Not any more than you'll find idiots in any movement - I would liken them more to the vandals that presented themselves during Occupy Wall Street.

I hang around the organizing points for the GamerGate stuff - people are remarkably level headed and respectful (and absolutely NOT driven by misogyny). There is no organized harassment happening, there is no corruption. Anybody attempting to agitate along those lines finds themselves massively downvoted/flagged/reported/etc.

Sarkeesian et. al. are quite intolerant of any kind of criticism or disagreement - the trolls are, frankly, being made out to be a bigger issue than they actually are (not that people making death threats is even remotely okay, I'm pointing out that those people do not represent the movement).

If you doubt this, I invite you to do the same. It really opened my eyes. Calling GG about misogyny or even about feminism has never been anything more than a form of well poisoning.

edit I'm getting the "submitted too fast" thing now, so I can't respond to comments directly. I will do so below.

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I ask anyone that points out "harassment" to provide direct examples of organized harassment, preferably links so the rest of us can see them. Someone downthread brought up the git repo containing the markdown file - how is this harassment, again?

* Regarding the #burgersandfries IRC - absolutely bullshit and absolutely disgusting. The name is even a reference to Quinn's personal life. That channel is on Rizon, is still up, and can be looked at on your own, but you'll note that this is not the organizing channel for gamergate (which is #gamergate).

Perhaps GG started out of disgust for Quinn (and her professional behavior is hardly beyond reproach), but tying them together for the purposes of discrediting GG is a genetic fallacy.

I'm not denying that organized harassment campaigns exist - but I am saying that #GG ain't it.

* Regarding how the GG movement can only be defined by what is done under it's banner

This line of thought allows any movement to be trivially discredited. Quite literally any movement involving strong emotions will lead to people doing stupid things. If you simply discard the entire thing based on that minority of people, you have been manipulated.

This would allow people who disagree with such a movement to expend the slightest amount of effort to do something (or even fabricate doing something) distasteful in its name as a form of attack. Please recognize that this possibility exists. Your answer to "drop the movement" is not feasible as that is an untenable sequence of events. 10 Movement starts, 20 idiot does something, 30 movment discredited, 40 goto 10.

* Regarding how GG isn't going after the big publishers

GG is about games journalism, specifically the journalists themselves and their lack of integrity, not what the publishers do. We can't exert enough pressure to convince, say, EA to stop doing underhanded things - there are simply too many people who will buy their content on a schedule (like the yearly Madden rehash) for any kind of boycott to succeed. Seriously, gamers have been trying for years on outrages that are about marketplace behavior rather than social issues. It does not work.

In other words, it's a matter of picking one's battles.

Exerting pressure on the journalists is another matter entirely. A journalist is only as good as their credibility - and showing a pattern of anomalous reviews or undisclosed connections is a great (and tremendously effective) way of exerting negative pressure on that kind of behavior.