The Gamergate/Anti-Gamergate movement has to be a Sociology PhD Candidate's thesis topic. It's fascinating how utterly polarizing it is, I mean just look at the sort of comments we're seeing right here on HN, and we tend to be the levelheaded and civil ones!
Both "sides" are victims of their own success. In spite of whatever potentially valid points they have, the moment someone figures out which "side" you are on you are immediately lumped into one group or the other and considered completely guilty by association. And the folks that do that are so absolutely certain of how "vile" or "evil" you are, as certainly as if you'd come out as a Nazi or somesuch.
But if you could somehow make your argument without getting either label attached, someone might actually want to listen to you as though you were a rational human being.
> and we tend to be the levelheaded and civil ones!
I've seen a lot of things discussed on HN. I think that may be wishful thinking. Just because HN isn't full of straight out cussing and insults doesn't mean we're level headed or civil.
Which side is which here? I'm not really clued into the whole GamerGate thing...
I have seen Randi Lee Harper say some very unpleasant things, and some even more unpleasant things said about her. I know nothing about the Open Gaming Society, but reading their website it seems like a relatively sane organization.
Randi Lee Harper is noted for making tools to help victims of online harassment. Level Up panel description was "A panel from experts on online harassment in gaming and geek culture, how to combat it, how to design against it, and how to create online communities that are moving away from harassment."
The GamerGate crowd claim that they care about "ethics in game journalism" and that the abuse that feminist gamers experience doesn't have anything to do with them. So theoretically, there aren't opposing sides here.
I've been following the #GamerGate trainwreck for a while. #SavePoint seems to maybe be about improving gamer culture? I don't know. I've not seen #SavePoint before today.
For those who don't know, #GamerGate claimed to be about "journalistic ethics" when they were actually just harassing a women (and later other women) who said negative things about how women were treated in games. [1]
The #SavePoint group seems to be very explicitly against harassment of any kind, and at least gives lip service to freedom of expression of both game developers and critics. I don't know if this is just a facade, like the one previously worn by #GamerGate, or if this is the real deal. The #GamerGate tag is hopelessly associated with misogyny and harassment, so the fact that they want to use a new hashtag is actually a minor point in their favor.
But other than "gaming ethics," I'm not really sure what they exist to promote. And I'm not even sure what they mean any more by "gaming ethics," considering the initial #gamergate accusations were proven completely and utterly false. (Including outrage at an article on GamaSutra [2] that pissed off a bunch of "gamers" who completely misunderstood it. [3])
#3 is... a bunch of paranoid conspiracy theory bullshit.
Let's have a look at the first entry. I'll probably get bored after a few of these, but... whatever.
Charge 1 - Leigh Alexander stands accused of writing an article that GG disagree with, and that many of them inexplicably interpreted as some kind of threat, or something. I don't know. The article was basically about how video games have become mainstream, the concept of a "gamer" demographic is largely meaningless, and developers and publishers need not, and should not, solely target everything at this narrow demographic.
Charge 2 - She is accused of talking to her colleagues, possibly at other publications. She may have engaged in such crimes as discussing her work with others, and building a network of contacts. Y'know... journalism. Because apparently all journalism must be done in a vacuum.
Charge 3 - She is accused to also doing other work, and talking about that other work on her personal social media accounts. Even though there's no evidence that she's done anything wrong as a journalist, she totally could have if she wanted to, and therefore can't be trusted, or something?
At this point, I'm just bored. Most of the rest of the list is basically that Leigh is accused of having professional relationships with people in the games industry. Y'know, like every other games journalist - this whole professional networking thing is kind of how journalists get access to things. Same's true for journalists covering any other entertainment industry. Or politics. Or business. Or...
I mean, repeatedly accusing a journalist of doing her job just seems utterly ridiculous.
What else... There's an accusation of lying, which is included even though the accusation itself says that it was probably misinterpreted. A whole bunch of Twitter B.S. that nobody cares about. Some paranoid ramblings, and a whole bunch of other inconsequential crap that nobody cares about...
So... That's the smoking gun? Really?
> Even though most #GamerGate accounts were proven not to be harassers
Wrong. There was no "proven" anywhere - just that there was a lot of harassment on Twitter that wasn't associated with GG, and a wider study only picked up a small number of GG-associated accounts. Which is something entirely different, despite what GG like to pretend.
