is keeping some sort of running tab on the threats, thinly veiled and otherwise, they are getting from the pure and noble oppressed victims of AGG who just want him to admit that everyone who posts under a certain hashtag is a horrible monster.
Projection is a way of life for some people.
@calbeck
I wholeheartedly believe in free speech and a free press. I wholeheartedly support GG’s right to speak and present its ethics case in multiple forums including AirPlay.
I just disagree with you that GG’s ethics case is in any way a strong case.
Here’s a question: Do you support the right of games writers and cultural critics to look at games through multiple lenses INCLUDING ones that criticize things like potentially sexist and/or racist themes? Do you support the right of people you think are SJWs to participate in the ongoing conversation about gaming as a hobby, including as games writers, and to make their opinions on these things known?
Do you believe SJW influence must be driven out of the gaming and other hobbyist press?
why not ask Caitlin Dewey and/or CHRIS SUELLENTROP to represent anti-gamergate? They are the authors of the two news articles you cited in this post – they were willing to put their names on articles condemning gamergate, they’re professional journalists, why not ask them?
“…but because so many have been doxed, threatened, and harassed, their skittishness is justified.” And yet GG has no problem with finding a limitless amount of people who want to represent GG, despite the bomb threat at GGinDC a few weeks ago and doxxing/harassing/threatening from aGG as well (with proof).
I think I understand this post though, and why it’s kind of… baiting – in order to get aGG to take you seriously, you have to at least make it appear that you can be won over by their side – so you show some signs here and there – clever, honestly I hope it works and you get some of them to attend.
“…but because so many have been doxed, threatened, and harassed, their skittishness is justified. ”
Once again you give credence to claims of harassment done by GamerGate and ignore entirely that GamerGate supporters have had the same treatment. Except the Big difference. The big god damn difference that you have seemingly ignored is that the harassment ‘from GamerGate’ is almost always anonymous trolls or people who are immediately denounced by others within GamerGate while the harassment toward GamerGate supporters has been from journalists, from industry professionals like the IGDA not just trolls, not people who are denounced but people who are celebrated by others within the Anti community.
“I also heard a lot of justification (“Nyberg and MIB are noted trolls”) and indignation (“I refuse to accept responsibility for what others have done”).”
““Nyberg and MIB are noted trolls”” I never saw that be used a justification for being doxed or harassed but as reason to not trust their word at face value. To not treat them as acting in good faith. There is tons of evidence that this is true, that they are dishonest and acting in bad faith. None of that justifies doxing or harassment. Seems to me like you’re being dishonest with your presentation of the argument.
Not accepting responsibility for the actions of others is not indignation but common sense. I will now treat you as you have just treated us:
take responsibility for and give us an apology for the actions of gaming journalists otherwise you support harassment, lies, cronyism, accepting bribes, etc… If you say that you are not responsible for their behaviour then you need to stop being so indignant and dont you dare try to use any ‘justifications’.
I have been following GG from the off, and I’ve just got round to reading this attempt to gauge the whole GG catastrophe properly. First of all thank you. I don’t expect GG to come off smelling of roses (it shouldn’t) but to simply have the chance at being given a voice is rare indeed.
The major fear I personally have is not that anti-GG will derail the talks, but that GG will derail itself by the speaker getting bogged down in denouncing the extremist feminism that a lot of anti-GG proponents and organisations champion, or denouncing the personal behaviour or actions of the people in anti-GG that have less than savory pasts instead of addressing their arguments. This is not just something GG are bad at, it’s something humans are bad at, and I really wish that weren’t the case.
A lot of harm has happened to both sides, and there have been legitimate casualties. ALL doxxing, ALL harassment, ALL insults are despicable and putrid, whether they purport to come from GG, anti-GG or third party trolls, but I think it has to be understood that harassment has originated from all three of those sources, as has been shown by others in these comments – and that is something that is NEVER reported by other journalists, whether in glorified blogposts on gaming websites, or more worryingly in the national press from the BBC or the New York Post.
Only one side of the story is given, leading to the natural conclusion that GG is and can only be a hate group – Which I abhor. I don’t hate anybody. I want more women in gaming. I want more representation of minorities, I want more people to feel safe and secure in themselves while gaming, and I take it personally when the BBC tell me I am “The worst of the worst” because I do not support that. I am a “Gamergater” and I don’t care about your views of feminism, race or culture, I just want to know my game journalists aren’t financially supporting, friends with, or sleeping with the people they are telling me to financially invest my money in when I go to them for a game review.
For me what GG has really succeeded in doing, is to highlight the need for journalists to better research their subjects, this came right out at the start with the Wizardchan harassment story, and has come to the fore again and again, both in gaming media, and the wider scope of journalism.
Next we have the conflict of interest issues, which have already led to several gaming websites re-writing their ethics codes to be stricter, pretty much proving that they were too lax in these measures previously.
We have the GameJournosPro list, which while I don’t think the wider conspiracy theories hold all that much water, are definitely a cause for concern that COMPETING website journalists and owners were coming together to discuss (among other things) which stories to report on, and how to frame them – as well as evidence of at least one person getting shunned for reporting on an issue that the others wanted to keep quiet on.
There are real journalistic ethic issues in the videogame journalism industry. Many in Gamergate are concerned with these and only these. I hope you understand this and steer the discussion so that these issues are addressed. I hope you give GG’s speaker time to properly speak about exactly these issues. I hope you steer it away from solely being about harassment and feminism, because while there are issues there, and GG should be called to account (but anti-GG should get the same criticism if you are being truly fair) the main issue is, should be, and has been from day one – Journalism ethics.
And the gaming industry is sorely lacking in some key areas of this.
Thanks again.
Whatever happens, I honestly hope you do not receive any harassment for this.
wormsby
If Social Justice Warcraft were simply a “lens” or a “viewpoint” then every word you have written would be acceptable. But it isn’t. It is, simply put, the co-opting of Progressive political material by authoritarians and plain old bullies. In every community where this is allowed to take root, the cohesive beliefs of the community are negated, and the community is torn asunder and destroyed, The only solution demonstrated to work in this scenario is to push back, fight to win, hold on to what you believe in, and pray it’s not too late.
I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here, Mr(Ms) wormsby. It came to me when I tried to classify SJWs and I realized that they’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding social environment but SJWs do not. They move to an area and they push and multiply until every inch of that social space is consumed, and the only way they can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Social Justice Warcraft is a disease, a cancer on the Progressive community and on every other subculture it touches. It is a plague, and Objectivity, Solidarity and Equality are the cure.
Nice to see he can roll with rough comments and keep on trucking. This guy is a Pro the way I see it. Hopefully he can rally the Anti-GG folks to give it their best as well. Would be nice to see the conversation finally advance.
