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#GamerGate: Stop Being Jerks on the Internet Edition
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Then I'm like 'oh, right. people are terrible'
The lack of self-awareness or any level of understanding is amazing.
Sadly, it usually just leads to threads getting sidetracked.
there's been this push to say that people need to harden the fuck up and accept that awful things will happen
no sir
i will not accept that
death threats should not be a thing. you should never find yourself saying or writing a death threat in the course of normal civilized life. the fact that this is something people have to be REMINDED about is mindblowing.
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the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
You could substitute any crime in there and the response is the same. Because people still have free will. And some people are really messed up in the head. Put two and two together and you get all the horrible shit that covers the darker corners of human nature.
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Saying that entertainment shouldn't be political is simply a form of privilege.
For instance, portraying women as objects is an inherently political concept. You simply don't recognize it as political because you're internalized that that world view as the universal default.
It's the same phenomenon when conservatives get offended when gay judges are asked to rule on gay marriage, because they assume the judge is biased for being gay. But they have no problem with a straight judge ruling on marriage, because a straight judge is "neutral" and "normal."
It's disingenuous to claim that GamerGate is against the co-opting of politics. They're only offended at having to consider the politics of people who don't look like them.
I'm basically in favor of -ghazi replacing -gate as our suffix of choice. Real scandals get short descriptions of what they actually are.
For example: "A Bunch of Privileged Assholes Getting Upset Because Someone Invited a Woman to G.R.O.S.S."
Granted, not as snappy.
I believe he's implying that people shouldn't be such shitheads who think death threats are funny or a way to make a point.
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His game was removed from Steam and the Humble Store.
He tweeted again later as part of his rant against how awful it is that Valve has the power to shut down the game justt because of one really specific death threat something to the effect of "This is mostly the fault of GamerGate fo making serious death threats so that my death threat looks bad"
Most of the arguments around it are "Well he done fucked up, good job valve" and "He's a young, hotheaded guy, and he probably wasn't actually going to kill Gabe Newell!"
Pretty crazy how it looks when it's two dudes.
Also, seriously, how are we at a point where anyone who owns half a company and is releasing a game he's been working on for years goes "I should probably threaten the life of the CEO of my business partner who is also my distributor"
Second step: find the sender
Third step: punish them
Fuck, that was hard! I just narrowly avoided creating a police state with thought police in the process.
I didn't know conservatives were against gay judges. That's a fringe belief if I ever heard it. Probably the extreme social conservatives who are too religious for their own good.
They're offended at the people using politics as a cudgel against them. Which is precisely what Anita is doing.
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I disagree, but only in that art that isn't political has nothing to say, and is therefore kinda shitty art.
So saying art shouldn't be political is an extreme lack of knowledge about art (and art criticism), more than privilege.
1) Other people have covered this better, so I'll defer to them here.
2) There are plenty of other places where politics involves more than two sides, and often these groups work together.
3) Atheism+ is an interesting choice to bring up as that also was a fiasco largely due to the firestorm that erupted when women spoke out about harassment and generally feeling unwelcome in a different male-dominated subculture.
4) I do not find TFYC especially inclusive. As an example, I'd suggest you read this post and then TFYC's response. Please also keep in mind that those they are happy to associate with harassers (their thank you post explicitly mentions an especially notorious Youtube troll who is well-known for harassing a female Youtuber, amongst others), which is not a thing that would exactly encourage inclusivity.
5) You are rather drastically misreading those articles. Every one of them I have read says that gaming is and has always been larger than the stereotype and people that make games should and do make games that reflect that audience. ("Death of the author" does not mean "kill all authors.")
6) Again, others have covered this better, so I'll defer to them.
also, the whole 'most people are apolitical' thing is probably the crux of this entire matter
if you happen to fit the sociopolitical default, then YEAH you can live life in an 'apolitical' fashion and not have to worry about anything political because every system is designed around you
for literally ANYONE ELSE, the very act of living in society is political and involves systemic injustices and all the realities of not fitting the default.
'apolitical' simply means "it's more comfortable for me if i'm able to pretend that society doesn't have problems because i don't see them"
sorry
no
this giant noisy bell that you say SJWs have been ringing? all this extra attention to ISSUES that you'd just like to pretend don't exist? why can't we just talk about the GAMES that gloss over more complex realities in favor of an easy narrative that fits my experience?
it's so important to silence critics and SJWs because it's MENTALLY UNCOMFORTABLE TO BE CONFRONTED WITH INJUSTICE. we're social animals and we're wired to feel sympathy when others are suffering. it's an obligation to fix the problem.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
Something the GamerGate people have been doing. They've found a lot of the harassers.
