A Gamer Gate Observation
Boston Magazine published a great article on Gamer Gate in general especially on how it started with a deranged (and nearly 10,000 word rant!) about an independent game designer named Zoe Quinn and her obsessed ex-boyfriend.
One part of the article really struck out to me:
Gjoni fell for her hard—maybe too hard, given how brief their relationship was. He began idealizing Quinn as “this perfect ethical thing,” he says, and less as a gifted and flawed woman who battled chronic depression. Quinn often traveled to speak at gaming conferences, and they saw each other at most once a week. After just five months, they broke up. But Gjoni wouldn’t let go
This is the heart of the problem. Notice how Gjoni describes Quinn as a “perfectly ethical thing” and not a “perfectly ethical person” or even a “perfectly ethical woman”. He already denied Quinn her humanity by calling her a thing and placed her in a realm of abstraction. This is something straight out of Freud.
There is obviously no such thing as a perfectly ethical person and perhaps if Gjoni and other Gamergaters were able to see women that way (flaws and all), they would not rage as much. No one is perfect and we all have our plusses and minuses. In the eyes of Gamergate, women are “perfectly ethical things” until they are not and then they become worthy of scorn and derision.
Saul,
Pot smoking Elmo ahoy!Report
What does this mean in actual English?Report
“I have just seen a red muppet smoking marijuana near the horizon”Report
When trolls get involved in a story, things get weird.
At least the ones I know.
Zoe should really learn not to take “pot smoking elmo” caliber advice. And also how to identify sarcasm.
This is not the only part of gamergate that’s been infested by trolls.Report
I have been reliably told this is about ethics in game journalism. Which is a very important topic well known for whipping up internet mobs.Report
I am not sure that Zoe Quinn (and her peccadilloes) has quite as much to do with gamergate today as she did, oh, seven months ago.
Clarkhat breaks down the dynamic here:
http://popehat.com/2014/10/21/gamer-gate-three-stages-to-obit/
If it was merely a case where a guy needed to see his girlfriend as more human rather than more idealized and that would have allowed him to be less hurt when he found out that she was less than ideally faithful and was, instead, faithful to him after her all-too-human fashion, I don’t think that we would have ended up here.Report
@jaybird — You realize that Clarkhat’s article is a low grade neo-reactionary rant. I mean, parts are true, but the whole is nonsense.
This:
Fucking Moldburg could have written that. I mean, during an absinthe bender I suppose.
Why do I care if my genes get passed on? Why does Gnon care, insofar as Gnon cares about anything at all?
Since, you know, Gnon is supposed to be a mindless process.
Maybe Clarkhat cares, and then he projects his petty, patriarchal nonsense on the universe itself.
NRx’s are adorable, ain’t they!
Anyway, it goes on with the typical NRx kinda-like-history but not really cuz we believe every piece of evo-psych nonsense we hear cuz that’s how we roll.
Too-edgy-for-you, bitches!
Come on, man, you’re better than this.
I really mean that.Report
Come on, man, you’re better than this.
I don’t know that I am.
I admit to having a lot of affection for Moldbug. My problem with Nrx is that it sees that a lot of things are its business that, seriously, aren’t. I enjoy it in the way that I enjoy Marxism, though… as a way to explain things that otherwise don’t make any sense to me.
The second we move from descriptive observations to prescriptive theories, I’m out, though.
All that to say: I’m probably not.Report
@jaybird — Oh I’m as cynical as the NRx’ers, as I’m pretty much a moral nihilist and “entropy always wins” sums up my view of everything. So yeah, nature red tooth and claw. I get it. Likewise I think there is value in taking a “systems”-based approach to society, which is about feedback effects and the collective actions of blindingly clueless moral agents. Yeah, game theory can be a great tool to figure shit out — sometimes, when we keep in mind that all models are wrong. But all that said, where they lose me is in their tendency toward pomposity, alongside their absolutely silly grand-narratives of history. Just, no. It tells us much about their preoccupations and practically nothing about the world.
Since after all, there are no grand narratives but lots of petty little stories of desperate people doing stupid things.
Cuz entropy.
Which brings us to that terrible article. “The Million Year War”? OMG!
These are the places where you should know better.Report
I’m a Romantic, I guess.Report
You realize that Clarkhat’s article is a low grade neo-reactionary rant.
I knew that, the same way that I know that a Hemingway story is terse.Report
Well yeah, it hit peak crazy when, of course, it was revealed the evil ex obviously slept her way to success because that’s what women do, especially evil women with their magic vaginas that control us.
Seriously, the whole thing was just a standard breakup wherein the guy took is badly and went obsessive. People turn their ex’s into caricatures of evil all the time as they rationalize heartbreak. It’s worse when they’re clearly obsessed with their ex — sometimes that turns into stalking, sometimes more and more demonetization and blame…we’re ugly beings, underneath.
The only real difference is instead of griping to his friends or trying to force their mutual friends to take sides, he blasted it over the internet and hit gold.
And for the record: No one has EVER cared about ethics in game journalism. EVER. And if they did, this woman is not who they’d hang their hat on. They’d be too busy talking about companies that clearly outright purchase reviews.
This was just two common sneers aimed at women who have the gall to spurn a man — “she must be a slut” and “she’s only successful because she has a vagina” that went viral.Report
It hit peak crazy in the first week? The first month? It’s been downhill ever since?
I feel like I should disagree but I can’t think of crazier in the last few months. I think that we have yet to hit peak crazy, though.
What I think is so crazy is how this isn’t something like “McKayla is NOT impressed” that was hot for 20 minutes and then evaporated. It’s still happening. I honestly thought that gamergate would be dead by now.Report
It more or less is dead. It burned itself out within a month.
What’s left is the ones who tasted blood, felt strong, and seek to feed again. They keep it going, look for new victims, all so they can feel potent again.
Maybe by controlling the zeitgeist. Maybe by putting another slut in her place. Maybe just by reaching out and screwing someone, to prove they can.
Doesn’t really matter. The GG crowd is a bunch of aggrieved white boys who are unhappy they’re not being catered to, and blame women.
Not exactly unusual. There’s still people out there screaming over Ultima Online’s Trammel decision (creating a griefing free shard), for Pete’s sake.
Gamergate just hits a certain nexus of grudge-carrying, obsessive types. MRA style misogynists in addition to gamers. You could write books on the hurt feelings and grudges of those who don’t like the way things have changed, and have gone looking for a scapegoat for it.Report
Sure. They are. Except for the ones who aren’t.
For whatever reason, though, it’s important for certain people that it be characterized in this way.Report
“Sure. They are. Except for the ones who aren’t.”
Except that the crowd behavior matches up well.Report
AFAIK, we have multiple roving crowds here.
Better to look at the instigators. you’ll learn more that way.Report
I might have agreed with that prior to the bomb threat at the meetup.Report
*shrug*. There’s no ‘anti-Gamergate’ group. I’m an atheist in Houston. If some atheist goes on a shooting spree against Christians in New Jersey, what’s that got to do with me?