That which can be claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
If we actually were the horrible monsters those delightful people at kotaku, polygon, etc. said we were, they would be as terrified of pissing us off as they are of ISIS.
The simple fact that they mock and deride implies they do not fear the consequences of their actions.
After nine months of this bullshit, I am not interested in compromise. The black flag was stowed away in October. Let the red Jolly Roger fly proudly. They offered no quarter when they believed theirs was a position of power; none should be given now. They can all go the way of Leigh Alexander; exiled and begging on twitter.
@mixed
I’m almost willing to bet you’re quoting the Matrix at me unironically. But I’ll choose to take it as some good-natured ribbing instead.
Whatever the case, I see we agree on the central aim of GamerGate — pushing the words and influences of what GG deems to be the “authoritarian left” out of gaming and other like spaces.
The only thing I think we disagree with is how ultimately silly and completely contrary to freedom of expression that sounds.
Stop with the baiting and disingenuous attempts at saying you are “acting in good faith”. Either take any and all claims as just that, claims, or you yourself don’t belong in journalism. Just because someone isn’t willing to swallow your narrative doesn’t mean they aren’t being rational. Don’t imply that for even a second that there are people within Gamergate who are part of a harassment campaign even the slightest. There’s not even been a bit of evidence that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that GG has anyone like that amongst its supporters.
Useful
Idiot
“It’s blatantly clear at this point that the SJPfag is just cashing in on the controversy for click bait. ”
“Ollie is slam dunking him. ”
“By declaring himself neutral it lends credence to the event….”
“He outright defends us.”
“He’s intentionally baiting
That’s the whole fucking point of this exercise….He’s painting aggro as the victims and offering them terms for vindication so that they’ll accept to come onto the panel.
Christfuck do you really think any reasonable person having a look at all the work we’ve done would actually lend credence to the false narrative still? No, he’s doing this because he doesn’t want a one-sided discussion.”
– http://8ch.net/gamergatehq/res/151553.html
Hello again, Mr. K!
First let me start by thanking you again for putting together this panel. It’s pretty great, and much appreciated despite perceived flaws.
If you rustled some jimmies with this and the last post, it is because GamerGate supporters have been asked for 9 months to shoulder some responsibility for, or at the very least, condemn harassment without having the favor returned. It is very disheartening to see people subjected to that treatment and have it get no press time.
Now the difference between someone saying “I do not have sympathy for GamerGate supporter” and “I do not have sumpathy for MIB or Butts” when they get doxxed/harassed is that the only evidence you have of “guilt” in the first instance is guilt by association, whereas MIB and Butts have been proven to have instigated and encouraged some pretty awful behavior themselves, as /individuals whose actions can and have been verified/.
No one deserve it in either case, but there is a definitive difference in the reasoning.
That ties into the my point about how the matter is covered. Guilt by association for random GamerGate supporters seems to be the norm, but when there are verifiable instances of actual, identifiable individuals who oppose GamerGate behaving poorly, there is nary a peep.
On a final, and entirely separate note, I look forward to the panel discussing how whenever there is a new conflict of interest revealed, the people involved/the friendships not disclosed seem to include the same group of people. I swear I could start a bingo card. The most recent reveal concerned Brendan Keogh, and without having read anything the people listed have written, I still was able to recognize their names because they have popped up in reveal after reveal for the last 9 months.
I don’t look into these people. I know nothing about them. But they just keep popping up each time there is a new conflict of interest revealed and so they have become almost household names.
Have a great weekend!
Hello again, Mr. K!
First let me start by thanking you again for putting together this panel. It’s pretty great, and much appreciated despite perceived flaws.
If you rustled some jimmies with this and the last post, it is because GamerGate supporters have been asked for 9 months to shoulder some responsibility for, or at the very least, condemn harassment without having the favor returned. It is very disheartening to see people subjected to that treatment and have it get no press time.
Now the difference between someone saying “I do not have sympathy for GamerGate supporter” and “I do not have sumpathy for MIB or Butts” when they get doxxed/harassed is that the only evidence you have of “guilt” in the first instance is guilt by association, whereas MIB and Butts have been proven to have instigated and encouraged some pretty awful behavior themselves, as /individuals whose actions can and have been verified/.
No one deserve it in either case, but there is a definitive difference in the reasoning.
That ties into the my point about how the matter is covered. Guilt by association for random GamerGate supporters seems to be the norm, but when there are verifiable instances of actual, identifiable individuals who oppose GamerGate behaving poorly, there is nary a peep.
On a final, and entirely separate note, I look forward to the panel discussing how whenever there is a new conflict of interest revealed, the people involved/the friendships not disclosed seem to include the same group of people. I swear I could start a bingo card. The most recent reveal concerned Brendan Keogh, and I recognized all of the names of the people involved.
Not because I know anything about them.
Not because I’ve researched them.
Not because I read them regularly.
Simply because whenever there is a new conflict of interest revealed, the parties involved almost invariably are drawn from a pot of the same 2 dozen (or so) people.
Have a great weekend!
wormsby,
“I see we agree on the central aim of GamerGate — pushing the words and influences of what GG deems to be the “authoritarian left” out of gaming and other like spaces.”
No. Read what I wrote again: it is not ANY word or influence associated with the Left that people defend their subcultures against, it is simply *authoritarianism* itself that can not be passively accepted into free-thinking, creative spaces. I will defend the spaces I inhabit from predatory authoritarian culture. Period. This has zero to do with any rejection of Progressive ideas and everything to do with rejection of authoritarianism where ever it attempts to co-opt culture.
Ponder these words from The Men They Couldn’t Hang on the subject:
“And so we learn from history generations have to fight
And those who crave for mastery
Must be faced down on sight
And if that means by words, by fists, by stones or by the gun
Remember those who stood up for
Their daughters and their sons
Listen to the sound of marching feet
And the voices of the ghosts of Cable Street
Fists and stones and batons and the gun
With courage we shall beat those blackshirts down”
-Ghosts of Cable Street
There are no stones, fists or guns in this fight; the only weapons here are trust, fact, compassion and justice. The battle over Journalistic Ethics is one very important part of this effort. That is #GamerGate’s mission and so I am aligned there. Is there a larger battle? Yes. Does that make #GamerGate about all of it. No, it does not.
Nice try though.
Do you realize how completely absurd this sounds within the overall context of enthusiast press writers not disclosing personal friendships and belonging to a game journalist listserv?
Seriously, your overblown, purple rhetoric about this shit is proving my point better than I ever could. This isn’t about hobbyist press ethics for you people. It’s a fucking war. A culture war.
This is one of the main reasons why no one takes you people seriously. It’s just weird, man.
I know Mr. Koretzky I “baiting the hook” to get Aggro’s open to the idea of showing up for the airplay debate (personally I would love to see some of the journalists who’s I’m going to be political and say alleged ethical failures have led up to the airplay debate) but he’s kind of doing what has made GG so skeptical about journalists, and the news media.