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1 Many people would say all art is political. Regardless, the point is these people think gaming should NEVER be political, not that it should be political as a whole.
2 Political acts and the party politics of the USA have very little to do with each other, and the machismo you seem apparently impressed with is irrelevant.
3 Which gamers are you talking about? Let me guess, 'real' gamers, not people like me or Sarkeesian?
4 I don't understand. Too many acronyms.
5 I've got a beard, I'm fat, and I am a massive gaming nerd. My sex life would embarrass the pope. Those people using terms like neck beard are often responding to the most appalling insults and threats imaginable, whether aimed at them or not. So while I think their name calling is unhelpful, it doesn't hurt my feelings and isn't in the same league at all.
6 No. Telling someone to shut up is not censorship. Censorship happens by powerful organizations such as governments and corporations.
Yes. Ignoring politics is easier if you benefit from the status quo.
Everything created by humans is political. Refusing to acknowledge that is a tactic that lets flaws go unexamined.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
1) Everyone is political.
2) I'll have to research further.
3) No strawman, politics in the gaming industry didn't start recently it was there from the beginning from the board rooms to the arcades. GG is very much political in its goals, which isn't liberal by any stretch.
4) No, it really isn't. Its themes are conservative in nature, despite its large numbers. It has some different views, yes, but they're not front and center for its ambitions or its public face. I'm not talking about the criminals threatening people, either. It's the GG who want to conform the video game industry to their standards, which isn't friendly to women. It wants the status quo to remain as is, or regress - not expand to larger audiences.
5) No, it isn't. A Gamer was a stereo typed white male nerd that lives in a basement until recently, now it's anyone that can play a video-game.
6) Censorship isn't the word you're looking for. Websites and companies have the right to do whatever they like with their property as long as its legal. That's not censorship. You don't follow their rules they'll ban you or alter their content to what they want. What do you call GG protesting against certain types of articles about video-games to their liking?
Meant to type GG.
I saw them make fake Facebook pages for Trayvon before getting into GamerGate, so, no, they've always been doing this, and the fact that games are getting shit from them means our thing is legit and part of society.
Wait so it's impossible to stop death threats without creating thought police and moving to a police state
But GG has had no problem finding the people sending death threats?
Also, how has GG "Punished" any of the harassers?
2) Politics are like two rams locking horns.
3) Gamers as a whole. (You mean the woman who is on tape calling herself "not a gamer" and thinking video games "gross" for the "murders" a player commits? I'd love her to address that one.)
4) OK...
5) The name calling was coming from those not getting threats for the most part. Once again, the threats were not coming from GamerGate people.
6) Shutting down discussion and banning people (on websites run by corporations) fits then, don't it?
1) Everything isn't overtly political. And your truism is a truism without evidence to back it up.
2) OK.
3) Yes, but the politics to "change the industry" on the terms people like Anita want it to isn't something that happens (in any industry) very often. And it is usually heavily resisted and rarely succeeds.
4) No, the goals are to stop exactly what third-wave feminists (mostly sex negative feminists) tried to do to atheism with the Atheist+ movement (Thunderf00t or TheAmazingAtheist can fill you in there.) Not an atheist myself, so I didn't know about this until Thunderf00t pointed it out.
5) In your opinion. Gamer has long been an open term to anyone who wanted it. From the youngest age, my friends of all races, genders, classes, and creeds loved video games.
6) As a collection of people with little real power (but the power of the purse and the e-mail,) they don't have the power to do anything. Forum moderators have a lot of power over the people who post in them.
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I don't think I've ever seen this tactic before.
It really does expose how empty the claims that this is about gaming are though. If video games are art, then they most certainly can be political and more importantly they can be analysed as such. Most of the shit the #GG crowd are complaining about are some of the few instances of actually journalism or study or analysis of video games going on.
The only thing I can do about it is engage with people who may not realize what they're involved with too.
Well considering who the harassers are all it takes to find them is a little self reflection. If they did that they could find all the harassers.
Well right now I'm debating with you and that libertarian guy, because you seem to think it's just fine, in the hope you'll change your mind.