I don't think it's a bunch of paranoid conspiracy theory bullshit. A lot of the items on that list are known and established facts. One of the ones that GG brings special attention to is the relationship between Nathan Grayson and Zoe Quinn, and how Grayson covered Quinn without revealing this relationship, a clear conflict of interest. To make it look worse Kyle Orland suggested to the mailing list that they not even cover news of this disclosure. [1]
For his part, Kyle then went on to apologize [2], but if GG had not been a watchdog in gaming journalism ethics, we already had an idea of how the story was going to be spinned.
>Grayson covered Quinn without revealing this relationship
You're repeating lies. A quote from the article I linked above:
>But Grayson never reviewed Depression Quest. He once wrote half a sentence about the game, before his relationship with Quinn ever started, but that's it. Critics of Quinn and Grayson have also raised concerns about this Kotaku article [1]—it was written before they started dating.
This has been confirmed directly by Kotoku and Grayson on multiple occasions. Google it.
Please repeat after me: There is no smoking gun.
The entire GamerGate movement is based on lies, misogyny, and anti-feminism. Find a different hashtag if you care about journalism ethics, and stop only blaming the women. The journalist, in this case, was a man, but he wasn't doxed, just Quinn! In other cases it was the female journalists who were harassed. (Not that doxing is ever the right answer! And not that I should even have to explain that...)
No, GG is clearly not about journalistic ethics. It's a group that's attempting to bully people into reporting only what they want to hear -- and they find it easier to bully the women. Charming, really.
Find a new group to defend, or risk being painted with a rather nasty brush.
>The entire GamerGate movement is based on lies, misogyny, and anti-feminism.
Not true. Although an initial lie may have sparked it - a raging fire isn't started without a lot of fuel lying around to keep it burning.
>Find a different hashtag if you care about journalism ethics, and stop only blaming the women.
We already did that. A different hashtag would do what exactly? Nothing. Other than causing a splinter group, confusion, and easier co-opting of the tag. Or should we go back to #5GuysBurgersAndFries and #Quinnspiracy? Those were things. Those are things separate from #GamerGate (hence the different tag).
>The journalist, in this case, was a man, but he wasn't doxed, just Quinn
In that particular case - and while doxing is wrong - don't pretend "only anti-GG" get doxed. [0] [1] Their is also a stark contrast between how the two sides blame each other. Anti-GG has no problem blaming GG in a heartbeat while GG blames third party trolls and not the opposing side because more likely than not - it's third party trolls.
>No, GG is clearly not about journalistic ethics.
Which is why countless media publishers have adopted or updated their ethical standards and practices from Oct-Jan of last year? Must be some sort of non-pressured, weird, coincidental timing that they all felt the need to disclose their ethical standards. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Complaints to the FTC even caused Kotaku and other publishers to add disclosure for affiliate linking. [7]
Unless you're saying 2-7 have nothing whatsoever to do with #GG? I find that a bit of a stretch to believe.
Their is also the donations and support from 4chan/GG towards TFYC [8] which Zoe Quinn tried to lambaste and media outlets refused to cover. How women-hating of #GG to support female devs when another female dev was shouting down at them.
Is there a single confirmed case of any issue that the #gg outrage is based on? Between the various topics above (Quinn, femfreq, "We are all gamers now" article) that, at least seemingly, spawned #GamerGate, it seems like it grew entirely from mob rage, and continues along in that vein.
>Complaints to the FTC even caused Kotaku and other publishers to add disclosure for affiliate linking.
Even terrible events can lead to positive results. A particularly bad fire that kills hundreds may get the fire code changed so that thousands will be saved; that doesn't mean that we encourage disasters for the sake of improving safety of those who survive.
The #GamerGate tag is irrevocably tied to all of the hate spewed by people associated with the tag at this point. It doesn't even matter that some people associated with the group may have done some good, because a lot of people carrying that banner spew misogynist crap and other hate speech pretty much constantly. It's not even the doxing that I'm talking about here; I'm just observing that, when I see a #gg tweet in the wild, it is almost universally associated with some form of hatred.