I’m sure there are perfectly pristine, sparkly unicorns of innocence and good intentions scattered throughout the GG group. Unfortunately, all the ones I’ve met — who seem quite solidly in the vast majority — are angry men upset at women over [something].
That something varies, but it sure as heck ain’t ethics in game journalism.Report
This is just another way of saying that people on that bad behavior on the side that you like should be treated as individual instances, while bad behavior on the side that you don’t like is evidence of that side’s inherent badness.Report
JR,
Perhaps if the behavior wasn’t so endemic to the label, I could spot you the point.
Unfortunately, I have yet to converse with — nor even read — someone who claims the label and didn’t fit the mold.
Perhaps some rare unicorns exist, but that wouldn’t change the facts that 99.9% DO fit the mold.Report
What’s the point of quantifying something for which you have no actual numbers?
I get that it is supposed to lend the veneer of statistical certainty, but since we both know that you have no such statistics it just looks like you’re substituting false empiricism for what is quite obviously your perception.
Why not just admit that it’s just your perception?Report
Yeah, let’s make sure that people who are specifically labeling themselves with a label that has never actually been used for anything *except* misogyny are the same as a bunch of people who are horrified at what people with that label are doing!
And, while we’re at it, I met this nice guy the other day. He assures me that he isn’t racist, and I believe him, and I’ve never seen him be even the slightest bit racist, at all.
So I’m baffled as to why everyone treats him as a pariah when he puts on his white robes with red cross and white pointed hat and hangs out in town. Weird. Just because he belongs to a social club with a bunch of racists doesn’t make *him* racist. Everyone should be judged by their own actions, not how they have chosen how to label themselves. I mean, it’s not like ‘KKK’ was associated with racism when they joined, or that by adopting that label he’s labeled *himself* with that.
*holds hand to ear*
I am informed, in fact, it *was* associated with racism, and in fact the entire origin was racism. I have also been informed that Gamergate’s origin was, in fact, pure misogyny, literally created to talk about a misogynic video that had nothing to do with ‘ethics in journalism’ at all, and has never been anything else. And thus people who voluntarily label themselves that way are either assholes or idiots.
Nevermind.Report
It’s easy to lead assholes around by the nose, though…Report
Dick Wolf (Not this one, this one) aired a TV episode about it in mid-February.Report
*THAT* might have been peak crazy, now that I think about it.Report
Pretty sure peak crazy was when they allied themselves with Jack Thompson.Report
@morat20
What really struck me about Gamergate is how young everyone involved was. Maybe this could be a sign of hope, maybe not. Maybe it just shows that there are a lot of young ultra-reactionaries up there:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/gamergate-supporters-party-at-strip-club.html
Looking at this picture, you are right. It is almost exclusively white guys. There is one black guy and one Asian guy. There are also two women and this probably gives the GG guys cover. They also all look under 25. This party was to celebrate how one guy was turning 18. He talks about being underwhelmed by a strip club because of how much porn is watched. I think censoring pornography is a fool’s errand but being jaded about sex at such a young age strikes me as very bad.
I also remember that a woman who received rape threat tweets found out that most of her attackers were boys. High school aged boys filled with hormones and adolescent issues. She ended up telling their moms who had an apocalyptic reaction of course.Report
Gamergate could *NEVER* have happened prior to the existence of the internet. Without 4Chan or Twitter or Reddit or the like? Never ever.
There were gatekeepers at the places that printed letters to the editor, there would have been no way for someone to tell the world that his girlfriend wrecked him (oh, and by the by, she did so with a guy who was a member of a circle of journalists).
Adolescents did not used to be able to influence culture in any meaningful way beyond consuming it.
Now they can create it.
I used to mock the Ancient Greeks’ theory that you don’t listen to people until they hit 40. Then I thought that I only stopped mocking it because I had hit 40.
Now I’m not so sure.Report
Not really true, honestly. When a bloke decides to set two mobs on each other, he can do it in press as well as he can do it on the net.
Unless you really think that someone going “undercover” in blackface couldn’t spawn a non-violent mob in meat-space.Report
High school age boys rape girls all the time, saul…
That said, when the non-gamergate side is flat out lying (and crucifying people for just reporting on a scam), I’m not going to choose a side lightly.
(Oh, wait, I’ve already chosen a side. The middle! It’s way more fun, I promise).Report
“when the non-gamergate side is flat out lying ”
???
Especially as the whole origin of GamerGate was a lie.Report
I’m speaking of Quinn lying about being doxxed.
About Chloe Sagal lying about her fundraising.
These are specific allegations that have been substantiated.
The caliber of people on the non-gamergate side leaves something to be desired.Report
@morat20
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/australia-culture-blog/2014/nov/28/alanah-pearce-tells-on-her-internet-trolls-to-their-mothersReport
And maybe if you diversified your media diet, you wouldn’t be stuck making these sorts of armchair psych diagnosis on people based on a particular media narrative.
As @jaybird points out, this isn’t about what it’s about.
And what does it even mean to say that this is “how Gamergaters see women?” What about the Gamergate supporters who are women? What about the ones who are gay men?Report
And what about the Chaos Theory book??Report
What about the Gamergate supporters who are women? What about the ones who are gay men?
What about them?Report
The question is pretty obvious. If Gamergate can be explained as a bunch of male hetero nerds who can’t see women as people, how do you account for those people who don’t fit that bill? Are the women who support Gamergate also unable to see themselves and other women as people?Report
Do you think sexism and the way women are portrayed, perceived, and treated are strictly the province of straight men?Report
Are you really expecting a yes or no answer to that question?
Lots of people are sexist from lots of different perspectives. That’s not the point.
The point is that when you start from the perspective of Gamergate=sexism, you’re making a fundamental category error, similar to the error that Gamergate supporters make when they argue that Gamergate=integrity in internet journalism.
This is simply not an issue of the good guys vs. the bad guys.Report
I’m asking it rhetorically, because I know you’re smart enough to know the answer, and that you therefore haven’t made your case very well. This is all the more evident by the fact that you answered it with, “It just isn’t the issue, damn it!”
Granted, I don’t think anything is black and white, but given the behavior of gamergaters toward women who’ve spoken out, I’m inclined to think there is definitely a darker shade of gray on one side.Report
No, that’s not it. If that were true, then you would have responded to the point that I actually made and not tried go off on this tangent about whether women and gay men can be sexist.Report
Eh, I think your original point was wrong: I think how gamergaters see women is a big part of the problem, and that includes how the women and the gay men see them. That’s evident in the way many of them react to the women who are on the other side.Report
What do the threats against Ann Coulter say about the team making them?Report
That’s different, by definition.Report
The problem is that you were the one who mentioned sexism. My point was never about sexism.