I don’t want the airplay debate to fall apart but the lovely derailing landmine has been stepped on, well here’s hoping that this debate on ethics actually happens, and we finally get to have a real debate about ethics.
3 more months. That’s a long time on the net and many things can do wrong or right in the meantime.
I wish everyone involved in this luck(, patience, and good beverages).
People told you we wouldn’t debate? That we’re evil hate filled bigots?
We respond by saying the same of them?
Of course. One of us is lying. One of us is afraid to debate. One of us is a hate filled bigot. I guess we’ll finally get to find out which.
If you can convince them to show up. You may have already noticed we’re quite enjoying the chance to send our best and brightest to argue in our favor. So that’s one half.
I can assure you, we’re all quite confident in the hand we’ve been dealt. So long as you’re not stacking the deck against us, we have nothing to fear.
Thank you for addressing 0 of our concerns about this….. You seem to have a fatal misunderstanding of the anti side
I’ve been thinking about the tightrope you’re walking, Mr. Koretzky. There’s been a distinct oddity in the way you’ve approached GamerGate. it’s as though you’re trying to gain GG’s trust while walking towards them from the mainstream narrative. There’s an edge of presumed guilt that smells like the mainstream. It’s also as though you’re trying to gain GG’s trust without committing to any of GG’s actual positions.
The more I’ve thought about this, the less odd it has seemed. You’re bridge-building. You’re trying to gain GG’s cooperation under conditions where you don’t lose aGG’s cooperation. Tricky. Very tricky. It’s also necessary for the debate to go forward. Let me join in the voices hoping that you get very articulate, charismatic voices to represent aGG. Someone mentioned Wil Wheaton? That’d be pretty awesome. I hope you get someone good, in any case.
Something else I have to say that I think is important. You’re noticing that both sides claim the same things about each other. Let me reinforce that.
GG sees aGG as an organized hatemob engaging in a harassment campaign to protect abusers and bad actors by deflecting blame onto those deemed by society to be acceptable targets. GG sees aGG as a bunch of bullies who founded their entire strategy in DARVO. Of course, alongside GG crying DARVO has been aGG also crying DARVO, which is exactly what you’d expect when someone is engaging in DARVO. I’m smart enough to notice that the mirrored accusations cancel each other out when considered in isolation. Anyone who is actually using DARVO is also smart enough to figure that out. Fortunately, the accusation doesn’t have to be considered in isolation. How does it look when considered in the light of the rest of the available evidence?
Have you seen this article on The Flounce? I think it’s one of the most important perspectives around on GamerGate.
http://theflounce.com/harassment-abuse-apologism-sanitizing-abuse-social-justice-spheres/
>Those sound like GamerGaters who are leaning toward rationality.
And just like that, you’ve extracted a sliver of a massive group, implied that section is the only one even close to rational, and found a nice way to handwave everyone else away. Criticism is not harassment, you need to start examining how words are used, because that is how the debate has been soured. Misogyny, sexism, harassment, threats, it’s all blown out of proportion, and fear has been confused with actual risk and incidence.
You know, something’s stuck with me in an SPJ-related thread. Someone who sounded like a journalist who thought it was “precious” that there were “kids” who thought SPJ actually had the power to enforce any sort of influence. Think about what this means. That person put so much trust in the practice of journalism, they thought it self-evident that a “society of professional journalists” would actually be a feared and respected body in media. That truth, that professionalism and critical examination would be universal values, the most basic axioms on which it all rests. You can call that naive, but it’s not misguided.
You’ve critically examined everything except yourself. Instead of the high rate of updates, have you considered just being quiet for a while, and engaging with each side anonymously? Or giving that as an assignment to two people? Engage, observe and report. Almost like… investigative journalism.
I understand your desire to not poison the well before a good discussion. I appreciate the nuanced method you have to present the forum in order for parties to show up. Basically, if both sides are dissatisfied with your lack of appearant support for their side, then you probably are doing something right.
Anyhow, I welcome and enjoy the neutral parties bringing the best and brightest from the different sides here to have a discussion to air concerns, find a way forward and ultimately end GG where both sides are comfortable.
No, there will always be people who want a eternal war, some for profit, some because it gave their online sense of self a identity and movement to back, but the vast majority of us gamers and geeks are wanting just to be heard and once again back in our community we love and feel are defending from outsiders
Rooting for a carefully set-up and engaging debate.
There have been a few attempts and talks/interviews in the past year but the “guest curation” and interview/debate formats have mostly been short-script unfocussed things with various backgrounds of invited representatives, there are exceptions but follow-up has been minimal due to a virtual black-out/one-way-flow of coverage on the issues in the wider medias reporting.
I am an outlier/observer in most of this, my interest is primarily selfish, I like to play games and there has been a LOT of weird coverage going on this past year in the “mass” media (the non youtube stuff) regarding sexism, hate movements, women being grossly misrepresented (30+ years of universal poor representation for anyone not an athletic super-soldier and suddenly women specifically have to receive overnight improvements to writing, design and acting, right now, or else obnoxious drama, online stories targeting specific developers and/or mass agenda based media coverage), men are evil-oppressive-rapists-in-waiting, universities are being picketed into un-inviting guest speakers, and my personal favourite, review outlets “should not have to target game consumers”. . .
That said while this past year has certainly been an interesting one a number of smaller and more audience engaged developers are quite obviously being a lot more guarded in regards to social-media interactions, concept art showcases and lore/gameplay trailers. The bigger companies have for the most part stood apart from the debacle, watched and taken some of the loudest feedback into consideration for the next iteration of a franchise when feasible (mostly on the visual side) .
When I say mass media I speak more of the daytime TV/news and tabloid/broadsheet written stuff than of gaming journalism.
I migrated to youtube (later than many consumers) after I learned I could listen to online podcasts/reviews while playing games I enjoy and have relevant and up to date information provided in less time(compared to reading an article/press release), with less delay and from people I became familiar with rather than from an institution that made its money from large on-the-page marketing subsidised adverts.
I deliberately choose personality driven, openly biased (the better to get an accurate impression from which to compare my own tastes to) enthusiast media over film/literature style ~flowery~ critiques as what matters to my enjoyment of the gaming hobby are gameplay, story and game stability/performance (which in magazines were increasingly becoming by-lines or late/glossed over).
If it hasn’t already been pointed out (I’m sure it has), the reason antiGG is unlikely to respond isn’t fear of harassment, but fear of losing their positions. The feminism/harassment angle was nothing but bait thrown out to cover up the many conflicts of interest and undisclosed relationships between the game journalists and the people they’re writing about.