If you come along and tell me that those aren't the "real" GG, that the real GG is only about journalistic ethics in games, why should I believe you when most of what I see associated with the tag is garbage? If you're honestly not a misogynist, then I have bad news for you: Most of the people who tweet using #gamergate are, and you should find a different tag to represent the positive things you are doing, or you will be associated with what they're saying. If you don't mind being associated with what they say, then...well, I have nothing more to say.
>why should I believe you when most of what I see associated with the tag is garbage
I don't ask for you to believe me. I just ask that you don't believe the media. Given they're the ones being criticized, they're incapable of giving a fair representation of the situation. That goes equally both ways, of course. I wouldn't ask you to trust an openly pro-#GG source (like Breitbart) for their opinion on #GG either.
There are a quite a number of neutral opinions to be found but they will not be found in prominent media and will mostly be random people on Tumblr or Medium which can make taking their word on things harder. [0]
>It doesn't even matter that some people associated with the group may have done some good, because a lot of people carrying that banner spew misogynist crap and other hate speech pretty much constantly.
I ask you to look at this [1]. One would have to cherrypick very selectively to get an outlook like that. Which is exactly what the media does.
I haven't been 'active' on the #GG tag in quite some time, you can verify that by checking my Twitter but I still read it from time to time and had a brief few months of high activity.
The harassment I see goes both ways [2] [3] with one side getting a hell of a lot more retweets/favorites for their hatred than the other and the other side having an entire hashtag dedicated to preventing it. I'll let you figure out which side is doing which.
When you try and stop harassment (as I legitimately tried to do on many instances) you get bitched at or blocked or told you're using a sockpuppet to build up PR. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario because the ones controlling the media control the public narrative. Don't call it out? You support it! Call it out and stand against it? You're using a sockpuppet for PR!
>Most of the people who tweet using #gamergate are, and you should find a different tag to represent the positive things you are doing, or you will be associated with what they're saying. If you don't mind being associated with what they say, then...well, I have nothing more to say.
I could say the same thing about #KillAllMen being blasted by feminists and if you're a feminist you're a sexist man hater. Do I think all feminists are a bunch of sexists man haters? No. Hashtags can be used by absolutely anyone and switching hashtags just makes it easier for the media to slander the new, less established tag.
>I ask you to look at this [1]. One would have to cherrypick very selectively to get an outlook like that. Which is exactly what the media does.
You don't need to use explicit words to be saying misogynistic things. #notyourshield is also a misguided movement, IMO.
>I could say the same thing about #KillAllMen being blasted by feminists and if you're a feminist you're a sexist man hater.
No, you couldn't really. If you tried to claim that #KillAllMen was actually a women's rights group that focused on bringing out the vote, then even if it had (somehow? facetiously?) been started that way, but then later was co-opted by militant man haters, then yes, I'd say anyone who didn't actually believe in killing all men would need to abandon the use of that tag.
I did a lot of reading and observing of people's tweets on my own timeline before coming to the conclusions I have. I don't see a media conspiracy; I see a single narrative that makes sense based on the data, and that, yes, has been reported on by the media.
Are there crazys on both sides? Absolutely. But I've blocked tons of people on Twitter and elsewhere for making misogynistic comments with the #gamergate tag. And just because they can group together and protect their friends doesn't mean that I would ever be comfortable with a group that demonizes "SJWs."
There's a bunch of mostly privileged and mostly white people speaking on behalf of all POC, all trans, all women, etc.
There are two issues with the above, depending on where one stands. One can be seen as "forgetting to include us" ala #WhiteFeminism and the other can be "speaking wrongly on our behalf" ala #NotYourShield
>I see a single narrative that makes sense based on the data
Please cite the data then.
I've gone out of my way to provide actual data that shows the exact opposite, with abuse being <1% while you have yet to provide any data whatsoever other than saying "my position is based on data".
>There's a bunch of mostly privileged and mostly white people speaking on behalf of all POC, all trans, all women, etc.
I think that most of the people in question who have been demonized have been women who have been speaking out about treatment of women in games. Or in Quinn's case, someone who was demonized as a cheater with no redeeming excuse at all (at first -- and what rationale eventually surfaced was shown to be lies).