I was responding to a particular point that @saul-degraw made in the OP, which is that Gamergate is motivated by a particular sort of rejected, nerdy male animus, a personalized version of the Madonna-whore complex. Pointing out that Gamergate supporters include gay men and women (ie people who are very obviously not animated by these feelings) is a pretty good argument against the specific point that Saul made.
If you want to argue that Gamergate is about sexism or misogyny, that’s fine, but that’s not a response to my actual comment.Report
Does the way people talk about the Koch brothers and the threats that they receive reveal some anti-Dutch bias?Report
Wait, wait, wait… the Kochs don’t threaten anyone.Report
How many people do you think have any idea that the Koch brothers are Dutch? Does their Dutchness come up as a reason for or in the content of the threats they receive? If so, then yes.Report
I knew it from the day I saw their clogs and love of Gouda….Report
How many of the conservative who don’t like George Soros and talk about him the same way progressives talk about the Koch brothers know or care that he’s Jewish? How often are they accused of Anti-Semitism?Report
I dunno. I don’t pay attention to that stuff, and it’s irrelevant anyway.Report
Gamergate is just another facet of “Operation Amusement”, just like pot smoking elmo. Side-effects are just a bonus.Report
“This is simply not an issue of the good guys vs. the bad guys.”
Actually, it is. We can watch the behavior.Report
Exactly. We can watch anti-Gamergaters doxx people, harass people and threaten people as well, which is generally how internet tribes work. All of them have true believers, benign supporters and outright trolls.Report
Brianna Wu recently made a video game featuring females as the main characters and had some interesting complaints about the complaints that she got about the body types the main characters had.
It’s interesting how often people resort to “I’M NOT THE ENEMY HERE!” rather than “You know what, yeah, I should have had fatter main characters.”Report
“made”Report
For what it’s worth, Brianna Wu also thinks that she’s Batman.Report
And has logged 250 work-days of Peggle.
I’ve heard quotes from her, ideas from her gaming studio.
They’re just unbelievably stupid.
Suppose I should give her props for actually knowing how to hire smarter people than she is, though.Report
Chris,
Wait, are we talking about the same issue here? Last I heard, part of this was about a reporter getting crucified for reporting on Chloe scamming money from people for a sex change operation?Report
Look, sexism is a big part of GG. It’s not the only part, but it’s no accident that the majority of the GG targets were women. Nor is it an accident that they were feminists. It’s no accident that GG is largely shy, weird, nerdy males.
Which it is, you know. Sure, the #notyourshield people exist, but they are spotlighted because they are not the average gater. In fact, basically they are “shields” for misogynistic jerks.
Which, obvious irony is obvious.
Personally, I don’t think you can put a bright-line border around GG that separates it from the ongoing harassment of Sarkeesian, nor Quinn’s pre-GG harassment, nor the harassment of a fair number of my friends. All women. All targets.
I mean, I see the behind-the-scenes these women face and it’s ugly, and the men doing it are misogynistic freak-trolls. It’s really bad, as ugly as you can imagine. These are truly messed up people. This is the bad stuff, guys who hold Eliot Rogers in high esteem.
Nor can you really erase the complete failure of these men to succeed at being men. And actually, as a feminist, I’m sympathetic to this. Masculinity can be really messy and it’s hard for weird, shy guys to negotiate this stuff.
I understand this really well, in fact.
But while we can see what has damaged these men, we also have to see what they have become, which is pretty horrible. It’s awful.
From Jaybird’s link:
Yep. Scratch these guys even slightly, you see the rage of the spurned male.
Sorry about that, guys. But you wanna get the girl, step up your game.Report
Gamergate: Using internet rage for fun and profit!Report
So, this is my problem with this point of view. That line works if you’re talking about Eron Gjoni, but not so much if you’re talking about Milo Yiannopoulos or Cathy Young or Christine Hoff Sommers, who are obviously not in on this because they couldn’t get the girl. Sure, you can dismiss Yiannopoulos as a reactionary and Young and Sommers as self-hating women, but the narrative strains.
The narrative further strains when you consider someone like Arthur Chu, who is every bit the awkward nerd, who probably ain’t getting all that much love from the ladies, but is full steam ahead anti-Gamergate.
And it strains even further when you take folks like Quinn or Brianna Wu and try to make uniquivocal victims/heroes out of them. And even further when you admit that the harassment and doxxing and the like is flying in both directions. A bunch of Gamergaters even got a bomb threat called on them in DC this past weekend: http://reason.com/archives/2015/05/04/bomb-threat-targets-gamergate-meetup-hea#.m8iqms:lpnTReport
And even further when you admit that the harassment and doxxing and the like is flying in both directions.
And if some anti-Gamergate people that had done that had a label they were operating under, I sure as *hell* wouldn’t put myself under that label also.
Unlike, apparently, the Gamergate people, who see no problems flying the ‘Gamergate’ banner, despite that label being created by misogynist assholes.Report
Your logic is circular.Report
Your logic is circular.
Uh, no, it’s not.
Here is what you quoted, which is where I assume you’re saying the circular logic is: Unlike, apparently, the Gamergate people, who see no problems flying the ‘Gamergate’ banner, despite that label being created by misogynist assholes.
First clause: ‘the Gamergate people, who see no problems flying the ‘Gamergate’ banner’
That, uh, is not really something that needs proving. Unless you’re asserting they’re labeling themselves Gamergate *despite* seeing problems with that label? Even if that was so, it doesn’t make any of the logic there ‘circular’.
Second clause: ‘despite [the Gamergate] label being created by misogynist assholes.’
Premise 1) Certain beliefs (specifically here, how a woman having sex is ‘unethical’ behavior) make people misogynist assholes.
Premise 2) The label ‘Gamergate’ was created by people who held those beliefs.
Conclusion) The label ‘Gamergate’ was created by misogynist assholes.
You can *disagree* with #1, or #2, but it’s pretty clearly not circular logic. None of the premises rely on a conclusion. Neither does the sentence as a whole.
In fact, if the statement was circular logic, it would completely fall apart if part of it was reversed…and it doesn’t:
‘Unlike, apparently, the Gamergate people, who see *a lot of* problems flying the ‘Gamergate’ banner, despite that label being created by misogynist assholes.’ – Nope, that sentence makes sense.
Unlike, apparently, the Gamergate people, who see no problems flying the ‘Gamergate’ banner, despite that label *not* being created by misogynist assholes. – And that also makes sense.
‘Wrong’ and ‘circular’ are not the same thing. Circular logic relies on itself. Nothing in what I said relies on itself.Report
Quid Pro Quo sex is now ethical? Gee, you must have just won tenure!Report
Certain beliefs (specifically here, how a woman having sex is ‘unethical’ behavior) make people misogynist assholes.
The lynchpin event girlfriend cheated on me. I took it a lot more personally than I probably ought to have.
