Gamergate, No "Right Side." - We Should Avoid Picking Sides

[RaikuFA]

There is room for Bayonetta getting a 7.5 on Polygon and 10 out of 10s from other respectable sites.

Not when the writer is giving it a bad score because of "oversexulization" yet writes for a porn site as well as a gaming news site.

It's absolutely okay to like Bayonetta. It's okay to NOT like Bayonetta as well. See how easy that is? - Jim Sterling.

Bayo. Cleans. House. (But Polygon gonna Polygon) - Super Best Friends

It's more as why he did it and his history. That SBF quote does fit it though.

You guys are truly obsessed with making everyone you disgree with some calculating villain out to end you hobby.

You know, I'm having trouble figuring out which side I disagree with most in this debate.
I use to make much bigger paragraphs for what I disagree with on the Anti-gg side, but now they are about half and half.

Bayonetta got rave reviews. It's one fucking score. Get over it.

I could care less about Bay2. I'd be just as upset if he gave it a higher score for the sexulization yet wrote for a site that was very conservitave. It's the conflict of intrest that's bugging me.

 

[justinslot]

p.s - I think Deep Blue lamented on this.

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

Delurking just to say that was Joshua/WOPR from War Games. And I've thought of that scene several times as I've watched this hashtag unfold.

(Created an account here--and I forget how I got here, maybe via Twitter--to follow #gamergate since this was apparently one of the few forums allowing it to be discussed, which I thank the management here for and hope they don't get a lot of blowback for it if it's officially declared a hate movement or whatever. I don't think I agree with it's stated aims--we need more and different kinds of game reviews, not ideology-free reviews, though I do agree with the desire to have people disclose friendships and who they're financially supporting and such--but I don't agree with the current move to condemn it as I think the games media has been trying for weeks to deflect people from talking about the games media and that's just part of it. The other part has been the games media acting like total jerks on social media, which has not endeared them to me either.)

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

According to Wikipedia, there are 8 diifferent types of Morris Dancing styles.

Imagine a Morris Dancing journalist said; that because of this, the amount of styles, the term Morris dancer was dead. Morris Dancers Are Dead the title would read.

Then the Cotswold Morris Dancers flew in to a rage, they'd never been so insulted. The Cotswold Morris Dancers, created a campaign, some parts of which tried to sensor the author by pressuring their sponsor.

Then the North West Morris Dancers came to the rescue of the author by criticising everything the Cotswold Morris Dancers enjoyed, said or did.

Then each side spoilt the picnic further by escalating into #MorrisGate, death threats, doxing, pedantic criticism etc. While the other six styles of Morris Dancers (Border Morris, Longsword dancing, Rapper, Molly Dancing, Ploughstots and Plough Monday) just wants to dance.

Then the news media outside of Morris dancing start to catch on, and there's headlines like Morris Dancers Death Threat a Woman for Being a Woman, and the words like, "look at those Morris dancing d**k heads," are muttered by the general public, when it was only the Cotswold and the North West Morris Dancers making all the noise.

I feel like such a Molly Dancer.

Now imagine that this was all actually over saying that one specific type of Morris Dancer didn't have to be your audience, and the entire metaphor was largely inaccurate as a result. People took a criticism of the perception of Morris Dancers as being a single type of Morris Dancers and the notion that it didn't have to be, and got offended and outraged at this false notion, and started screaming like children that they weren't like that style of dancers that nobody said they were like.

Imagine other articles reflected an increasing desire for other Morris Dancers not to be labeled Morris Dancers, a sentiment that had previously gone largely unchallenged, but was suddenly contentious because everyone was already incorrectly angry about the "death of Morris Dancers." Imagine Morris Dancers took a statement that you don't have to let the perception of the angry white Morris Dancer dictate who you or your audience was as a statement that Morris Dancers were all angry white males and acted, in response, like angry white males. Imagine, for a moment, that all this happened because nobody bothered to think about the actual commentary before they decided to get offended and angry.

Imagine how ridiculous Morris Dancers look in that world.

Now imagine a world where people read articles and think critically about them. Nobody's noses get bent out of shape because the criticisms about an expanding market and people uncomfortable with an identity aren't turned into raging hate speeches by people who supposedly shouldn't be responding. Now there is no backlash, no "war" between #morrisgate and the people they misrepresented. There's a good chance there isn't even a #morrisgate, as critical thinking would likely have diffused the controversy over a minor Morris Dancer sleeping with Morris Dancer critics for good reviews when it turned out there was no actual meat on the bones.

We'd still be in a place where people were increasingly questioning their identities as Morris Dancers, but there wouldn't be bile or vitriol over commentary on it because nobody would be pretending it was actually the end of Morris Dancing. And maybe, if Morris Dancers conducted themselves like mature, intelligent adults, they could shake their image as angry white males who ostrasise female and minority Morris Dancers by addressing such controversy in a mature fashion.