I can’t expect you to just believe this, but just keep it in mind as a possible reason for when they act the way they do.
“…but because so many have been doxed, threatened, and harassed, their skittishness is justified. So here’s what I’ll tell the leading anti-GamerGaters…”
Really? I feel like this is one of those “a claim without evidence can be dismissed” sort of things. Because I’ve heard a lot of claims in this department, but never any proof offered up. Whereas if you ask us for evidence, we will get it to you right away, or we’ll correct our story if we were wrong. I’m not seeing that.
I feel like you started reading this story in the middle, and instead of jumping back to the beginning and reading it from start to finish, you’re just sort of casting around in the book to and fro trying to make sense of it in a most unorganized way.
I’m way too burned out from physical therapy this week to be able to argue this point very well right now, I really just want to sleep. But you need to take a careful look through these comments to understand why some of the things you have said in some of these updates are pretty insulting and disheartening for us.
Mr. Strings illustrates how insulting it is to us to ask us to condem harrasment after harrasment form the otherside (which has impacted people’s lives and their jobs) is handwaved away just because “oh, they’re trolls.”
Mr. Strings (@OmniUke)
May 15, 2015 at 8:25 am
“What I find odd is that one ‘side’ must condemn anonymous abuse, while the other needn’t condemn known abuse by its supporters. Seemingly just because of their fear act.
I’m interested in whether or not you could you prove, for example, that anonymous threats weren’t made by you?”
—————————————————————-
Human covers it well how it seems a bit disparaging that you’re kind of buying into their version of things uncritically.
Human
May 15, 2015 at 8:52 am
“They have their narrative. They’re happy with their narrative. Their narrative filled a wikipedia article with links from publications I wouldn’t source if I was on fire. The main stream media bought their narrative when they deigned to notice the kerfluffle. Law and Order bought their narrative. You’re buying their narrative. Go and find me all of this harassment and doxxing and threats LINKED to gamergate.”
—————————————————————-
I’m going to leave it with another quote from another post here. I really hope you can hear us. We’re aching, in a very real sense, for someone to hear us.
Ross (@ross_lumbus)
May 15, 2015 at 9:10 am
“I concur with both Doctor Ethics and Oliver Campbell
The only way that the other side will attend is IF they have full control of the narrative and the ability to make unproven claims.
Why? Because their narrative crumbles on inspection.
Why do so many of them have comments censored? Why do they hide behind the blockbot?
Their only strength is in control the narrative and not having it questioned.
Do not trust anything. Do not accept any statement or claim as truth.
Do not trust US either? Verify what we say as true. We are happy to back ourselves.
Watch closely what THEY do. Question anything and you will be victim blaming. You will be seen as unreasonable , AT BEST.”
“If you start letting these people plant false narratives unproven and unquestioned, then I question what we are doing in the debate.”
——————————————————————-
Now, what I can say, before I go to bed, because I am absolutely exhausted.
We need you to be critical of us, so we can be sure to have an airtight case about journalistic impropriety. But that only works if you are ALSO critical of everyone in this situation, GG, AGG, and neutral as well. Otherwise the entire thing devolves into #Gamergate trying to defend itself, with absolutely nothing that we’re tying to get on the table being discussed.
We’ve played that song and dance. Instead, we want an entire debate about ethics and the journalistic corruption we’ve documented. More than enough time has been wasted on everything eslse.
If I prayed to gods, I’d pray to them about this getting done right. Journalism is the eyes and ears of the world to know what is actually happening. If we can’t clear up the corruption of those sense in gaming, we will never make any headway in making actual journalism ethical and just.
I don’t want to fight in a war that was allowed to happen because journalists can’t do their jobs. I almost had to. Instead, it was bad enough fighting in the right war that couldn’t even get coverage.
Isn’t gamergate the same group which campaigned against gaming websites for writing opinion pieces which they didn’t like? Like I remember GamerGate went after Gamasutra in a big way for publishing an opinion which was unpalatable to them. I mean isn’t that the whole purpose of opinion pieces? Authors exercise their right to freedom of expression and express opinions which may or may not agree with the primary audience of that publication. And what did GamerGate do? They campaigned against advertisers on Gamasutra using false pretenses that Gamasutra is against gamers. Intel initially believed these lies, but when they realized that they’ve been duped, they reinstated their ads on Gamasutra. And this is the group you want to talk about journalistic ethics? Seriously? A group that tried its best to destroy the livelihood of journalists of a publication just because it published an *opinion* piece? Wow. Just wow.
That’s a very… ‘interesting’ interpretation of events Sai, but no. That’s not accurate.
@grimachu
They just revived the email campaign against Polygon again because Kies recently made some “social justice-y” comments in his Witcher 3 review.
The “Gamers are Over” opinion pieces are a huge, if not the central, piece of the ethics charge.
Kies’s “social justice-y” Bayonetta 2 review is an ethics charge on DeepFreeze.
In GamerGate’s own recent straw poll (by a guy named “Doctor Ethics” no less, lol) 89% of you agreed the mission is not just ethics, but to fight “colonization of gaming by SJWs.” Only 4% said the mission was ethics alone.
Like it or not, GamerGate purports to be anti-censorship and pro-free speech but comment after comment here and elsewhere reveals that it’s about stamping out “authoritarian left” influences. These are facts. And while you all will deny it when phrased too bluntly, comment after comment will then immediately go into why the authoritarian left is a cancer and must be silenced.
The only rational conclusion, sorry, is that you guys are what you readily admit to being: a largely a pro-censorship movement hiding behind a sprinkling of valid undisclosed personal relationships and appearance of impropriety charges you’ve uncovered. That some elements of the radical left that you squawk with on Twitter are also fans of silencing speech they like does not change this.
I find Pamela Geller, the KKK, Westboro Baptist Church, Paul Elam, and Milo Yiannopoulos varying degrees of awful, and yet I fully and without reservation support their right to voice their views on the internet and in the public square. I am not a GamerGate fan but I roundly denounced Arthur Chu’s trying to mess with you guys getting some beers in DC. I find the Honey Badger Brigade politically garbage but I support their right to peaceably attend and participate in conventions.
Do you support the “authoritarian left’s” right to do games reviews and critiques in the indie press and elsewhere?
Furthermore, do you really think the SPJ and the journalist community — in my experience, a group of pretty rabidly free speech folks — are going to be in any way sympathetic to your core views that the “authoritarian left” must be shut down and silenced?
Have you really thought through what you are saying and doing?
Why no Sai it isn’t?
What? No?
Here is how it goes, Sai. You are deliberately misrepresenting and simplifying a situation, to the point where the claim is not something we need to defend.
Leigh happily lead the charge of about a dozen other sites to rail and insult their audience.
Yes, by all means wave that off as of no consequence or her right. I, and many others, believe that when you seek to rally your supposed competing press and smear and insult your audience, then your audience is more than able to rail against those that rail against them.