I did not respond by cheating on her. Perhaps I would have learned some things by doing so…
Anyway, if we’re able to say stuff like “it’s unethical to have a primary partner with whom you have discussed such things as monogamy and agreed upon monogamy and then go on to have unprotected sex with someone else and then go on to have unprotected sex with your primary partner”, then we’re able to say “it’s unethical even if a female does this” without turning the discussion into the misogyny of policing the sexual choices of women.
But, I say that as someone who was hurt pretty bad (if not harmed) by the lynchpin event girlfriend.Report
Granted the syllogism was weak. However, what happened to Quinn was pretty openly misogynistic on every level. The thing is, the people who stormed in on this, who jumped with joy when The Zoe Post hit, were pretty much the worst men possible, and they made no effort to even slightly hide it.
Which, that’s what happened.Report
Oh, I agree that what happened to Quinn following that post was openly misogynistic. It was nobody’s business but his and hers (and, I suppose, their partners and close friends) and it was very much the definition of the airing of dirty laundry. An emotionally healthy guy would have just broken up with her and gotten tested.Report
@jaybird — I dunno. I’m willing to accept Ozy Franz’s viewpoint that she was an emotional abuser, and he was in his rights to publicly talk about that. Of course, he didn’t stop there. Nor does this excuse even slightly the actions of the GG crowd. But she’s no hero.Report
Sure, but I am not even close to her circle and I shouldn’t be asked to have an opinion on her in the first place.
I suppose the meta-issue of the censorship of discussion of Zoe’s relationship with the friends and friends of friends who were involved with covering her games on the various websites following the airing of the dirty laundry was interesting (4chan deleting threads discussing this sort of thing? fascinating…) but I admit to not having any knowledge of gamergate until it was well into backlash to the backlash to the backlash stage of the Streisand Effect.Report
4chan deletes the Child Pornography threads too, I think. (but that’s /b/…)Report
Zoe Quinn was not just minding her own business on the internet when a bunch of neckbeards attacked her for violating a fluidbonded relationship.
There is history here.
Zoe Quin already had a stink about her for doing awful things like trolling suicidal people. It’s like people are ready to accept a gaffe as proof that Bush the younger was stupid, becasue he has demonstrated a propensity for stupidity. Zoe Quinn had already demonstrated she was vile, so when the Zoe Pose hit, people were primed.Report
Cite some damn sources, kiddo.
Because I have to ask if we’re talking about the same Zoe Quinn — the one who made Depression Quest??
Because that’s actively a game that seeks to make people think about how hard it is to live with depression.
If she did, before, actively troll suicidal people — it would appear as if she has reformed.
So, cite your sources pal, because I’m calling bullshit, based on the record I’ve got.Report
This one time, at band camp, Zoe Quinn killed a saxophone player just to watch the light leave his eyes. Then she slept with the conductor and the percussion section, to make them her vagina-controlled slaves.
Seriously, I saw a screenshot of a conversation between two people who said they knew someone whose brother was a flautist and totally saw it all happen, and couldn’t stop it because Zoe Quinn’s head turned around 180 degrees and vomited green goop at him and then a priest ran away.Report
But I don’t make singular victims or heroes out of Quinn or Wu, insofar as they are both flawed people. Likewise for @freebsdgirl, who I actually quite like on a personal level. But I see her with the good and the bad.
I’m less interested in the big-media personalities who glommed on to GG, insofar as they are predictable ninnies being predictable. Yiannopoulos is a blowhard. Hoff Summers is just ridiculous.
But they are not the energy behind GG. After all, they in fact don’t play games, nor do they have any meaningful connection to nerd-culture. In other words, they are precisely the “entryists” that the GG crowd barks about, except in their own ranks.
Obvious irony is again obvious.
I mean, you can hate Quinn and Wu, but you cannot deny they make games. You can think @freebsdgirl is a bitch (and she sure can be), but you cannot doubt she has code committed to the BSD kernel. So love us or hate us, here we are.
Plus we have cool hair. (Mine’s purple.)
Anyway, this is a fight within nerd-culture, and I am most interested in the plight of the nerds, not the right-wing media goofballs who came storming in when they saw the dust.
This started on the -chans. It’s about those guys.
And yeah, guys like Chu are nerds. As is Barry Deutsch.
So if you think this is just about beating up on nerdy guys, uh no. You’re missing the point. It’s about calling out nerd-guys who hate women, cuz really they hate themselves [cw: worst thread ever].
Stop doing that. It’s unattractive.Report
Bri’s about as much of a game developer as Sid, imnsho (informed!).Report
So if you think this is just about beating up on nerdy guys, uh no. You’re missing the point. It’s about calling out nerd-guys who hate women, cuz really they hate themselves [cw: worst thread ever].
But, let’s at least pause to acknowledge that sometimes it *does* slip into beating up nerdy guys. In fact, it just sorta did there. I have a problem with ‘nerdy’ being there at all, by which people really mean ‘socially awkward’, which is also wrong. Socially awkward is when you can’t figure out where in the conversation to go next. It might include legitimately misunderstanding some social clue, and failing romantically in one direction or the other.
But it’s not the same thing as blatant misogyny and stuff like that. It’s not even the same thing as being bitter.
Likewise, there are men who can’t find women. This might be because of being socially awkward…or it might not be.
And *that’s* not the same as being bitter, either. They might be bitter, they might not be.
Meanwhile, a lot of PUA people sound pretty damn bitter, and they can, in theory, get dates.Report
Actual PUA folks write the books, and then laugh at all the subtle sabotage.Report
Look, sexism is a big part of GG. It’s not the only part, but it’s no accident that the majority of the GG targets were women. Nor is it an accident that they were feminists.
Nor is it an accident that they were all various flavors of awful human beings, ranging from simple woo peddlers/scam artists/meth heads to outright abusers of humans and animals. Zoe, Brianna, and Butts are just Requires Hate with more active twitter accounts.Report
Bri can actually sound sane, once in a while.
I think it’s when they let the intern man the twitter account.Report
What about the Gamergate supporters who are women? What about the ones who are gay men?
I have this to say: *labels matter*
If someone wants to try to fix ethics in game journalism, fine. I’m all for that.
Now, why the *hell* are they choosing to label themselves ‘Gamergate’, a movement that *started* with blatant misogyny, and quickly escalated to rape and death threats? A movement where the ‘ethical lapse’ that supposedly started it was *complete bullshit*, and any objective observer must agree with that?
No, sorry, an indie developer once dating someone at a gaming magazine, who after that point never reviewed her free game, is not some giant ethical lapse. (The giant ethical lapses in game journalism is the giant amounts of advertising *money* going from giant game developers to magazines, not hypothetical promotions of *free* indie games that didn’t actually happen.) That can’t *possibly* be the start of any sort of legitimate movement.
This isn’t some movement that got hijacked. This isn’t something that at one time was some shining beacon and they’re trying to move it back. I can understand that, not giving up on something that was *once* good, and wanting to take it back.