"Internalized oppression" is a real thing. Not listening to the oppressed is also a real thing. #NotYourShield is misguided because it ignores the first and mocks people who are trying to help because some people do the second. Just because a member of a group doesn't feel oppressed doesn't make the experience any less real for someone else in that group. I've met minorities who have it all and who insist that they haven't encountered prejudice for years, and yet I read other accounts of people who are pulled over and harassed because of the color of their skin. The experience of the first person doesn't invalidate the experience of the second.
>Please cite the data then.
I have, above, several times: personal observations of many tweets with #gamergate combined with boorish claims, plus many different articles by journalists who "dove deep" and tried to find people to talk with about #gg. The "data" you sited was restricted to a few specific "obvious" hate words.
And just because I apparently am a glutton for punishment, I just read the top 100 or so tweets on a #gamergate search. Aside from circlejerk-GG-is-awesome-we-are-the-best posts, most were slams of Anita (misquoting her in several), (proud!) reports of the trolling of Brenda Wu, slams of SJWs, or claims that the media was distorting what happened at SXSW. The last was probably the actions of a single bad actor (or a small number of them? and with all of this anti-terrorism technology in place, why haven't they CAUGHT them?!), but the media loves an easy narrative, regardless of the truth. The rest of the tweets didn't do anything to change my opinion of GG.
What kills me is that, if it's true, entire stated premise of #gg is naive: Journalism has existed in an ethical grey area since shortly after the printing press was invented.
So how do you deal with journalists being too close to those they review? Support good reviewers who are willing to slam games that deserve it.
It won't hurt to get journalists to admit when they're being paid by advertisers, but it won't do any actual good either, because most or all journalists benefit from game publisher money or freebies. If every single review ever has a generic "we may have received freebies and/or advertising from this publisher" disclaimer, what have you accomplished? And specific disclaimers won't ever happen (for logistical reasons) except if it's a publisher like Consumer's Reports that never accepts freebies or advertising. And there are very few of those around.
So what is it again that you're trying to accomplish?
P.S. It is a good thing that people donated to causes that help women and/or minorities. I don't want to minimize that. But the bulk of people using #gamergate are still using it to promote what I would consider negative-for-society ideas (in a Kant/Moral Imperative sense), so I stand my decision to block most #gamergate-tweeting accounts and generally criticize the hashtag.
P.P.S. I am at this point tiring of this discussion. I will cede you the last word if you reply, otherwise it's been an interesting chat. Thanks for keeping it civil. Yes, that's a point in your favor.
>I think that most of the people in question who have been demonized have been women who have been speaking out about treatment of women in games.
Data contradicts this sentiment. [0] The "targeted men" are more likely to receive negative and neutral tweets and less positive tweets than the "targeted" women that are often cited. I see Chu being shit on more than anyone else, honestly.
>personal observations of many tweets
My entire experience with #GG has been with a large transgender crowd and an entire community panicking and trying to contact local authorities or family of a member because they were contemplating suicide after someone outed them as trans to their employer. Any "harassment" I've seen is calling people out on their bullshit.
e.g Anita's newest list of harassment, someone said they "recognized a lot of names from #GamerGate" - nobody active in #gamergate recognizes any of the names. Are the tweets harassment? Yes, most of them were. Are they tied to #GG in any way? No, they aren't.
>plus many different articles by journalists
I hope you don't mean the same journalists being slammed for their ethics. They found that the people accusing them of being morally corrupt are "actually" the morally corrupt and should not be listened to? Well, okay then. Or do you mean different journalists who don't have any skin in the game?
>claims that the media was distorting what happened at SXSW
The last 3 "positive #Gamergate [panel, gathering, etc]" have received bomb threats and have been cancelled due to it. That's being ignored by the media entirely and swept under a rug as if it doesn't matter. If it were an anti-GG [panel/gathering/etc] and it received bomb threats the media would never shut up about it. That's my understanding of the SXSW issue going on.
Actually - I just took a break to check the tag really fast. It gets worse than people shutting down the panel, GG is being blamed for shutting down its own panel. [1] But if enough people write about it, that makes it true I guess? That is blatant bullshit. #GG has been trying to get a platform to speak on for well over a year. Every time has been shut down like this, but this time they're putting the blame on #GG itself. The sheer absurdity of the claim coupled with fifteen different articles on it to push the narrative is corrupt as fuck. This is the type of shit that is keeping #GG around. Media collusion to push a narrative regardless of facts.