Expression of opinions? Well, sure. If we are calling her and all the other interests she colluded with, against the gamer’s interests, then US promoting her and her “friends” conduct to the people advertising is ALSO just as fair and US simply expression OUR opinions to others.
Terribly sorry but your argument is pretty poor form
Gamasutra is most decidedly against gamers and as are ALL of the press that have been offering “gamers are dead” or “Gamergate is dead” or “Gamergate is misogynistic” or whatever other poison they wish to spit at their audience.
Intel cowed down to your side’s badgering and outrage? And? It was not lies, never was.
Nope we did not and do not wish to destroy lives over an opinion piece.
But I will be completely honest with you. I will not shed a tear if all the unethical practices and all the falsified reporting and unproven accusations and ALL that make these practices were turned out of the gaming press industry.
Screw them. Screw them all.
Quite honestly, I think it is a mind boggling exercise in arrogance that certain gaming journalist publications and sites believe that talking down and insulting their readership was a good way to insulate themselves from backlash from said readership.
I also believe that anyone that would make such an argument is not making it in good faith or is bereft of the facts on the matter. I suspect that you are the former
“The only rational conclusion, sorry, is that you guys are what you readily admit to being: a largely a pro-censorship movement hiding behind a sprinkling of valid undisclosed personal relationships and appearance of impropriety charges you’ve uncovered. That some elements of the radical left that you squawk with on Twitter are also fans of silencing speech they like does not change this.”
The debate havent started yet. And when you judge you are judged in return. Free speech and expression never meant freedom of consequence or that others have to agree with you. #GamerGate
Neowarden, think about what you are saying.
It doesn’t matter if there is the least bit of validity in what you are saying, but I will tell you why.
We contacted SPJ through #SPJethicsweek about Ethical improprieties.
What do you think that the purpose of the debate? Ethics.
Therefore regardless of whether we see ANY value of opposing those that are pro-censorship or SJWs or anything else, we are talking about ethics to the Society of Professional Journalists about the Journalists in Gaming media.
Judge all you like but back your assertions with fact and not conjecture or feelings and we will do the same.
Good luck!
Wormsby,
You make a very important point: there absolutely is a faction within GG that opposes SJW colonization of subcultures. It’s a faction. There is also a chan culture faction and a consumer advocacy faction. This is not a monolith
“Can you confirm anyone whatsoever will show up to debate AGAINST Gamergate? Because our detractors are apparently ignoring this entirely.
…but because so many have been doxed, threatened, and harassed, their skittishness is justified. So here’s what I’ll tell the leading anti-GamerGaters…”
So what about the gamergaters that were doxxed, threatened (like a threat that the FBI themselves considered actually legitimate), harassed and forced out of their jobs by aGG people harassing their bosses with false claims of misogyny? A lot of them provably BY aGG? Why do they don’t matter? Why is it aGG need to be “safe” but not GG?
Come on man, you’re making zero fucking sense.
…moreover, I think I am safe in saying that virtually no one I. GG wants to silence or censor the authoritarian left or deny them a seat at the table. A seat. Not the table itself. Note the enthusiastic response to the SPJ’s offer to give both parties a seat at their table.
The voice we are trying to “silence” is a megaphone telling others what they may or may not say, do, or create. You argue that opposing censorship is censorship itself. And you wonder why we roll our eyes.
That faction per your own internal polling is 89% of you. But I guess not you.
So long as you, personally, support the speech rights of Kies, Alexander, etc. to express their views on gaming in the gaming press than we have no real battle. I support Breitbart and TechRaptor and others to do the same.
Having opinions about games is not censoring them. No one has censored anything. The Witcher 3 and Grand Theft Auto V are doing great (I’m currently playing the latter on PC).
So bring on your ethics case without all the “they said gamers are over” and “they opined about sexist imagery in a review” stuff. As I’ve said, there’s merit to some of your ethics claims. I’m just not convinced it’s what’s really got you all so worked up.
This is our mutual hobby. It’s not life or death. We could all relax a little.
wormsby. I will say this for you. Out of all the Anti GG I have seen. You are actually talking so I will hope others will show you some respect (i believe most have that have responded to you).
Being a GG supporter but not actively in twitter or signed up to any of the forums I can say I agree with you. That is not a bad thing and that is not PRO censorship though.
Here is the difference between what GG supporters and what the Anti-GG have been doing. And I hope you can answer on these or have an opinion.
Freedom of speech and non-censorship means you can have the right to SAY anything you want to the public. The public then has the right to say anything THEY want back to you. That is free speech when in a public style forum. What the Journolists and Anti-GG do however is close that back and forth that helps form a FREE society, and thus is turns into a one way conversation. Honestly gamers have always been against this. When the likes of Jack Thompson came in and the moral panic of the hard right said games are making everyone violent. Gamers as a whole refused to lay down and instead used their free speech in the public forums to fight back against THAT narrative. I can almost guarantee you were there with them at that point right?
So now the hard left is coming in and using a different tactic. They are using what some consider ethical breaches to make similar claims to what the hard right did, this time however they are closing down the responses from the gamers. THAT is the only problem I have with the so called “SJW” scene is when you try and disagree or have a discussion about this, they block and censor.
There is no way… NO way you can support that.,.. and say the GG camp is pro censorship for WANTING to talk about the issues.
Ethics is the major crux. GG supports do not want ANYONE censoring the open forums… it is just this time the hard Left extremists are the ones doing the censoring of games. And do not try to say they are not, since they headed up the campaign to remove GTA from Target in Australia. No matter how much of an impact it actually had, they WANTED to pull the game, ala… take the game away.
What the SPJ discussion is about… is the ethical breaches they believe have happened however.
Baldwin and Kern are correct: A debate is a waste of time. Anti-GG aren’t rational and can’t field rational arguments. You shouldn’t waste your time trying to talk to the anti’s. They haven’t been involved before, so why involve them now? Just let GG take the stage and allow us to speak freely, and we can have a debate without having to be distracted by the clearly false harassment- and threat-narrative of the SJW feminists..
Wormsby, there is Certainly a large majority that believes that GG is part of a larger trend against SJW corrodIng subcultures (I am also involved with Sad Puppies and support HBB for example). However, the faction that feels this is the primary organizing feature of GG is much smaller. I’d estimate 1/3rd. Still, I am a lifelong Gamer😉
I thought the event was in August. Why is all this going on now. We’ve basically said more than we could possibly say in our half of a four-hour event. If aGGros don’t want to come, F ’em. You want to believe they feel unsafe, despite no gamer saying anything threatening wrt this event? Fine. We can’t control what other people say and do. It’s disappointing because we thought finally we were getting a fair shake but it seems that several hundred of our statements can be trumped by a couple of loonies.