And everybody could just dance, because nobody decided that a commentary over identity of the market...I mean, dance scene was hate speech against all Morris Dancers.

That was a long way to go for a metaphor, but there.

I like that you could build on that n we could share #MorrisGate, even if we did use more imagines than John Lennon.

Yeah, I really don't see why we can't have everyone accept that if new types of dances come into fashion, the old style Morris dancing will stay, as long as people dance it.

 

[grassgremlin]

I'm adding to my thread.
I finally pick the side.

The Right Side is Pixie Jenni http://pixietalksgamergate.wordpress.com/
Seriously guys. Actual Journalism being done here.

 

[Bat Vader]

I couldn't care any less about GamerGate or the people that dislike GamerGate. I refuse to sit on the fence when I can just as well stay inside and treat all of it with extreme apathy. I just look out the window and laugh at how foolish both sides are being; after that I go back to playing video games.

 

[Eddie the head]

She reinforced the stereotype not to dismiss it as false, but to say that the gaming community needed to target and run the stereotypes out. Classic lynch-mob rhetoric.

Except she didn't reinforce it, did dismiss it as false, and didn't resort to any "lynch mob:" rhetoric. This is completely backwards and I suspect intentionally dishonest.

Well isn't that a convent way of thinking. You get to reassure yourself that you're right. Get to call the other person wrong. And you get to take the moral high ground by calling them "intentionally dishonest."

Look I likely agree with you in the long run, but this type or rhetoric is polarizing and serves only to burn bridges. If you want to fight bigotry you have to at least try and understand it.

 

[Something Amyss]

Well isn't that a convent way of thinking.

Honestly, yes. It's the most convenient form of thinking I can think of. It is so inconvenient to deconstruct and reword someone's argument I literally do not understand why so many people are so quick to do it. It wasn't rhetoric, it was calling out the fact that someone had literally reworded someone's article to mean the exact opposite.

But I know you didn't mean it that way. I know you're accusing me of rhetoric. And I also know it's baseless. But the word choice was interesting.

Look I likely agree with you in the long run

I doubt you agree with me in the long run. My primary role in all of this has been to assess claims and argue against false ones. I don't know where you stand, but the number of people who are simply motivated by fact appears to be very small right now, and so I don't hold my breath. I'm not sure what particularly I should be doing to not polarise the facts, but I have no specific intentions of trying to play the "both sides" nonsense because it might endear me to people complaining about utterly false things.

But seriously, did you read the article? Because I don't need to reassure myself of anything. I read the article. The article is not a call for a lynch mob. It's not a call for a lynch mob. She points out the increasing irrelevance of the angry white male that companies THINK is their meal ticket. It is almost exactly the opposite of the way callbeck phrased it, and since he's been made aware of that before, I suspect (and note, I said suspect) that he's intentionally claiming the opposite.

I mean, if you want to call me out on the word play I did at the beginning, fair enough. I did it specifically to make a point, but I did in fact do it. If you're going to call me out on trying to reassure myself, don't bother. I don't need to be reassured, because I've read the article. And if you haven't, you should, too.

 

[Pirate Of PC Master race]

p.s - I think Deep Blue lamented on this.

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

Delurking just to say that was Joshua/WOPR from War Games. And I've thought of that scene several times as I've watched this hashtag unfold.

(Created an account here--and I forget how I got here, maybe via Twitter--to follow #gamergate since this was apparently one of the few forums allowing it to be discussed, which I thank the management here for and hope they don't get a lot of blowback for it if it's officially declared a hate movement or whatever. I don't think I agree with it's stated aims--we need more and different kinds of game reviews, not ideology-free reviews, though I do agree with the desire to have people disclose friendships and who they're financially supporting and such--but I don't agree with the current move to condemn it as I think the games media has been trying for weeks to deflect people from talking about the games media and that's just part of it. The other part has been the games media acting like total jerks on social media, which has not endeared them to me either.)

Well. That is the joke.(Deep Blue is the first computer to beat the world chess champion. And cannot speak. Speaking is hard to program.)

And regarding the topic of the "free reviews". There is no such thing in this fascinating world. Due to the fact that early-accessible(not to be confused with early access games) review copies only having a single source. it is pretty much like having people on the leach. (Except you can destroy those people's livelihoods whenever they look at you funny.)

Personally I think it is unreasonable to expect unbiased review of something when someone has a gun pointed to their head, but it seems like I am the minority here. Oh well. What is worse is that this whole shenanigan can be solved with grain of salt regarding the any media.(for my case, a bottle of salt with the loose cap.) I wonder how long it took for people to notice that TV shopping channel commercials didn't always kept their words.

Edit: Whoops. forgot to post the other half of the post.