>It won't hurt to get journalists to admit when they're being paid by advertisers, but it won't do any actual good either
Of course it will do good. It's good for the consumers. I can take their review with a grain of salt knowing there is a bias. Not knowing is worse than knowing without making the assumption that every review is paid for - which is a lose-lose for reviewers. If every review is paid for, they aren't reviews and I wouldn't listen to them. That's bad for the reviewer (nobody listening to them) but good for consumers.
Furthermore, I'm less likely to trust someone not known for taking freebies who gives a glowing review to a game only to be found 3 months after release they were paid $1,500 in merchandise to give a good review to a shitty game nobody ended up liking. That's both bad for consumers and bad for the reviewer (but only if caught!).
>So how do you deal with journalists being too close to those they review?
"Hey, I'm dating the girl who worked on this game. I should let Paul review it because he isn't expecting to fuck her tonight and won't have an incentive to praise the game if it's bad."
"I'd love to have $2,000 in merchandise but that's a bribe that I'll have to decline. I'll accept the pre-release game in order to review it but I will not accept the $2,000 goodie-bag you're trying to bribe me with."
That's actually been done before, believe it or not! Some people are ethical enough and take their job seriously enough to deny bribes! The people who can admit they might be too biased to give a fair and honest review are the people I trust the most to be writing about things.
>P.P.S. I am at this point tiring of this discussion. I will cede you the last word if you reply, otherwise it's been an interesting chat. Thanks for keeping it civil. Yes, that's a point in your favor.
That's understandable and I'd like to thank you in return for keeping things civil.
It is not a complicated situation, from the start its been clear that gamergate is solely a vehicle for organised harassment (primarily of women). There isnt any moral quandry or naunced position about it, its just harassment.
So there is an interesting question. In a polarized situation where there are two sides presenting themselves as victims of the other... how could show one side is ACTUALLY right and one is wrong (assuming reasonable evidence) without sounding partisan?
Wouldn't anything that bolstered one side and defamed the other look very partisan? Wouldn't stronger evidence look MORE partisan?
Would you have to slowly dish out the evidence over time to turn the tide without setting off people's 'partisan hack' sensors in any single discussion?
Could you evidence end up making things MORE partisan and doing the opposite of what you intend?
No one's stopping you from posting evidence and discussing it, of course. In a debate with sides this polarized, you will sound partisan whenever you use any kind of evidence.
I try fairly hard to combat that fact when I present evidence, although I honestly don't know all the facts and thus can't represent them all fairly. But then again, that's why I participate in discussions online. To learn.
I meant my comment in the abstract, outside of this issue. I seem to remember On The Media (or something else) discussing something like this. I think there was a study that at a certain point any evidence tends to reinforce people in their position even if it's backwards (i.e. your proof I'm wrong convinces me I'm right).
It's not like we haven't seen a number of topics get wedged in this permanent 'stuck' state even when we have objective proof. They become politicized and truth no longer works on the discussion.
Umm... That report does not say what you think it says.
Whoever did that excerpt was either utterly useless at statistics (and reading comprehension), or was trying to twist the results to try to prove a point.
The report was about harassment on Twitter in general, not GG. They were trying to get a very broad sample from all over Twitter, covering any abuse or harassment that was reported to them.
Since the whole GG mess was ongoing at the time of the research, the researchers decided to use the ggautoblocker list to see how much overlap their was between their sample, and people connected to GG, to find out how much it affected their results.
The result is that there was a fair bit of overlap - about 12% of the people in their sample were also on the ggautoblocker list. Most of the harassment they found was not related to GG.
Their finding: "Reports to WAM! constitute a much wider range of harassment than the GamerGate controversy alone".
That's not what the excerpt you posted claims at all. It interprets that as "only 65 out of 9,844 accounts on the ggautoblocker list engaged in harassment". Which is bunk - the study found nothing at all about the remaining 9,779 accounts on that list. Only that those 65 accounts were in both sample sets.
Here's another way to look at it. The 65 harassers who were also on the ggautoblocker list were responsible for 12% of the harassment on Twitter that these researchers found. So they obviously only noticed 0.6% of GamerGate. Therefore, if they'd found all of the GG-associated harassment and abuse, they'd end up with about with 18 times more harassment reports, of which 95% would have been associated with GamerGate.