I just want to add that is all aGG were as reasonable in disagreement as wormsby, there would be no war at all.
@mixedmartialartshistory
“The voice we are trying to “silence” is a megaphone telling others what they may or may not say, do, or create. You argue that opposing censorship is censorship itself. And you wonder why we roll our eyes.”
Well, opposing censorship CAN be censorship. It’s the moral dilemma of libertarians: How do I get an authoritarian to stop using free speech to restrict others’ speech? The only way seems to be to restrict *their* speech. It’s silly and ideological, but it’s a very real consideration.
That said, what wormsby keeps doing is that he conflates challenging critics with silencing critics. We have no problem with a Sarkeesian or a Chu spouting their criticism. But we reserve the right to challenge their claims. To point out factual inaccuracies. To show an opposition to their view. The free marketplace of ideas requires that everyone back up their claim by proof and have that challenged – publicly.
If you want to address the matter of critics being “silenced”, wormsby? Look no further than anyone who dares criticize Anita’s videos. Which critics are the ones getting five digit sums for crying about being silenced? And which critics are still hardly being acknowledged as human beings?
No critic on either side is a saint (yes, that reference is intentional). None is beyond criticism. Everyone can and should be challenged on their claims. Otherwise, we might as well just start believing in the celestial teapot.
@wormsby
“So bring on your ethics case without all the “they said gamers are over”…”
I’m no expert on journalistic ethics, but it seems to me that the “Gamers are over” article on Gamasutra, and Leigh Alexander in general, violate several of the entries of the SPF Code of Ethics (spj.org/ethicscode.asp):
SPJ:
“– Support the open and civil exchange of views, even views they find repugnant.”
Leigh Alexander, Gamasutra:
“These obtuse shitslingers, these wailing hyper-consumers, these childish internet-arguers — they are not my audience. They don’t have to be yours. There is no ‘side’ to be on, there is no ‘debate’ to be had.”
SPJ:
“– Avoid stereotyping. Journalists should examine the ways their values and experiences may shape their reporting.”
Leigh Alexander, Gamasutra:
“It’s young men queuing with plush mushroom hats and backpacks and jutting promo poster rolls. Queuing passionately for hours, at events around the world, to see the things that marketers want them to see. To find out whether they should buy things or not. They don’t know how to dress or behave.”
SPJ:
“– Label advocacy and commentary.”
That article doesn’t seem to labelled as commentary. It seems to be filed under “news”. But since it so clearly is commentary, personally I don’t care about this.
SPJ:
“– Consider the long-term implications of the extended reach and permanence of publication. Provide updated and more complete information as appropriate.”
I’m a former professional game developer, and I’d say that Gamasutra seems to not consider its negative long-term influence on the game industry with these articles, or they don’t care.
SPJ:
“– Explain ethical choices and processes to audiences. Encourage a civil dialogue with the public about journalistic practices, coverage and news content.”
Leigh Alexander, Gamasutra:
“There is no ‘side’ to be on, there is no ‘debate’ to be had.”
SPJ:
“– Expose unethical conduct in journalism, including within their organizations.”
Leigh Alexander on Twitter:
“my ethics policy is this: get money, fight bullshit, and make sure that those i love stand the longest. that’s it”
If I implied they had been *successfully* silenced then I apologize for not speaking more clearly.
Still, I’m struggling to understand how else to characterize what the “win state” of a movement to “fight … political colonization of games by SJWs” is.
I’m also not understanding how else to interpret dressing up “she wrote an opinion piece saying gamers are over” as a serious charge that someone has violated professional ethics.
When prominent gators like Daddy Warpig continue to say that one of GG’s chief demands is for reviewers to “stop pushing ideology in reviews,” I don’t think it’s a stretch to shorthand that as demanding “silencing” of certain viewpoints that GG has concluded are “authoritarian.”
Anyway, I agree the SJW stuff is as pointless to debate as the harassment stuff. I’ve been saying that. I think you guys absolutely should bring your ethics case to the fore and leave the culture war stuff out of this.
I don’t think Leigh and the others were wise to pour gas on the tire fire that was GG back then, but I also don’t think any of it violates any of the considerations you cite, precisely because it was an opinion/commentary piece.
If you’re for free speech, then you’re for free speech. This includes speech that you don’t like. It includes the “gamers are over” pieces and includes things like Milo’s vicious hit piece on Shanley. It includes Ralph and his various crimes against good taste and the English language.
I turned 46 this week. I’ve been gaming for longer than most Gaters have been alive. I’ve got over 400 hours in Mount and Blade and 500 in DayZ. I’m a gamer. And her article didn’t faze me. It bombastically made some points worth considering. I like that there are indies out there being brash.
I think we could all use some perspective here. I wish we were talking about pay for play scandals and real meaty ethics charges rather than Leigh being rude. Oh well.
“GamerGaters don’t love their mothers”
My mother had a good laugh at that one.
@wormsby
“I don’t think Leigh and the others were wise to pour gas on the tire fire that was GG back then, but I also don’t think any of it violates any of the considerations you cite, precisely because it was an opinion/commentary piece.”
Does the SPJ code of ethics not apply to commentary pieces?
“If you’re for free speech, then you’re for free speech.”
Yes, Leigh Alexander and Gamasutra have the right to publish those articles.
“I think we could all use some perspective here. I wish we were talking about pay for play scandals and real meaty ethics charges rather than Leigh being rude. Oh well.”
As far as I can see, Leigh Alexander openly gives preferential coverage to those game developers she’s friends with. In the overcrowded indie games business, this publicity might make-or-break a developer team. We’re free to protest against this nepotism. When arguing against nepotism results in utterly crazy insults and slandering, we protest against those insults and slandering too.
I wouldn’t want to have that article completely tossed aside just because there are more serious breaches of ethics, such as the slandering of Brad Wardell.
Besides, I think you underestimate just how much this fire they poured gas on makes life more difficult for game developers.
From the SPJ’s FAQ (spj.org/ethicsfaq.asp):
“But our code does provide a framework to evaluate ethical behavior, and we encourage fellow journalists and the public to hold news reports and commentary up to ethical scrutiny.”
So it seems that the SPJ’s position is that these guidelines should apply to commentary pieces too.
wormsby, do you think that it’s fine if commentary pieces do NOT “support the open and civil exchange of views”, “avoid stereotyping”, and “consider the long-term implications”?
If you read the the bottom and the committee notes it makes it clear they aren’t hard and fast rules, but a set of considerations.
“It is not a set of rules, rather a guide that encourages all who engage in journalism to take responsibility for the information they provide, regardless of medium. The code should be read as a whole; individual principles should not be taken out of context. It is not, nor can it be under the First Amendment, legally enforceable.”
