#GamerGate Needs Damage Control Badly (Small OP Update)

[Sleepy Sol]

snip

Anita wasn't exactly heavily relevant to the discussion surrounding this issue. I'd say she still isn't (to any significant degree anyways), but a lot of people put on their tin foil hats when she released a video right in the midst of these events.

It's more like someone found something hugely inconsequential and not at all incriminating about how a certain independent developer spent their private life. But, instead of blowing over, more people began asking further questions about this person until the perceived problem grew to be much larger than them, which led to the whole "Journalistic integrity" spin on this ordeal.

So at some point, after several weeks of this story developing, gaming sites all posted articles at similar times declaring the identity of the "gamer" to be dead, for whatever reason. Again, tin foil hats, but rather odd. This understandably inflamed many more people about this issue. It doesn't help matters that many public figures and journalists in support of ZQ's narrative were spitting acid at anyone who even barely implied that maybe a woman can lie or embellish sometimes. Just like men can and do. Or humans in general. Or that it might have been a mistake of 'gaming' journalistic outlets to immediately trust a narrative without further supportive sources (and YES, a number of proponents of what became #gamergate did this as well; they just don't call themselves journalists). There's also the whole "supporting developers or promoting their projects without a full disclosure of a writer's investment in said developer or project, personal, financial, or otherwise" thing.

It's a huge shitstorm with a fair share of dicks on both sides, but I believe it's not entirely unfounded at this point.

 

[Jux]

Looks like someone is going through the 3700+ pages of that IRC log, and surprise surprise, the accusations that ZQ was cherry picking don't seem to be holding water.

http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/09/08/zoe-quinns-screenshots-of-4chans-dirty-tricks-were-just-the-appetizer-heres-the-first-course-of-the-dinner-directly-from-the-irc-log/

That is some serious auditing

Why would someone subject themselves to that kind of torture?!

That's sort of David Futrelle's thing, he runs a website that tracks internet misogyny.

 

[Fappy]

Looks like someone is going through the 3700+ pages of that IRC log, and surprise surprise, the accusations that ZQ was cherry picking don't seem to be holding water.

http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/09/08/zoe-quinns-screenshots-of-4chans-dirty-tricks-were-just-the-appetizer-heres-the-first-course-of-the-dinner-directly-from-the-irc-log/

That is some serious auditing

Why would someone subject themselves to that kind of torture?!

That's sort of David Futrelle's thing, he runs a website that tracks internet misogyny.

I would hope he has a staff of some kind helping him out. It would take days (perhaps weeks) to go through all that by yourself unless you were cutting serious corners with some kind of page search tool.

 

[Skatologist]

Looks like someone is going through the 3700+ pages of that IRC log, and surprise surprise, the accusations that ZQ was cherry picking don't seem to be holding water.

http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/09/08/zoe-quinns-screenshots-of-4chans-dirty-tricks-were-just-the-appetizer-heres-the-first-course-of-the-dinner-directly-from-the-irc-log/

That is some serious auditing

Why would someone subject themselves to that kind of torture?!

That's sort of David Futrelle's thing, he runs a website that tracks internet misogyny.

Oh, I've seen his YouTube channel, his only videos there are unfortunately MRAs in there own words.

 

[BlackMageBob]

Looks like someone is going through the 3700+ pages of that IRC log, and surprise surprise, the accusations that ZQ was cherry picking don't seem to be holding water.

http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/09/08/zoe-quinns-screenshots-of-4chans-dirty-tricks-were-just-the-appetizer-heres-the-first-course-of-the-dinner-directly-from-the-irc-log/

That is some serious auditing

Why would someone subject themselves to that kind of torture?!

That's sort of David Futrelle's thing, he runs a website that tracks internet misogyny.

Oh, I've seen his YouTube channel, his only videos there are unfortunately MRAs in there own words.

Just, all three of you, stop. The logs are publicly available. Take the lines he points out, and do a ctrl+f. Look at roughly the ten preceding lines, and the ten following lines. Letting other people confirm your biases is how we arrived at this point.