That analysis is also complete garbage, but it's just as sound as the analysis in that excerpt you posted, and based on exactly the same faulty reasoning.
Many of the accounts on the ggautoblocker list are either bots, or duplicate accounts created specifically for the purpose of harassing people and discarded when they are no longer useful.
No problem. Those excerpts were basically designed to be misleading, for the purpose of pushing an agenda (the "GG totally doesn't harass women, you [insert gendered insult towards women here]" angle).
The basic tactic is to try to sound reasonable, to mask the seething rage and hostility that lies beneath.
It is a bizarre and vile thing that Feminist Frequency has come to be associated with "anti-GamerGate" when it has primarily been about the critical discussion of women in media, including video games.
The very fact that discussing the representation of women in media can be seen as "anti" anything makes me incredibly sad.
Feminist Frequency has always produced well researched and well argued videos. They incite much needed and level-headed discussion about how we represent women in games and other media. That anyone can throw hate at them for it suggests we have a long way to go as a society.
I know nothing about the subject, but I've seen this twitter account before and instantly assumed it was parody. Is it a character being portrayed or a real person because I still can't tell.
I get the liability arguments here, I really do, but people need to understand this is going to keep happening as long as people keep kowtowing to the demands of terrorists.
And I do not see that as too strong a word, either. Making threats against an event because it's against your ideology is the textbook definition of using fear to shape thought and policy.
These threats are never credible. It's high time to stop treating them as such.
What's hilarious about this whole thing is that I have no idea which "side" you are on by your comment. I've seen this exact sentiment expressed about SXSW's decision on both /r/KiA and /r/GamerGhazi.
It's a mistake to think of it as "sides" rather than a small group of people with a persecution complex, and everyone else wishing they'd broaden their perspective a bit.
What's hilarious about this whole thing is that I have no idea which "side" you are on by your comment. I've seen this exact sentiment expressed about SXSW's decision on both /r/KiA and /r/GamerGhazi.
Haha. But really, it's hard for that group to claim to be the silent, persecuted majority when nearly every major figure in the industry who has spoken about it and nearly every news outlet that has covered it has completely condemned it. The "movement" has even been placeholder villains on Law and Order SVU, and if that isn't the gold standard for general cultural sentiment, I don't know what is.
I was going to downvote you for just copy and pasting then I realized you were right. The other side could easily misconstrue things and paint my side that way.
I'm not convinced about the reverse, but that may be because I'm on my side. People can go pretty far to rationalize things.
There are people who enjoy playing video games, and laughing at life.
Then there are the SJWs out to shit on every game, and tell you that you're an asshole for laughing at anything.
Very clear lines drawn by the second group. The first group generally couldn't care less... it's just when the second group causes there to be more censorship or causes a game to be delayed because they don't want their little feels hurt that the first group takes offense.
"I am on nobody's side, because nobody is on my side."
We're on the outside looking in as two horseshoe theory extremist groups duke it out. They both have a lot of valid points, but the value for most of us is just drama and entertainment.
That's kind of the unfortunate thing. Any valid point they have is basically erased by the actions of a few that they (on the whole) refuse to condem and distance themselves from. I'm sure there are tons of people in the 'movement' who don't want any part of the death threats, but their arguments are tainted by association.
One side seems to want to simply be, a (hopefully) tiny number on the other side want their lives ruined; and a bunch of other people are caught up with them (based on beliefs, right or wrong, strong or weak) as 'silent majority' justifications and cover for bad actions.
I don't think that's fair to either side of the discussion, or to SXSW. They reportedly received threats and piles of attention over both panels, and they didn't want to deal with that.
They allowed both panels to sign up in the name of neutrality and diversity of ideas.
And I guess people from both sides made sure neither could have nice things. (SXSW didn't blame anyone, but that's my guess.)
> They reportedly received threats and piles of attention over both panels, and they didn't want to deal with that.
What, exactly, did they think would happen when they stepped into GG?
> They allowed both panels to sign up in the name of neutrality and diversity of ideas.
That's bullshit. When one group is infamous for dragging the other through the trash, issuing death threats, bomb threats, etc. there is no 'neutrality' to be found.
> And I guess people from both sides made sure neither could have nice things.
Again, bullshit. One side is know for getting death threats for existing, the other for sending death threats. One side is clearly to blame.