I think the code is exactly what it is intended to be, a set of guiding principles to be used contextually. I do think opinion pieces and commentary can and in fact should be encouraged to make controversial and perhaps even offensive statements. The Wall Street Journal’s opinion pages often offend the shit out of me with some outrageous statements. But such is their right.
So yes, I do think it’s fine if opinion and commentary pieces push the boundaries.
Where are the people sending these threats? Why haven’t arrests been made? Why does AGG post these threats instead of going to the authorities? It’s all about the victim narrative. This should be about ethics in journalism not who was called (x) the most.
“If you read the the bottom and the committee notes it makes it clear they aren’t hard and fast rules, but a set of considerations.”
Yes, I know. I have to say that I don’t understand your point. Is this supposed to mean that discussions about how journalists violate the SPJ’s code of ethics are useless from the outset because they’re only a set of considerations?
“So yes, I do think it’s fine if opinion and commentary pieces push the boundaries.”
It’s certainly their right. I’ve rarely seen such extreme insults in any other publication except in the vicinity of extreme leftist or extreme rightist websites, though. More importantly, I’ve never seen a media narrative do more damage in an area (videogames) that was completely harmless.
But I think that this is actually a good side effect from this whole mess: that we get demonstrated how damaging media narratives can be, training us to see harmful narratives in other much more important areas such as war and crime.
I’m not saying it’s useless to have the conversation on your ethics case.
I’m saying a lot of it, like the “gamers are over” stuff, isn’t very compelling and in fact seems the sort of censorious nonsense that SJWs get accused of.
I’m also saying it becomea even more absurd when you consider that you’re likely to send Milo Yiannopoulos as your ethics standard bearer on issues like this, when he accuses “feminists” of making bomb threats without evidence and attacks actual, specific human beings, like Shanley Kane, with vituperative hit pieces.
I don’t care overmuch if he does that stuff. I just don’t understand how you guys can lose your shit over the Alexander “attacks” on a stereotype and yet line up behind a guy like Yiannopoulos.
I think many of you might be somewhat inconsistent in your concerns for journalistic ethics. And I’m pretty sure I know why.
i’m from europe, i don’t use the tag but i’m a symphatizer of gamergate as they touched many arguments that i always feel that needed to be addressed, i don’t know yiannopoulous very well and if i want to be completly fair yiannopolous has made some attack on the stereotype too (something about how people should go touch some boobs instead of xbox controller if i remember well) but i appreciate the fact that a public figure had the courage to speak for gamergate, and the same i think about the youtuber total biscuit and the feminist christina sommers
if yiannopoulous has any skeleton in the drawers i’d love to see someone compile a list of things yiannopolus has said or done and but nobody has done so, i can tell you that a list like that for leigh alexander exist and include horrible stuff like threatening other writer
https://archive.is/2tKxj
leigh alexander is a bully, you are saying that because of freedom of speech, she should be able to bully whoever she wants and nobody should ever challenge or stand up to her, i can’t really accept that
also you say that GG should leave the culture wars and focus on ethic but how can that be done? recently a reviewer decided to give a lower than average score to a product because the game had a lack of different ethnicity people on it, is this a culture war problem or an ethic one? for me it’s both and to be honest i’ve already lost hope on the “ethic” part a long time ago, it’s the culture wars that these people enforce that really makes me worried
“I’m saying a lot of it, like the “gamers are over” stuff, isn’t very compelling and in fact seems the sort of censorious nonsense that SJWs get accused of.”
As I said before, maybe you just underestimate how much damage the media’s narrative and these articles in particular did to the games industry and to the gamers community. One of the SPJ’s principles is “Minimize Harm”, and I’d like to see journalists adhere to that principle.
“I’m also saying it becomea even more absurd when you consider that you’re likely to send Milo Yiannopoulos as your ethics standard bearer on issues like this, when he accuses “feminists” of making bomb threats without evidence and attacks actual, specific human beings, like Shanley Kane, with vituperative hit pieces.”
Personally I don’t consider Milo Yiannopoulos as an “ethics standard bearer”. If there’s no evidence that a bomb threat came from a feminist, he shouldn’t have written that. Regarding Kane, in my cursory understanding she spends her time writing vituperative hit pieces on other people herself, so if she dishes out like this, is it unethical to reveal that? You’d have to be more concrete, but I don’t really want this discussion to go there. Is this a competition who can send the most ethical people to the panel? Not in my view. The topic is ethics in games journalism, and his articles can be put under as much scrutiny as anyone else’s. He’s certainly good at exposing other journalist’s failures, and if he’s accused of something, he probably won’t react with deflection and irrational insults. If the Anti-GG side also puts up somebody like him, it might result in an interesting and fruitful discussion where journalist’s faults are actually adressed.
“I think many of you might be somewhat inconsistent in your concerns for journalistic ethics. And I’m pretty sure I know why.”
What do you mean? Personally, my concern is that the current games media and mainstream media’s nepotism and scandalizing narratives do nothing but damage. They spread falsehoods among their readers, they create fear and division, with their uncompromising and hate-filled language they indirectly encourage unstable people towards insane and illegal activism, they destroy innocent people’s reputations, they cause game developers to self-censor out of fear, they cause a complete breakdown of civil discussion.
Just to clarify what I believe was the main problem with the “Gamers are dead” articles.
It was not really about them individually. It was because there was a collusion in the industry to publish these articles in unison to try and silence and slander a large group of people.
Does Leigh and the others have the right to publish the articles? Yes. But the community has the right to reject and use public discord to disagree. They did, and then were banned… so they contacted advertisers, and then were slandered.
It was not a single event like the article from Leigh ONLY… it was a chain of events that was designed to minimize and slander ANYONE who disagreed with the articles. Why else have it be that people from a secret mailing list all publish the same type of articles at once.
To me it was far more about the timing and the results afterwards… then any hurt feelings about the article. It was a direct retaliation to try and slander those that disagreed with them and their narrative.
I have been following this debacle since Quinnspiracy threads were being deleted on 4chan in August. I have yet to see any evidence or proof of organized gamergate harassment anywhere.
You will see our detractors claiming dox, or harassment, yet after trawling multiple gamergate hubs and ircs, there a no talk of this, no planning of this, at best there are other people confused as to where this is coming from.
I don’t see how gamergate is able to mass target woman without a single discussion or planning session anywhere. Yet every comments section or article has people claiming mass doxxing, and hharassment of tthem and their loved ones.
I honestly believe almost every claim is disingenuous.
I
If you need people from the opposing side, you can try to get in touch with DiGRA. DiGRA is the source for all the “Gamers are dead” articles, and it could be interesting to force the group of cultural marxist academics and feminists to publicly talk about their view on ethics.