And honestly, Futrelle? Really? That particular individual is drenched in bullshit.

 

[Fappy]

Looks like someone is going through the 3700+ pages of that IRC log, and surprise surprise, the accusations that ZQ was cherry picking don't seem to be holding water.

http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/09/08/zoe-quinns-screenshots-of-4chans-dirty-tricks-were-just-the-appetizer-heres-the-first-course-of-the-dinner-directly-from-the-irc-log/

That is some serious auditing

Why would someone subject themselves to that kind of torture?!

That's sort of David Futrelle's thing, he runs a website that tracks internet misogyny.

Oh, I've seen his YouTube channel, his only videos there are unfortunately MRAs in there own words.

Just, all three of you, stop. The logs are publicly available. Take the lines he points out, and do a ctrl+f. Look at roughly the ten preceding lines, and the ten following lines. Letting other people confirm your biases is how we arrived at this point.

And honestly, Futrelle? Really? That particular individual is drenched in bullshit.

Why was I being called out here? I wasn't disputing the person I was quoting...

 

[carnex]

Seriously, lay off David Futrelle. Even if he does a service to all this, he's a fruitcake and his mere involvement is going to derail everything again. Let's not make this Red Pill central vs Feminism or SJWs. That will end up as one big stinking pile of garbage.

Also, stop blaming each other. This is internet. Any public discussion, especially one that involves sensitive subject, will have to take place under the umbrella of a major shitstorm. But to actually have a discussion participants should not partake in the ongoing shitstorm itself.

 

[Panda Pandemic]

Seriously, lay off David Futrelle. Even if he does a service to all this, he's a fruitcake and his mere involvement is going to derail everything again. Let's not make this Red Pill central vs Feminism or SJWs. That will end up as one big stinking pile of garbage.

Fruitcake according to... who exactly? I only ever recall seeing MRAs complain about him prior to this.

 

[Dr. Crawver]

You really wonder why people aren't giving #GamerGate the time of day? Really? It doesn't compute? STOP GIVING THEM AMMO! Teach the idiots within your ranks to keep their goddamn mouths shut. Whether you agree with their insane ravings or not, they are associated with your movement and their actions do reflect on your message. The only thing holding me back from supporting this movement is the simple fact that it is so over-saturated with immature, volatile and outright hateful people that I can't bring myself to support it. I cringe every time I see one of your ilk cry "Social Justice Warrior" and that Vivian James (or whatever) mascot is just a sad attempt at the "but I have black friends" defense.

Yeah, pretty much exactly what I feel as well. I might have even joined the gamergate side (even though I hate that name, it makes it sound far far bigger an issue than it really is) if it wasn't for so many of the raving lunatics, as well as some of the demands/hopes a lot of the members are simply unrealistic and quite frankly detrimental. There is no Journalistic circle that is expected to have 0 connection with those they report on. It would hurt the industry because connections are important, and why gaming should be held as at a higher standard than politics I have no idea.

Also I feel it's impossible to separate the movement from where it all started. Damage control for the vile abuse that Quinn received for quite unsubstantiated claims. (If anyone links me internet aristocrats videos, I'll promptly ignore you. A friend of mine made me watch them, and I am so surprised people take them as evidence. He says that he doesn't care about the fact that she slept with so many people, and yet keeps bringing it up as a frankly vile appeal to emotion, so much of what he says needs citation that he doesn't provide, and the evidence he provides, and everyone keeps bringing up, that she got beneficial reviews from people she slept with. They were nothing. A mention in a list of 50 games, and another very brief mention before that. If that's what she "paid" for, she did not get her moneys worth. Also worth pointing out that watching the full thing just made me feel ill. That happens when I am subjected to such bile and venom, so I feel quite strongly on the issue of those videos.)

Also thank you, finally someone has said it about that damned Vivan James character. I've been on /v/, I happened to be on around the time this was all happening. They (or at least a large portion of them) believe that because they made a "normal" female character (who very very quickly degraded into another "waifu") that they are immune to comments about being sexist. It's a rather childish way of looking at it all tbh. Sexism is as much about the subtle treatment of characters as the obvious tangible physical traits of the character. Seems like most of them don't really understand that, and that's why Vivan is not a good defense.