> (SXSW didn't blame anyone, but that's my guess.)
Clearly.
Now I know that the anti-GG people I know of have been VERY critical of SXSW for giving GG a panel in the first place. I know they've been campaigning and complaining. I'm sure they've expressed disappointment and probably personally boycotted the events.
But I seriously doubt the anti-GG people sent death threats.
On the other hand I can easily see the pro-GGers waning they would send them if their panel was cancelled, or the anti-GG panel wasn't cancelled, or because of some other perceived issue (such as one getting a better time slot or bigger room).
And now that SXSW was cowered to the hate mob, I imagine they'll get threats for for cancelling the pro-GG panel and letting the anti-GG people 'win' (despite losing their own panel too).
It's clear which side I'm on. I'm not trying to hide that I think GG is ruining my hobby. I'd say they're setting our image back 20-30 years but I don't remember death threats over NES games.
If SXSW wanted to be 'neutral' and stay out of it they could have. I don't understand how they went forward with scheduling the panels and didn't see all this coming. It's so predictable and sadly status-quo.
I've looked for evidence for which "side" did the harassment. SXSW didn't make specific who was part of the "hate mob". That's why I guessed it was both sides.
> On the other hand I can easily see the pro-GGers
On the other hand, you sound biased (as far as text can provide "sound"), without any specific data to back it up. If you know something I don't, I'd be glad to hear it.
EDIT: I'm not picking a side here, and I'd be willing to defend either in a debate. I really hope I don't sound condescending, and apologize if I do.
As I said, it's clear I'm anti-GG. Biased is defined as 'unfairly prejudiced' against someone. After watching people driven out of their homes and numerous death threats and doxxings I don't think my view of GG is 'unfairly prejudiced'.
SXSW hasn't said who is at fault and I imagine plenty of anti-GG people were... 'less than cordial'... about their thoughts.
But since one side of this 'debate' is know for issuing death threats I'm willing to make a firm guess on who is at fault.
> I'm not picking a side here, and I'd be willing to defend either in a debate.
At a certain point, when there is enough evidence, 'neutrality' in the face of a hate group isn't neutral.
Perhaps you don't know anything about GG and this is (more or less) the first you've heard of it. Because I know of it I tend to assume others in tech know of it (it's made the national news after all, multiple times).
So when I continue to see people couching things as a 'debate' and 'being neutral' to me it looks a lot like the people still 'asking' for 'debate' on the 'possibility' of climate change (or the dangers of vaccination, or the possibility of fake moon landings). They say that but clearly they've picked a side.
No true Scotsman would be if someone clearly anti-GG was proven to send a death threat and I redefined them to not be anti-GG for some reason.
We haven't reached that point yet in my argument. I'd have to be proven wrong first.
Since the reason I'm anti-GG is the harassment and threats (don't agree with their ideas but I think they'd be ignorable without the problematic behavior), I wouldn't want to see someone on my side do the same. But they could.
The unfortunate truth is that Gamergate has been harassed, you just likely haven't heard it. For example, there were bomb threats at several of their meetups, and a panel they had at a Society of Professional Journalism conference had to be evacuated because of several bomb threats.
Hmm. Now that you mention I may have heard about the SPJ one.
I won't make any further comment about those threats. I have no info about them, all my thoughts on the possibility are heavy on bias (could be right, but clearly bias).
> But I seriously doubt the anti-GG people sent death threats.
Anti-GG have in fact called in bomb threats against pro-GG meetings multiple times, so that doesn't follow.
Look, it's clear you feel strongly about this, but when you dismiss the misdeeds of people on your "side" you are doing exactly the same thing you're condemning on the other "side." It's better to take a civil attitude towards everyone. Discussion is good, threats and hyperbole are not. Gaming would be better off without the trolls and frothers on both sides of this mess.
I get it, SXSW is a business, and they want to protect their profits. It makes plenty of sense. SXSW loves attention, they just chose to sit this one out because their analysis concluded that it would be better for their bottom line. They pride themselves as a forward-thinking event, even continuing this spiel in their announcement. It's now obvious to everyone that cares that it was all just marketing.
Ultimately I think this will hurt their bottom line by driving diversity away from their event. Will discussions of racial diversity now be cancelled at the whim of the KKK? These groups operate through threats and intimidation, and I think there is a real risk of other hate groups catching wind of this and using similar tactics to stir up attention for their cause.