But Gamergate *never* was anything commendable, at all. It was based on a lie, of something that wouldn’t even be an ethical lapse if true. That’s because the origin wasn’t being told to try to fix anything, it was an attempted sexual shaming of something. That was, literally, the origin. And by the time anyone had heard of it, by the time it got its name, it had moved on to *even worse* stuff.
And someone’s about to assert that the anti-gamergate side has done bad things, too. Yeah…and everyone is an individual actor *until stated otherwise*. The difference is, one side has people deliberately *climbing under* a banner the horrible people are using (And the horrible people were using it *first*, they didn’t steal it.), and the other side has…no banners at all, really.
If someone wants to start a process to reform game journalism, or to criticize overly-critical ‘SJW’, they need to *pick a different name*. They are deliberately choosing to operate under a name with a lot of horrible baggage…and no good history, which seems to make it clear they *want* that horrible baggage, because why else use the name?Report
“why the *hell* are they choosing to label themselves ‘Gamergate’,”
Did they choose it? Or did it get hung on them and they decided to run with it rather than spend most of any conversation explaining how no really seriously we aren’t those guys, please stop asking about those guys, we’ve already explained how we’re not those guys! “Okay, but what do you think about those guys?”Report
@densityduck
Did they choose it?
Did *who* choose it?
Right now, there are a bunch of *self-described* Gamergate people *insisting* that Gamergate is actually about ethics in journalism.
There are not, as far I as I know, a bunch of *non* self-described Gamergate people, some other group of people, that cares about said ethics and are actually trying to do something about it. (Although everyone would like that to exist, so it might.)
More importantly, if there are any such people, they don’t appear to be getting tarred with ‘Gamergate’ labels.
In fact, a lot of the anti-Gamergate people have come outright and said ‘Ethics in game journalism *actually is* a complete mess, and someone should do something about it.’ (Hell, *I* just said that.) Everyone pretty much agrees on that, which is what makes so completely insane for *anyone* to choose the Gamergate label(1)…unless they’re choosing it for, uh, *different* reasons.
If people getting randomly tarred as ‘Gamergate’ for supporting ethics in journalism exist (Instead of people choosing that label and then trying to define it.), I have to suggest it’s up to you to point them out.
1) The Gamergate people are not going to magically birth some sort of serious movement to fix game journalism, they’ve already managed to piss off way too many people.Report
@davidtc
The problem is that you are extending certain courtesies and giving the benefit of the doubt to one side of this thing and not the other.
Personally, I think that both sides have a point and both sides are full of shit. In other words, both sides are composed of actual individual people, with a myriad of thoughts, ideas and concerns.Report
The problem is that you are extending certain courtesies and giving the benefit of the doubt to one side of this thing and not the other.
No, I’m really not. I dislike the people doxxing the Gamergate people as much as anyone else who doxes. I think people who call in bomb threats should go to prison for a long time.
The difference is that one side is *willingly putting on uniforms* of asshats, that asshats invented, than have never been for anyone *except* asshats.
The other side…doesn’t have uniforms. It’s a bunch of people reacting to things. Some of them I completely agree with, some of them I mostly agree with, some of them I don’t agree at all…and I’m not putting on the uniform of any of them.
And as I just said: I’m pretty certain that if someone actually runs around trying to, for example, reform gaming journalism *without* deliberately linking themselves connection to Gamergate…no one would have any problem with that.
If someone has a counter example, please, show it.
The people against Gamergate, in fact, *keep saying* there are actual problems with gaming journalism…but it isn’t the bullshit misogynistic ‘problem’ discovered by Gamergate, where women sometimes have *sex* with people.Report
Again, this is where your error is. You’re starting with this assumption and rationalizing backwards.Report
So here’s my serious question: Have you actually *read* about this history of Gamergate?
Because we’re got basically the entire thing documented here: http://gamergatecritique.com/2014/10/24/the-harassment-of-zoe-quinn/
In the second paragraph, there’s a link to a huge IRC log, if you want to read the entire thing in context. That is an IRC channel started by /v/, the 4chan idiots that started this entire thing. (And, like most of IRC and 4chan, is not only is horrible sexist and racist, but is pretty hard to read. In fact, IRC and 4chan both have a pretty high starting hurdle to *overcome* their default level of extreme bigotry.(1) This channel…does not do that.)
To quote the article: I searched the entire chat log for the main topics presented within #GamerGate. There are 1,443 instances of “gamergate”. There are 2,560 instances of “sjw”, which stands for Social Justice Warrior. There are 151 instances of the word “ethic” within the chat log, while there are 607 mentions of rape. Contrast that to the 4,778 instances of “Zoe” and 3,764 instances of “Quinn”. This is entirely about a woman.
The 4chan stuff can be found elsewhere. It’s equally as revealing.
Although the best documentation so far is still over here: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gamergate
Anyone calling themselves a member of Gamergate is either ignorant or an asshole. It was a movement started to harass one women, and then adding another woman to the harassment.
And before anyone mentions it: I *know* Zoe Quinn has done some bad stuff. I’m not a fan of her using the DMCA to take down a criticism of her, and I think her reaction to what’s-the-name, that charity, was wrongheaded.
And you’ll notice I’m *not* wearing a Zoe Quinn t-shirt and promoting a hashtag she created, either.
1) This is less because of the media, and more because those are the only places that *allow* that level of horribleness.Report
Yes. And more importantly, I’ve read about it from the pro-Gamergate perspective, the anti-Gamergate perspective, and from folks, like me, who don’t have a dog in the fight.
This is where my point of contention lies. Why isn’t it enough to simply say that lots of folks using the Gamergate moniker have done crappy things? What do you gain by trying to put forth this level of certainty that you simply cannot prove?Report
Yes. And more importantly, I’ve read about it from the pro-Gamergate perspective, the anti-Gamergate perspective, and from folks, like me, who don’t have a dog in the fight.
Oh? So I’m going to ask a question, and you’re not going to respond, but I think the point will be made: What ethical journalism lapses, especially, did Zoe Quinn contribute to?
Because here’s the entire list: Grayson wrote a blog post that mentioned her before entering into a relationship with her. This blog post wasn’t even about her, it was about a reality TV show that went stupidly wrong because the developers wouldn’t play along with the producers.
That’s it. A blog post. Not an article, mind you. A staff blog post. Which didn’t recommend any games. (And there was also an article written months earlier by Grayson that happened to mention her, but I think they’ve given up trying to pretend that was relevant.)
Kinda odd to focus so much on her…hell, she isn’t even the *journalist* with the supposed lapses in the first place. At the very least it should be Grayson that is in the focus, but there’s really no evidence that he did anything he shouldn’t have, and the supposed ethical lapse is, uh, pretty damn minor.
But you’re going to respond with ‘I’ve read *both* sides of the history’. Yeah, j-r, so have *I*. And one side is utterly full of crap, attempting to rewrite their history into something less horrible.
This is where my point of contention lies. Why isn’t it enough to simply say that lots of folks using the Gamergate moniker have done crappy things? What do you gain by trying to put forth this level of certainty that you simply cannot prove?