Also sorry about this post, turned into a bit more of a rant than I expected.

 

[carnex]

Seriously, lay off David Futrelle. Even if he does a service to all this, he's a fruitcake and his mere involvement is going to derail everything again. Let's not make this Red Pill central vs Feminism or SJWs. That will end up as one big stinking pile of garbage.

Fruitcake according to... who exactly? I only ever recall seeing MRAs complain about him prior to this.

I actually didn't hear anyone complain about him. I have read his blog about a year ago and saw someone who just pokes people without any goal whatsoever than to poke fun of them. He offers nothing but poking fun. I don't care which side he is on, he's counterproductive in my opinion.

 

[000Ronald]

I like the logic of your response, I really do, but there are some logistical issues here. I mean, it's one thing to call one another out on places like this board, where, even if we don't use our real names, everyone has a defined identity (and, to their credit, I see a lot of people on the GamerGate thread calling out their more seedy elements fairly regularly). But it's quite another when we're dealing with literally anonymous posting boards like the chans, and hateful comments coming from burner accounts on twitter. That's where most of the bile has been coming from. You can't challenge them, because, realistically, you don't even have any way to communicate with them. It's hit-and-run bad behavior.

Have you tried reasoning with them? I've done the rational and adult conversation thing with them, before this mess. When someone takes an extremist or backwards stance like this, it is next to impossible to change their minds. If they believe that someone like Anita Sarkeesian is trying to ruin video games for everyone, to them, it's an ultimate law of the universe that nothing can overturn.

You know when you get into a religious or ethical debate with someone? Even though you have formal scientific papers, documentation from an ethics community or something else along those lines, they will continue to quote their own misinformation and sketchy websites made with a 12-year-old's understanding of HTML. Nothing you say will get through to these people and sometimes you have to realise that bashing your head against a brick wall isn't even making a dent.

Don't get me wrong, I would love for my reasoning backed by facts and rational to get through to these people, but it hasn't worked in the past in the hundreds of arguments I've had and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Have I spoken to the people responsible for the specific circumstances of this incident? No. Not yet. Have I spoken to people I know to be unreasonable, who's minds I am reasonably sure I am going to be unable to change? Yes I have. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/528.843798-Poll-The-Extreme-Conservative-Agenda-And-The-Second-Class-Citizen#20775793] More than once [www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/528.847550-9-11-Truthers-FACThammer?page=5#20980610]. I'm actually pretty active in the Religion and Politics forum, and I would like to think that I'm reasonably well liked there, because despite the fact that I discuss very inflammatory matters on a fairly regular basis, my forum health meter is still 100% clean.

You're right in saying that trying to talk to convince them of their own wrong doing is more often than not next to useless. I won't disagree with that. But even if you can't change their mind, you still try. Not because you expect it to have any effort, at least not on it's own, but so that everyone else who wants to say something but might not know how knows that they aren't the only ones who feel that way, so that maybe they might be willing to speak up, too.

I don't believe that this (the harrassment, the vitriol, the threats) are who we are, as a community; but I do believe that it's the most visible part of who we are, at least right now. If nothing else, it's become distressingly common as of late, and I've just come to the point where I'm sick and tired of it. If nothing else, I'm going to make damned sure that everyone that sees what I have to say understands that. Maybe other people will decide they're sick and tired of it, too.

 

[000Ronald]

Looks like someone is going through the 3700+ pages of that IRC log, and surprise surprise, the accusations that ZQ was cherry picking don't seem to be holding water.

http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/09/08/zoe-quinns-screenshots-of-4chans-dirty-tricks-were-just-the-appetizer-heres-the-first-course-of-the-dinner-directly-from-the-irc-log/

That is some serious auditing

Why would someone subject themselves to that kind of torture?!