I sincerely hope this focuses on the behaviour of journalists – cronyism, promoting their friends without disclosure, lying and deliberately being antagnoistic for pageviews, hit pieces, their contempt for anyone who tries to present corrections which don’t fit the prefered ‘narrative’, selective deleting of comments, twitter bullying (Ben Dreyfuss mocking of suicide victims, Sam Biddle’s pro-bullying stance, Leigh Alexander’s hatred of pretty much everyone – you only have to watch their twitter streams to see what awful people they are).
It looks very much like the lunatics have taken over the asylum!
Surely it’s not the SPJ’s job to make any intervention/judgements of online fights/harassment etc. if it is not journalists themselves taking part in it?
Good luck!
Wormsby,
Contrary to your belief, you are not older than I am. In fact, I have been a “hardcore” Gamer since you were likely in kindergarten. More to the point, my “purple language” regarding people standing up for their daughters and sons regards my own children who are hardcore gamers themselves. The same children Leigh Alexander called “obtuse shitslingers” who don’t know how to act or dress. So you will excuse me if I dig in and defend my own from this cynical attack on our culture.
Can I get your comments/feedback on this post over on reddit? http://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstGamerGate/comments/36ek2j/lets_talk_about_nathan_graysons_ethical_breach/
This post lists the ethical breaches that started a bunch of the kerfluffle of gamergate (a secondary point would be the silencing of the discussion about Grayson/Quinn).
This is why I see having any anti people at any debate/meetup as detrimental. If it is about ethics then it should be between the people bringing up the violations and those who are ‘responsible’ for them (i.e. other journalists).
Sadly, I predict the only anti-gamergaters who will show up for this event, will be the ones pulling fire alarms and causing general mischief to prevent it from continuing. AGG doesn’t talk, they attack. This appeal to reason will fall on deaf ears yet again.
I think if you are having trouble identifying people willing to participate on the anti- side, a few good ideas would be the following:
Jason Schreier of Kotaku
Brian Crecente of Polygon
James Fudge of GamePolitics
Jim Sterling YouTuber formerly of Escapist
Caitlin Dewey of Washington Post
Katherine Cross
Amanda Marcotte of Raw Story
Rami Ismail Indie Developer
Several of the above, especially the top three, would probably be willing to attend. I think it provides a fairly balanced counter to the GamerGate list and avoids obscure and divisive personalities such as Butts or AMIB.
I think our journalist friend is learning an important lesson. Every maintream media outlet, and so many bloggers, game journos, and twitter darlings have been condemning us, GG. But given an opportunity to criticize where prominent members can actually answer that criticism, they are shrivelling up and vanishing. Nobody in GamerGate is surprised, we’ve been saying since Day 1 of this that getting anti’s to show would be trouble- they don’t want to discuss anything. They want to preach their gospel from a bully pulpit, and have the masses Listen and Believe.
This is being posted far too late, and I understand it may be missed. BUt I’ve read through all the blog posts on AirPlay, and I’m still lost on one thing – what is the topic of the debate? I understand that it is somehow about GamerGate, but what is the question being debated?
If it’s ethics in games journalism, the latest meltdown over on KotakuInAction seems to be that GamerGate isn’t about ethics and has always been about being anti-SJW.
Jason,
1. many of the ethical breaches that kicked off GG and are ongoing, involve tit for tat based on matching ideologies. The most prominent journalists that GG have a bone to pick with, are SJWs.
2. BECAUSE they are SJWs, they made it an SJW issue rather than allow it to be a purely ethical one (eg. “its not about ethics, its about being anti-female!”). This attracted more SJWs to the fight from outside of the industry. GG got dragged INTO an SJW fight, not the other way around. This widened the playing field and therefore GG in scope and membership, so now we have a mix of people who are either a) just in it for the industry problems b) in it for stopping SJWs gaining ground or c) a mixture of the two.
This is why there’s currently a lot of discussion, as many want to see the main GG board on reddit stay as is (a mix), while many also want to see KiA become refocused as an industry watchdog (which would include SJW stuff for the industry), and the pure SJW drama move to another subreddit as it’s a much larger rabbithole.
In-fighting/arguing it may be, but that’s the sign of a healthy and eclectic community, not a bad one.
Gamergate strikes me as a brilliant example of what it is complaining about.
If I understand the Gamergate position correctly, it boils down to this:
Gamers are fed up with being portrayed as a sinister conspiracy to keep normal people out of gaming. They don’t like having a few bad examples being taken as representative of the entire community. They don’t like having their agenda (journalistic ethics) ignored in favour of the agenda of their opponent.
And what is the community that has rallied underneath the Gamergate banner done?
It has portrayed journalism as a sinister conspiracy to keep normal people out of the news. It has taken a few bad examples, and used them to represent the entire community. They have ignored the agenda of their opponent (the godawful way that so many online gamers behave) because they have their own agenda to push.
And guess what? “Society at large” is bigger than “Gaming subculture” (the trick is to notice the bit where it says ‘sub’) and they CAN afford to ignore you. And you CAN’T afford to ignore them. And nobody really cares if you think it’s fair or not.
If the leaders of Al-Qaeda in Iraq can write (internal) memos saying “Guys, please stop cutting people’s heads off and putting it on the internet, it’s generating bad press for us,” (which they did) then your personal opinion about stupid violent behaviour doesn’t mean that people are wrong to compare you (collectively) to terrorists.
You want ‘the journalists’ to improve their act when it comes to ethics (specifically, the conflict of interests when it comes to reviewing games). Sure, fine, that’s a great goal. Society at large, as represented by the majority of journalists, wants ‘the gamers’ to improve their ethics (specifically, obnoxious behaviours including harassment). And generally speaking, the person who says “I wasted $50 on this stupid game” is going to get a lot less support and sympathy than the person who says “My teenaged child was told to kill himself by a gamer, and I’m scared that he might do it.” Because (let’s apply a little perspective here) if wasting money on a bad computer game is the biggest problem in your life, then nobody gives a shit about you and your first-world problems.
Nick since the people who claim to be harassed often harass the people who support gamergate. Anybody who has made criminal comments should be brougth it up on charges and arrested shame the media seem very selective on what wrongdoing it reports.
And I often wish we could sue for libel the people who keep accusing supporters of GG of things we did not do. We would be millonaires easily.
Firstly, I should probably apologize to ‘original Nick’, I just realised that someone else by the name of Nick has been commenting against this post.
I accept completely that you (Neowarden) oppose violence and that you mean what you just said. But you’re still staying fixed on your agenda, and nothing that you’ve said there gives me a reason to change what I’m saying.
Society at large isnt represented by dishonest journalists, and we won’t apologize to anyone for not agreeing with them or accepting their corrupt practices,
Nothing you stated makes me change my mind either. And yes I mean every single word I just said.
Perhaps I should assume you condone the violent threats sent against us. ?