…I’m pretty certain I don’t have to ‘prove’ anyone is an asshole, that being an opinion and all.
And my claim isn’t that ‘folks using the Gamergate moniker have done crappy things’.
My claim is: At no point was the Gamergate moniker *not* associated with crappy things, ever. It has always been a cesspool of awfulness, of sexism and harassment.
In fact, the *term* ‘Gamergate’, was created when Adam Baldwin used it as a hashtag when talking about the ‘Quinnspiracy’ video, a video created solely to harass Zoe Quinn, a video which claimed she had slept her way into the video game industry. It had nothing to do with game journalism at all. That is the literal *origin of the term*.
There has never been *any* point that that label actually meant anything positive. So people who have chosen to label themselves with that moniker are *either* okay with those crappy things (aka, an asshole) or they don’t know about them (aka, ignorant).Report
Lying about being doxxed is a pretty flagrant violation of ethical standards. I’m not going to call it JOURNALISTIC standards, as she ain’t a journalist.
Another facet of gamergate is the game developers blatantly stealing other people’s work, and getting punished for it.Report
Lying about being doxxed is a pretty flagrant violation of ethical standards. I’m not going to call it JOURNALISTIC standards, as she ain’t a journalist.
Kim, I have no idea who you’re reading, but you’re just wrong.
Here’s reddit explaining how they keep having to delete her doxxing:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/2dzrlv/on_zoe_quinn_censorship_doxxing_and_general/
Also, isn’t the proper conspiracy theory that she doxxed *herself*? I am aware there was about five minutes of time where people tried to assert the doxxing was fake, but I’m pretty sure that is no longer the operative lie.Report
It’s not a conspiracy theory when folks who work with Quinn say that’s what happened.
The only reason “pretending you’ve been doxxed” isn’t in the PR handbook is that it is TOO EASY TO DISPROVE.
Pretending you’re receiving anonymous death threats is in the PR Handbook, so I suppose I can’t be too upset when someone actually uses it… (note: not saying that Quinn did, I’m referencing something completely different here).
I also can’t be too upset about Quinn lying (other than the MSM is eating that shit up, because MSM sucks), because she does have a game to sell, and free PR is FREE PR, dammit.
Life ain’t fair, and that’s that.Report
BTW, when someone tells Quinn to go sleep with game journalists in order to get good reviews… AND THEN SHE DOES IT… Some people really, really, really need to understand sarcasm better!!!Report
So here’s my serious question: Have you actually *read* about this history of Gamergate?
Actually, I saw it happen in real time. Common indicators that someone doesn’t know wtf they are talking about in re: GG are
1. Omission of the history of Zoe with Wizardchan
2. Omission of TFYC gamejam
3 . BIGBIGBIG one: Omission of the role of “The Fappening.”
I have a strong suspicion that Saul can’t even define the terms used above, much less explain them.Report
Iron,
Pardon, but you don’t know what you’re talking about, EITHER.
When trolls are afoot, you only get to know what’s going on when you ask the people causing the chaos…
(Trolls love to boast — why do you think I know what’s going on?)Report
You’re the Ayyyy team? GNAA? The notorious hacker Sealion who lives in Redchannit?
Just as long as you’re not an SA goon. Those people suck.Report
Me? I’m nobody. But I’ve got big ears…
Look up the whole bit on pot-smoking Elmo, it’s really quite fun.
At least one spat in gamergate was pulled to get rid of both sides (the reporter and the “game developer” — quoted for theft).Report
Well, I shall address those things, then!
1) Zoe Quinn had a history of being harassed before. That is correct.
2) Zoe Quinn decided, well before all this, to spread nonsense about TFYC. (There *was* grounds to perhaps be dubious of TFYC contest and maybe even warn people away. However, there was no grounds at all to call them transphobic. It’s exceptionally absurd to criticize a contest that *explicitly* was made open to trans women, especially since something like 90% of contests ‘for women’ don’t bother mention that at all.) Why she did this, I don’t know. Perhaps it was to selfishly promote her own game jam. That is a reasonable conclusion.
3) I have to admit, I have no idea what you think ‘The Fappening’ had to do with Gamergate. It was yet another example of the internet behaving horribly, that happened (Or at least becamepublic) at exactly the same time, but they appear unrelated.Report
Wait! Someone is accusing Quinn of being transphobic?
I mean, there is a sense that we are all transphobic, such that we live in a matrix of cissexism, and blah, blah, blah. Heck, under that rubric I’m transphobic.
“Hello, my name is veronica. I’m a transphobe. It’s been two weeks since my last meeting.”
Who wants their fucking white chip?
But anyway, I know Quinn has been cool to her trans friends, cuz a few of them are my friends, like IRL, face-to-face, I’ve kissed these girls, friends. (Never met Quinn, as it happens, which is surprising given that she was a Dorchester girl.)
But anyway, OMG.
#####
@kim — Quinn was harassed, doxxed, and abused a thousand ways from Sunday. It was alarming and overwhelming and pretty undeniable. It was too much for one person to fake. There is no way she could have faked that ocean of terrible men who hate her.
In the end all we have are various chat logs and people who won’t go on record and on and on, but the threats were real. I mean, too much has happened since then for anyone to usefully deny it. You can say, “Well, I heard that she did this one dishonest thing, from a friend who knew her, yeah sure.”
’Cept I do have friends who know her. Like, for-reals face-to-face friends. They saw the abuse with their own eyes. They saw the toll it took.
And come on, I’m an purple-haired social justice trans feminist who lives in Boston. My social circles inevitably overlap with Quinn’s.
Plus, they didn’t limit their nonsense to Quinn. Sarkeesian and Wu got the full bore, as has @freebsdgirl. Chloe Sagal is still getting caught in this mess. And yes, this is all one thing. Sarkeesian correctly identified the core of the Gamergate hate as the very same abusers who have been attacking her all along.
I mean, a few join, a few leave, the same group.
I think there is a core to this group who are the same guys attacking Rebecca Watson, back when we were naïve and thought this was unusual. But anyway, yeah.
And look, I know Chloe Sagal, and in fact I’m pretty decent (online) friends with her g/f. Like, I’ve spoken to Rani on the phone a few times. She’s pretty much everything always. And I see (some of) the private side of what those women are enduring.
Zoe is not lying, not on the big picture. I know this cuz the other targets of gamergate see the same shit she does. I’ve seen it, shown to me in private discussions with people who really know what they are talking about, cuz they are the actual targets.
The fact is, you have a track record on this forum of being full of shit. You’re full of shit now. Please stop.
#####
Anyway look, Quinn is a hella flawed person. She’s a mess. After all, she did completely fuck over her boyfriend in a really awful way.
And we might say that’s their private business, and maybe it is. But it still speaks to her character. Who treats people that way?