I did...something like that, once [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/528.847550-9-11-Truthers-FACThammer?page=3#20950881]. While I won't speak for whoever this person was, I will say that I was motivated by a desire to participate in a discussion in good faith. Someone presents me with a great deal of evidence, enough that it appears overwhelming at first[footnote]A little over six hours of video to comb through, not to mention possible weeks of research involved in refuting it[/footnote], probably expecting me to just dismiss it out of hand. I decided I didn't want to do that. My actions were motivated by a sense of fairness, and a desire to hold not just the other person, but myself accountable. As I said before, this discussion we're having isn't just a discussion between you and I; it is a performance, and I have every desire to perform as best as I can, if only so that other people may look at it sometime later and nod in approval.

 

[rgrekejin]

I like the logic of your response, I really do, but there are some logistical issues here. I mean, it's one thing to call one another out on places like this board, where, even if we don't use our real names, everyone has a defined identity (and, to their credit, I see a lot of people on the GamerGate thread calling out their more seedy elements fairly regularly). But it's quite another when we're dealing with literally anonymous posting boards like the chans, and hateful comments coming from burner accounts on twitter. That's where most of the bile has been coming from. You can't challenge them, because, realistically, you don't even have any way to communicate with them. It's hit-and-run bad behavior.

Have I spoken to the people responsible for the specific circumstances of this incident? No. Not yet. Have I spoken to people I know to be unreasonable, who's minds I am reasonably sure I am going to be unable to change? Yes I have. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/528.843798-Poll-The-Extreme-Conservative-Agenda-And-The-Second-Class-Citizen#20775793] More than once [www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/528.847550-9-11-Truthers-FACThammer?page=5#20980610]. I'm actually pretty active in the Religion and Politics forum, and I would like to think that I'm reasonably well liked there, because despite the fact that I discuss very inflammatory matters on a fairly regular basis, my forum health meter is still 100% clean.

You're right in saying that trying to talk to convince them of their own wrong doing is more often than not next to useless. I won't disagree with that. But even if you can't change their mind, you still try. Not because you expect it to have any effort, at least not on it's own, but so that everyone else who wants to say something but might not know how knows that they aren't the only ones who feel that way, so that maybe they might be willing to speak up, too.

I don't believe that this (the harrassment, the vitriol, the threats) are who we are, as a community; but I do believe that it's the most visible part of who we are, at least right now. If nothing else, it's become distressingly common as of late, and I've just come to the point where I'm sick and tired of it. If nothing else, I'm going to make damned sure that everyone that sees what I have to say understands that. Maybe other people will decide they're sick and tired of it, too.

That's not really what I'm saying. I mean, how do you physically communicate with them? What channels do you use? On a truly anonymous board, you never know if you're even responding to the same person. How do you respond to a twitter account that's been set up five minutes ago to make a flurry of bad tweets, then never signed into again and inevitably deleted within the hour. The problem isn't that they are unreasonable or unwilling to change, but that the nature of the media itself makes it impossible to talk to them at all.

 

[000Ronald]

That's not really what I'm saying. I mean, how do you physically communicate with them? What channels do you use? On a truly anonymous board, you never know if you're even responding to the same person. How do you respond to a twitter account that's been set up five minutes ago to make a flurry of bad tweets, then never signed into again and inevitably deleted within the hour. The problem isn't that they are unreasonable or unwilling to change, but that the nature of the media itself makes it impossible to talk to them at all.

I had not considered that. I suppose...communicating with people like that is impossible, in a traditional sense. That being said, if the community comes together and strongly, strongly condemns this behavior for a long enough amount of time, I feel that it would make it a much rarer occurrence. Furthermore, in conducting ourselves in this way, others will see that this is how we have chosen to conduct ourselves, and will respond accordingly. As I've said before, what's happening now, not just in the Gamergate community, but in our community as a whole, is something of a feedback loop; people are coming over, acting like children, and no one is saying anything. So more people are coming over, thinking that the community is accepting of this behavior, and people are leaving because they WON'T accept that behavior, but don't feel strongly enough to speak out. If this keeps up, this WILL become our community, and I don't want that. This, more than anything else, is why I've decided to start speaking out, and I hope others will follow in suit.

