#SavePoint on why their panel was cancelled: http://www.theopengamingsociety.org/savepoint-dear-community...
LevelUp on why their panel was cancelled: https://twitter.com/randileeharper/status/658780409765994496
LevelUp on why their panel was cancelled: https://twitter.com/randileeharper/status/658780409765994496
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.
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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])
[1] http://gawker.com/what-is-gamergate-and-why-an-explainer-for...
[2] http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/224400/Gamers_dont_have_t...
[3] https://medium.com/plaguearist-does-gamergate/im-doing-this-...
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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.
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.
[1] https://archive.is/NaHx0#selection-333.0-345.310
[2] http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/09/addressing-allegations...
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.
[1] http://tmi.kotaku.com/the-indie-game-reality-tv-show-that-we...
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.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2tbbkg/a_fi...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOioaFpZ3tU
[2] http://www.ign.com/wikis/ign/Standards_and_Practices
[3] http://www.destructoid.com/a-word-on-ethics-280654.phtml
[4] http://www.gameranx.com/about/
[5] http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/ed...
[6] http://www.eurogamer.net/policies.php?view=how-we-work
[7] http://techraptor.net/content/ftc-forces-gawker-make-disclos...
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fine_Young_Capitalists
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.
[0] https://medium.com/@Slyly_Mirabelle/a-year-of-gamergate-from...
[1] http://equalityactualitatem.tumblr.com/post/96992331819/on-g...
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."
How so? It's a direct response to this scenario: http://40.media.tumblr.com/73df4acf6fc05fcdca641f417a7d247a/...
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".
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.
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.
[0] https://medium.com/@cainejw/a-statistical-analysis-of-gamerg...
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?
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... (tl;dr: there is male hostility towards women in online video games)
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.
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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.
The basic tactic is to try to sound reasonable, to mask the seething rage and hostility that lies beneath.
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.