But still! The (mostly) men attacking her don’t actually care about poor fucking Gjoni, except as a fuckboy in their wall-to-wall misogyny orgy (which perhaps is the most gratuitous metaphor I’ve used on this forum; you’re welcome).
Anyway, point is, we all have good reasons to not date Zoe Quinn. Likewise, I would hesitate to do business with her, at least not without first talking to her a bit and talking to others I trust who have worked with her, that sort of thing. Obvious stuff.
But an imperfect woman can still be a victim of harassment, and the harassment remains wrong, and the people harassing her will be judged on the merits of their position, not on what an “evil cunt SJW” the person they are attacking is.
Gamergate is a cesspool of horrible, a concentration of some of the worst fucking bigots in nerd-space, along with non-nerd-bigots who charged in to join the bigot parade.
@kim — You’re really on the wrong side here. Seriously, this is not okay.Report
v,
I don’t think assigning a side to me is terribly helpful at this point — I know someone who worked with Quinn… He’s a bit closer to this than most. (If you want to think that I’m full of shit about that, discount everything I have to say equally–and I really don’t mind, because I know I have a lot of weird things to say, and it’s probably better if you don’t believe me.)
And I’m not saying that Quinn didn’t get shelacked by people harassing her… So, yeah, big picture, she didn’t deserve what she got. I’m a bit annoyed at the MSM for how they’re reporting it — taking her word uncritically is poor journalism.
Seriously, do you know anyone who would consider setting an internet mob on someone?Report
v,
Okay, this whole fiasco is officially too hilarious to bother taking a side.
I am now insanely curious about why that gang of gamedevs is going after a female game developer — more specifically, what the HELL she did to get them all riled up about her… (Oh, I helped translate what transphobic mysogynistic cis womyn meant. So, um, go you? I think you’re the reason I can actually translate that!)
[Life is so much more fun when both sides are using sock-puppet like personas! So much more hilarious, that is.]Report
You’re seriously linking to someone with their own Encyclopedia Dramatica page as a good reference?Report
No, I’m not linking anyone. I did ask you to link to the evidence about Quinn trolling someone who was suicidal, as that seemed out of character for her.Report
Quinn lied about people doxxing her.
Does that matter to you?
Because the 4chan folks may be guilty of doxxing people (they do!)
but not her.
(And, yes, I heard this from someone who worked with Quinn).Report
David,
Or, um, you know, ethics period.
Quinn lied about some of the cyber-stalking that she claimed occurred after her boyfriend broke up with her.
A game journalist got crucified for writing about someone scamming money off people for “urgent surgery” (because he happened to reveal that she was scamming money to get a sex change operation).
You might want to consider that the Main Stream Media is not exactly unbiased or exhibiting critical thinking at this point, as the doxxing of Quinn has been pretty conclusively disproven by the folks she claimed did it.Report
Your knowledge is just as much a pack of lies, sir.Report
Wrong. Your claim that Gamergate people actually have their origins in 18th century English mysticism, brought over by the Freemasons to America, in utterly incorrect. There is no evidence of this.
(Please note: As Kim did not actually specify what she thinks is the truth, I have made it up for her.)Report
I have above, should you have the wherewithal to read it.Report
Democratic Party
Democratic Republic of Korea
Why does Obama use the same label Kim Jong-il?
And the democratic party was found by Andrew Jackson who was racist even by the standards of his day. Why don’t these people find a new label.Report
Why does Obama use the same label Kim Jong-il?
I know. Everyone complained when Obama named the party that in 2011, but did he listen? No.
Meanwhile, it sure is sad that the misogynistic Gamergame came along and ruined that trust historic name that existed long before Quinn, fighting for actual ethics in game journalism. I remember their takedown of Watch Dogs in their 2014 year in review. It sure is a shame how Gamergate Magazine will have to change their name.Report
The Democrats have had any number of opportunities to change the name of their party since 1972, and yet they still refuse to do it; they still cling to that name with its legacy of racist hatred, bigotry, and anti-intellectualism. Why, I ask, do you think they so badly want to march under that banner?Report
Why do modern Democrats Choose to march under a banner that originated with racists and was used by racists for 150 after that?Report
Now, why the *hell* are they choosing to label themselves ‘Gamergate’, a movement that *started* with blatant misogyny, and quickly escalated to rape and death threats? A movement where the ‘ethical lapse’ that supposedly started it was *complete bullshit*, and any objective observer must agree with that?
Since your premises are bullshit, your conclusion is also.
I get it, that you see GG as something bad, because people who told you about it says it is bad, and you don’t have the time (or, what with the mass deletion of material the, the ability) to actually know what happened. But you are utterly misinformed.
Saying that GG “started” over any particular thing is as stupidly and misleadingly reductive as saying WWI started over an assassination or that Rome fell in AD476.
GG is the same kulturkampf that we’ve been seeing since at least the 1970s that has manifested in this blogs time in such things as the Atheism+ movement. Your question is as tethered to reality as asking “Why would anyone self-identify as an atheist when Richard Dawkins mocked FGM?”Report
A problem is that a lot of people are poorly socialized. Nerdy boys are just presumed to be naturally socially awkward rather than trained in the social graces. This ends up causing problems latter.Report
One of the things that Gamergate uncovered was the issue of how gaming journalism had something similar to Ezra Klein’s Journolist but, like, it actually *DID* all of the stuff that right-wingers feverishly imagined the Journolist was doing.
Not that Gamergate is about ethics in journalism anymore, but I thought that that coming to light was one of those things that if you put it in a novel, a decent editor would suggest taking it out because it was too hackneyed.Report
There was nothing in the ethics of game journalism stuff that should have surprised anybody. Industry mags are compromised and often just mouth pieces for the industry is old old news. It has been that way in movie and tv industries for decades. Heck i haven’t played comp games in many years but i remember reading gaming mags in the 90’s and seeing reviews of EA games next to full page ads for EA games. It didn’t really take much to figure how objective or rigourous the standards of journalism were. That has also part of the move to yelp/tripadvisor/amazon reviewing because it moved away bought and paid for industry shills. Of course yelp/tripadvisor are now big biz and less useful to a degree.Report
Games journalism was a joke BEFORE any of this mess. Everyone knew it.
It didn’t blow up into a mass movement of doxxing idiots, though. Not until someone got their feelings hurt over a breakup. Which makes me awfully suspicious that the problem was ethics in games journalism.Report
Games journalism was a joke BEFORE any of this mess. Everyone knew it.
A ‘mess’ is putting it lightly. It has basically every single flaw of every other type of media review, along with some new ones, combined into one giant piece of crap. It’s total bullshit.
Pretty much everyone on every side of this agrees. The pro-Gamergate side have postulated nonsensical conspiracy theories about journalists kept in line via sex. The *non*-stupid people have, uh, pointed to the fact there’s no divide between advertising and editorial, and gaming magazines are completely dependent on game developers to stay afloat.
It didn’t blow up into a mass movement of doxxing idiots, though. Not until someone got their feelings hurt over a breakup. Which makes me awfully suspicious that the problem was ethics in games journalism.