As an aside, I would mention that if you have the chance to respond to someone, you ought to take it. My experience is that if they bother to respond, that response will prove their own disingenuity beyond any doubt.

 

[Skatologist]

Looks like someone is going through the 3700+ pages of that IRC log, and surprise surprise, the accusations that ZQ was cherry picking don't seem to be holding water.

http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/09/08/zoe-quinns-screenshots-of-4chans-dirty-tricks-were-just-the-appetizer-heres-the-first-course-of-the-dinner-directly-from-the-irc-log/

That is some serious auditing

Why would someone subject themselves to that kind of torture?!

That's sort of David Futrelle's thing, he runs a website that tracks internet misogyny.

Oh, I've seen his YouTube channel, his only videos there are unfortunately MRAs in there own words.

Just, all three of you, stop. The logs are publicly available. Take the lines he points out, and do a ctrl+f. Look at roughly the ten preceding lines, and the ten following lines. Letting other people confirm your biases is how we arrived at this point.

And honestly, Futrelle? Really? That particular individual is drenched in bullshit.

Didn't mean to say any of that, I was just surprised Futrelle had something other than a YouTube channel since I never checked his about page as a link to his "We Hunted the Mammoth" site and that someoneas small as him was also somehow becoming part of this. Not sure if his site, his link, or his videos are the things that are "drenched in bullshit" so I guess I'll just ask for examples.

 

[Netrigan]

But what the fuck is all this unrelated bullshit doing here? Why have the lines been drawn between so-called 'SJWs' and 'misogynerd' (or whatever the fuck they're called)? Why is feminism a factor at all? Oh wait, I see, many of the 'misogynerds' are saying that the Indy/Gaming Press Illuminati is using feminism/misogyny as a smokescreen to censor debate. Well if that's the case, then why the fuck are women, some of which have NO connection to any of this (like Anita), getting bombarded with harassment in the form of death and rape threats in relation to this?

Near as I can figure it, it's because this is part of a huge sprawling argument and no one seems to have the discipline within the movement to pair the thing down to its simplest form and use that to direct people toward agreeing with their argument.

Which is why you get this really confused narrative.

On the so-called "Feminist" side, the narrative has largely been the same, female voices are making themselves heard within the gaming community and this is the reaction they're getting. They do have to a bit of damage control as one of their star examples may not be as pure and innocent as she first appeared, but then Zoe was always more of a stand-in for the abuse many women have experienced. It's a well-honed narrative, is extremely compelling, and they're good at selling it.

On the other side, they're fighting some sprawling war against political correctness, so they're throwing in all their usual targets and complicating their narrative beyond comprehension. You can tell they don't have many proper journalists on their side, because they are absolute pants at presenting their arguments in a clear, concise manner. I've tried on a few occasions to wade into their side of things and am usually greeted with sprawling jpegs filled with circled bits and bobs, arrows, editorial asides, speculation, and so on at the jump. To the degree that they've gotten the #GamerGate thing apart is down to journalists wading into this mess of ideas, arguments, and speculation and finding a narrative on Journalistic Ethics.

Assuming there is important connective tissue (I honestly don't think there is, but who knows with this mess), the big mistake they made here is letting someone else create the narrative, thus re-writing it to serve their purposes. The journalists have looked upon it and said, "ah, yes, we have made some mistakes, we need to do better, and never mind all this anti-SWS stuff because we still think that's idiotic."

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

As this seems to be the gathering area for "dissenters", I'm going to offer this thread my reasons for supporting gamergate.

I read thezoepost and saw it for what it truly was (a tell-all about an abusive relationship with an emotionally manipulative and destructive human being) instead of what the media was telling me it was (a jilted ex airing dirty laundry for revenge). I've experienced that relationship from the inside. I recognized it immediately. I was appalled at how quickly the damning facts of the case were dismissed by the media at large in order to fit the overriding narrative of all women as default victims.