I'm just one person, so there's not a lot I can do.
Also stop with the 'movement' stuff, please.
oh, it's not new
it's just particularly useless
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
Wrong.
There was a huge movement to get this judge to recuse himself on the grounds that this judge was somehow biased, where as a straight judge wouldn't be.
Just like with GamerGate, it's a false assumption of privileged neutrality.
The bigots in the Prop 8 assume that being straight is neutral, and and therefore anything gay is a perversion of justice.
GamerGate does the exact same thing. They enjoy games that have certain political views that they see as politically neutral. Any contrary political view is non-neutral, and therefore bad.
Talk about this in another thread, people will let you know what's going on with conservative judges.
Yes. She's using politics specific to video-games, or specifically the industry itself. Politics isn't off-limits for media to explore.
edit: GamerGate is using politics to get what it wants from the industry.
5. The articles with all those stereotypes of gamers were talking about how those stereotypes are being destroyed in the eye of the public because everybody is a gamer. They aren't calling people that.
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He only got "screwed over" because he was going through greenlight while continuing to find a publisher, and then Valve went "Wait, no, you don't get to use the greenlight process only to ditch it if you find greener pastures elsewhere, you're a greenlight game, go through the greenlight process now"
Also, even in the email they sent him they went "Hey so you said some shit about us, and that's fine, because we're open to criticism even in a public sphere, and even when filled with vitriol. But no mas on the death threats"
Anyways , not the thread, I just wanted to bring up the whole a: Weird how different things go when a man sends a death threat to a man, and b: Seriously what the fuck why is it so hard for people not to threaten to murder other people
He's apparently a grade-a asshole who had his fans pursue a harassment campaign against the dude who made Guncraft, because he had the NERVE to go "Hey, maybe you should treat your customers a little better or you might lose them" while they were sharing a chatroom during an indie bundle thing.
Anita has done nothing aside from create a web series of videos talking about misogyny in gaming. If you disagree with her, boo fucking hoo. Don't watch the video. You do not get to engage in a campaign of intimidation to silence opposition. Which is exactly what you're doing. You're going to say that's not you, that's someone unrelated, but here you are, Willie, right in that post, villifying her simply for voicing her opinion.
And to your notion about how games shouldn't be 'wholly' political? What does that even mean? What the bloody hell are you talking about? 'Wholly' political? Since when are games wholly political? Since when is anything wholly political? That is a made up term, and is extraordinarily dishonest. No, Willie, what you want is to go back to when gamers as a whole could treat people like shit and no one cared because everyone looked down on gaming as childish. Well, unfortunately, gaming grew up. Now it appeals to audiences as wide as film and books and music. And so you get experiences and voices as wide and varied as in film and books and music. Don't you dare tell me that's a bad thing. Don't you fucking dare.
What GamerGate is really about is that the light of mainstream attention is shining on the racism and sexism endemic to the gaming circles that used to be safe havens for this vile behavior and they are freaking out.
Its just too bad that they all have really poor titles that might be interpreted otherwise. And that they all came out at roughly the same time. (I'm being serious)
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I'd say the problem is a lack of critical reading and reasoning on the part of people who are reading the articles. And they all came out around the same time because of gamergate. Also the people who write the articles don't name them. That's the editor who wants lots of clicks fault.
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I can see why it'd be a movement, it's not an organization.
*Sigh.* I'm not defending the threats she's received.
Endemic? Really? So, all that money raised to get women-created games made means nothing? GamerGate isn't about sexism, racism, or harassment.
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1) So explain to us the meaning of non-overt politics. Because it sounds like non-overt politics is just a fancy way of saying "The politics that I personally already assume as true," where as overt politics is a fancy way of saying "The politics of people who are different from myself."
For instance, Samus is actually a girl? That's a political message, "Girls can be heroes too!" But if Samus was a guy, it would also be political, "All heroes are men!" But it would be political in a way that most gamers already accept without question.
4) I honestly have no idea what you're referring to. What exactly do you mean by "The anti-GG are pretty homogeneous in viewpoint", unless by viewpoint, you mean "Women are people too" and "Harassment = bad"?
5) If that's the case, then why does GamerGate consider Feminist views as being counter to Gamer culture? If the meaning of "gamer" is as broad as you define it, then they should have no problem welcoming feminist views.
Can you explain this? I don't know what you're talking about. As long as it is on-topic.