So now the GGers are mad and will probably boycott them or yell at their sponsors.
And the anti-GG, anti-harassment people are mad at them for hosting the others and then cancelling the good side... so they'll boycott and yell at the sponsors.
So instead of having neither group at no monetary cost, they found a way to have neither group and take a hit to their reputation and possibly pocket books.
And of course they didn't take a moral stand either way (which both sides likely see as a stand with their enemy).
Way to go SXSW. Playing with fire has a reputation for a reason.
So why not hold the panels in an undisclosed location and webcast them? Preferably for the public, not just conference attendees. Instead of giving the terrorists (for lack of a better word) exactly what they want turn it around and use their threats to garner extra publicity.
Actually, #Savepoint will still be having the panel, at a separate location. It seems like they expected to be canceled, or not get the panel, so they planned ahead. With tempers this high, it's likely have one (or several) bomb threats will be called against the location the day of.
Austin is located in the American state of Texas, which prides itself on gun ownership. Also, the SXSW conference has already had an instance of violence: a driver ran into a crowd of people and killed a few of them. While not intentional, I'm sure the programmers of this conference are eager to separate their brand from the idea of danger.
"Austin is located in the American state of Texas, which prides itself on gun ownership."
That doesn't really follow from the facts as a reason to be concerned about violence. Austin's crime rate is lower than that of most other major American cities, including ones such as Chicago which have heavy gun control. (As per Wikipedia, Chicago's murder rate for 2014 was 15.1, Austin's 3.5.)
I'm not sure the crime rate statistic is relevant in the context of the flood of threats being directed at the event. We're no longer talking about 'random crime' at this point. Also, if there's going to be a threat of violence, I'd prefer that threat not to happen in a state where people have easy access to guns; I understand that many people have trust in crowd-sourced defense (ala a well-armed populace) but I like to think the police and the event security are better choice for that.
> Also, the SXSW conference has already had an instance of violence: a driver ran into a crowd of people and killed a few of them
Though I can see them being overly cautious as a result, I think context is important here: that was a drunk driver running from the cops. SXSW being there was a tragic coincidence.
Don't hold things in TX / do not support things in TX. I know I get flames for that everytime, but the state of TX holds / enforces some horrible views.
The whole Gamergate drama reminds me of the old saying: “The reason why campus politics are so dirty is that the stakes are so small.” I mean seriously what kind of loser takes video games seriously? Or even worse, who actually cares about video game reviews?
If you're interested in interactive media -- and you've had an account on Hacker News for 8+ years, so let's assume so -- then you really should have at least a passing understanding of how video games work. Both technically and creatively. And as businesses. It's a fascinating topic -- and arguably we're going through a bit of a golden age!
If you're just interested in making fun of nerds for liking video games... Again, you've had a Hacker News account for 8+ years. Might want to watch you you call "loser" for liking stuff related to technology.
(8+ years? Unless you first created your account when you were 10 years old, you're literally an adult who wrote the comment above. Wow!)
Ha ha. I used to be a hard core gamer. Then I grew up, moved out of my parents' house, and got a life. There's nothing wrong with playing games as a hobby. The losers are the ones who actually care about games and take them seriously.
Well, originally, the female programmers of some videogames took some extreme harassment that was completely unacceptable.
The problem is that the original issue (that level of online harassment is simply not acceptable irrespective of gender and how do we stand against it) and the original victims are now long forgotten in preference to a bunch of new actors who are all about the "political theatre" of their supposed "cause".
What's frustrating about this whole situation is how deceptive the "extremists" have been on both sides (GamerGate and Anti-GamerGate) by making false-flag attacks. You just can't tell who is faking what now, and it's making reasonable discussion between the two camps impossible, further polarizing everyone.
Both "sides" are victims of their own success. In spite of whatever potentially valid points they have, the moment someone figures out which "side" you are on you are immediately lumped into one group or the other and considered completely guilty by association. And the folks that do that are so absolutely certain of how "vile" or "evil" you are, as certainly as if you'd come out as a Nazi or somesuch.
But if you could somehow make your argument without getting either label attached, someone might actually want to listen to you as though you were a rational human being.