Then the gaming press closed ranks around an objectively terrible person for what appeared to be ideological reasons, which is bad enough already. Only, upon closer examination, it appears they're all basically friends in a treehouse, living together, sleeping together, supporting each other financially, and the lot of them tied together by various firms and companies with angling to become the gatekeepers for an always-burgeoning indie gaming scene. Nepotism run so amok you can't even see "networking" through a telescope.

Then came the censorship, the removal of comments and threads and even posters from sites and forums that were usually lauded for their freedom of expression. Sure, some of the participants were base trolls in need of moderation, but that's literally always the case on the internet. Pointing to the very worst element of your opposition (when your opposition can do literally nothing about it) as reason to silence and marginalize and ignore them is pure intellectual dishonesty.

Finally, when it looked like gamers weren't going to just "let it go" and resume business as usual, we saw like 8-10 nearly identical articles decrying the death of an entire demographic of people - a demographic hundreds of millions strong and featuring nearly every conceivable walk of human life. I believe most of these offensive articles could be traced back to people and companies associated with one woman, a woman who essentially declared "I AM video game journalism". She put wheels in motion to craft an entire narrative aimed at her justified detractors, drawing on her tentacles embedded throughout the industry to smear and belittle the lot of us.

That last one really got to me. I've never been on the wrong side of a media smear campaign before. It was very unsettling. It made me reconsider a lot of things. And it definitely made me hate the state of games journalism. So me and people like me are making noise, withdrawing support, shining lights, and advocating for change. If you think that makes me (a clean-shaven lefty pro-choice agnostic who pines for universal healthcare and the elimination of the off-shore economy) a right-wing misogynist hell-bent on oppressing all minorities, I simply don't know what else to tell you.

 

[Netrigan]

Finally, when it looked like gamers weren't going to just "let it go" and resume business as usual, we saw like 8-10 nearly identical articles decrying the death of an entire demographic of people - a demographic hundreds of millions strong and featuring nearly every conceivable walk of human life. I believe most of these offensive articles could be traced back to people and companies associated with one woman, a woman who essentially declared "I AM video game journalism". She put wheels in motion to craft an entire narrative aimed at her justified detractors, drawing on her tentacles embedded throughout the industry to smear and belittle the lot of us.

I'm pretty sure the real reason is far less sinister than this.

Ideas often spread incredibly easily. Back in the 80s, there was a surge of werewolf movies one year (An American Werewolf in London, The Howling, Wolfen), the source of which was likely the novel version of Wolfen which had been a success just prior. When The Abyss came out, it came along with several other underwater movies... the likely source, the best-selling novel, Sphere (turned into a movie much later). The lead up to this surge of articles is several months of gamers being cast (rightly or wrongly) as the villains in an on-going drama. It wouldn't take much of anything to push them in the same direction. A prominent blog or tweet mentioning in passing that gamers are killing gaming could easily trigger it off without it being planned by anyone. It could even be just the conversations the game journalists have been having behind the scenes which came pouring out the next time there was a notable event that triggers a flood of articles.

Which doesn't preclude a Talking Points style assault on the media. The Democrats and Republicans do this all the time. They hit the Sunday morning chat shows using a carefully chosen phrase to push their agenda. This gets repeated over and over and within a couple of days, the press are repeating the words as their own. It wouldn't take more than a couple of people to plant an idea in the heads of the gaming press, because it's designed as an easily used narrative.

The thing is, the people writing these articles have largely been saying the same thing for a long time. All the "Is Gaming Dead" articles is really just the same old ideas recycled under a new and exciting headline. How exactly that particularly phrase planted itself in their heads isn't all that important. You have a lot of people, all with the same basic beliefs, all posting similar articles following similar outrages... and they've been doing it since the original Kickstarter incident.

If I start getting hit with the same GamerGate story/idea from multiple sources, this isn't evidence of some grand conspiracy directing the GamerGate movement, it's just a bunch of people who all believe (more or less) the same thing who are constantly spitballing things both in public and in private.