What makes *me* suspicious is that the two people that were gone after were a) an indie game developer, and soon after, b) a game critic.
Neither of which are, what’s the word? Oh yeah. ‘journalists’Report
Quinn lied about being doxxed. Does that matter?
I’m not willing to say that someone lying is a mass movement from the other side.Report
No, what it really found out was that shockingly, a bunch of people in the same industry on a mailing list where they discuss current events, compete in fantasy football leagues, and bitch about the industry in general.
The truth is, the games press is a lot better than the “good ole days” of the 90’s and early 00’s.
I mean, yeah, indie culture is going to be about who you know. Welcome to every indie culture, ever. I mean, every indy music culture, comic culture, arts culture, or movie culture in every major city in the US has people complaining person x only got where they are because they’re friends with person y. Welcome to life, where networking is important and you have to interact with human beings, not just toss your wonderful creation into the ether for all to marvel at.Report
An amusing aside, this:
That’s literally three blocks from my apartment. Like, I wonder if I was there that night?
But then, I think I would have noticed the hair!Report
If her hair was the same color then….Report
Well I guess I’m grateful that I now know generally what Gamer Gate is over. I don’t know that I want to know more but it was educational. The Boston article sure makes me inclined to think that the dude who issued the “Post” was an incredible douche- though in fairness the article does also assume that his accusations of infidelity are made up entirely*.
*Not, mind, that any of his behavior would be justified even if the infidelity were true.Report
While I have no idea about him, I can say I know a number of people who basically reinvented a breakup over the next several months. The end product bore little to no resemblance to the initial story.
Infidelity happens, on both sides. Claims of infidelity, independent of evidence or suspicion, also appear. Because “he/she cheated on me” is helpful when you want your audience to correctly identify the villain and the victim.
So no telling. Doesn’t even really matter. I don’t care how cheated on your are — why involve the rest of us? Much less whistle up a pack of demons nobody can seem to put down again? (First Rule of Demonology: Never summon what you cannot put down.)Report
Not NEARLY the worst breakup in game developer history. Not even in boston, man.Report
You mean the happily married Arthur Chu? I’m pretty sure he figured out that women are people. I’m pretty sure, in fact that his journey to figuring out is part of the reason he’s so vehemently opposed to gamergate.
It seems to me that most of the menfolk arguing against GamerGate are grown-ass men looking at the situation, recognizing versions of the people they were in their youth, and begging the new generation not to be such dumbasses.
That’s not to far away from where I’m at with GG.
Edit: whoops, this was meant to be a reply to JR’s comment halfway up the thread. Still figuring out the new posting system.Report
Same here, except the part where I’m not exactly a man. But anyway.Report
Oh yeah. I absolutely see shades of what I could have been.
I’ve got more capacity for forgiveness for the idiot kids than I do the grown adults involved in this mess. Having raised a teenager (and having been one), I realize they’re all idiots, they do stupid stuff they’ll regret for life and the lucky ones are the ones whose stupidity is purely social cruelty and doesn’t trespass into crimes.
Being a teenager is likely always going to be a period of petty cruelties, both given and endured. Bitter experience is really the best teacher.
Some people, of course, never learn. A 14 year old can do something heinous and earn some measure of forgiveness (heck, even the legal system realizes this) – -but a 35 year old? WTF, man. If you don’t know better by now, you’ve got issues. See a therapist.Report
Yeah, it’s pretty bad when a 13 year old commits rape.
Even if you do grow up out of shit like that… gotta hurt, don’t it?Report
Having raised a teenager (and having been one), I realize they’re all idiots, they do stupid stuff they’ll regret for life and the lucky ones are the ones whose stupidity is purely social cruelty and doesn’t trespass into crimes.
I’m pretty sure you’re overgeneralizing there. I really can’t recall anything I did as a teenager that fits that description in any meaningful way. I once said some unkind things to a classmate, but she had been extremely rude to me all year. The dumbest thing I did as a teenager was be overly cautious and scrupulous.Report
I lied to a guy for about half a year (had him convinced I was someone else entirely, and while being nearly 100% truthful — all I really needed to do was change my name).
That and I was a general arse who wouldn’t listen to her peers worth a damn.
But, rape murder assault? Nothing big. Not even drinking or pot or smoking.Report
Right.
Here is “grown-ass man” Arthur Chu in his own words:
I wear black robes. I am a practitioner of the Dark Arts. I rigorously manage my own thinking and purge myself of dangerous “unthinkable” thoughts — “mindkill” myself — on a regular basis.
This is what you have to do to be a feminist anti-racist progressive, i.e. a social justice stormtrooper, You have to recognize that there is no neutral culture, neutrality is impossible, that culture is a cutthroat war of memes and that you have to commit to picking a side and setting yourself up as a neutral arbiter of memes is impossible and is a form of surrender. You have to constantly “check your privilege” and “unpack the knapsack” and all those other buzzwords.
You need to understand that the only way to be “rational” in this world is to be irrational, that the only way to be “fair” is to pick the right side and fight for it. The people who genuinely win are the people who do this. The people who refuse to do this are the ones who sit on the sidelines and never even lose because they aren’t really playing.
This is the same guy who sent an email to a bar in DC suggesting that the bar ought not play host to a gathering of people whom Chu has decided are on the wrong side of an ideological fight, a gathering that was later disrupted by bomb threats. Not quite sure that I would describe this is as grown-ass man behavior, but to each his own, I suppose.Report
He began idealizing Quinn as “this perfect ethical thing,” he says
Her?
So he must be an SJW, too.
Yup:
Sometime around November of 2013, I signed up for an OKCupid account and got a 98% match with a cutie with colorful hair (cool), who was super into social justice stuff (good!), and was super into video games (neat!), and liked to make them (ah! I used to make them, that was fun times!), and by some coincidence turns out to have made a somewhat esoteric game I happened to have played a while back.Report
In answer to a previous article:
Yes, there must always be scapegoats. Perhaps, in a more enlightened time, we will have a system where we will put SJWs and Gamergaters in a Thunderdome that is presided over by post-apocalypse Tina Turner and we can determine who is right that way.
Until then, we will have people who continue to obsess over and disparage the “other” while continuing to insist that the “other” is the only one that engages in such behavior. It becomes especially amusing when the same people who are obsessing over the “other” claim that the “other” is dead/no longer relevant/active.
Or, as I said, in response to an article that showed up in my G+: “Anita is still a thing? huh.”Report
Sarkeesian fell into the oldest trap in the world. You can do something for love/for the cause for hours and hours and on evenings and weekends and you will spend all of your free time daydreaming about making it better and the next one you’re going to do.
The second you start doing something for money?
You find excuses to do something else.Report
The second you start doing something for money?
You find excuses to do something else.
It’s especially easy when you got paid up front.Report
This is the best thing that I’ve read on this page.
+1Report