From what I could tell it quickly turned to a misogynist witch hunt with heavy doxxing and harassment and not a lot of actual substance
In case it's the second one, I have to tell you something: it really isn't about truth in games journalism. I know a lot of people think it is, but it truly isn't. Gamergate's sword are its misogynistic views and its coordinated attacks, while it's shield is the "games journalism" angle. If you truly believe you can separate one from the other, trust me, you can't.
The number of people who disagree with GamerGate, who are willing to deeply go into their reasons why, is very very tiny in my experience. Usually all you get is "gamergate is about harassing women", a link to an instance where trolls have done precisely that, and nothing further. Absolutely nothing to directly rebut the constant refrain that most people in the movement are there to crap on female developers.
If you have some deeper insights, I'd love for you to share them here. I find GG to be unfairly maligned - and given the fact that they've picked a fight with primarily huge, monied interests with mass media connections, I can see why. It doesn't even need to rise to the level of massive conspiracy.
I agree with the stated purposes of GG: games journalism needs some serious balancing. For instance, that mailing list in which both journalists and producers are members is an example of a line that should exist and yet doesn't. Hech, even "game developer literally in bed with producers" is something that, properly approached (not the case AT ALL, of course), could have been a valid point.
And yet, what is GG known for? They are being openly misogynistic, attacking anyone who dares speaking against them in a pretty serious way. Anita Sarkeesian and Felicia Day, to name two famous women, were doxxed and harrassed just for speaking openly.
And just like you cannot say "X and Y belong to Anonymous, but Z doesn't", you cannot say "The misogynists are using GG as an excuse, but they are not true GGers", because they are GG (the same way that you are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic).
So my point would be: If a group is full of jerks that are flocking towards a group erroneously, are they really in the wrong group?
Edit: Downvoters, where is your evidence, where is your evidence, where is your evidence, where is your evidence?
What evidence is there that prominent GG detractors are receiving harassment for their views? Exactly the same amount of evidence that prominent GG supporters are receiving harassment for their views, yet for some reason, this standard is only applied against some people and not others.
I want to know what that reason is, I want someone reasonable to explain that to me, and I hope beyond all hope it doesn't boil down to "because some of those people have media connections and some don't".
It gets easier to understand when you realize most of us were bullied as kids. It becomes a natural instinct to herd together and protect our own. It's less because some of those people have media connections and more because those media connections happen to be people they consider friends and loved ones. At that point, emotional bias takes over.
Or, to put it another way, if somebody told you your mother was a murderer, would you believe him, no matter what evidence he presented? Even if he had a video of the event, it would be easier for you to believe that the tape had been doctored than for you to believe this person you loved could do something so terrible. At least it would be for me.
I'm not excusing it, mind you, just explaining it.
Given how central HN is to Silicon Valley, I suspect that at least some of the participants in this discussion are more than innocent (if naive) bystanders and actively sabotage any investigation into the licentious relationship between games companies and game journalists: whenever anyone dares to mention that something untoward has been going on, they automatiaclly and habitually scream: misogyny, harrassment, bullying. And it works well on the mainstream level: the damsel-in-distress trope sells really well with normal guys. But it doesn't work with everyone, like myself ... leading to angry downvoting.
I suppose you could argue that exposing frauds is a form of doxxing, but so could whistleblowing. I think there is a line to be drawn[0], but their names? How do you talk about the key players in a scandal if you can't use their names?
[0]: That guy who took a picture of Zoe's work place and posted it on twitter was over the line, for example. Then again, Zoe posted Mike Cernovich's address on twitter and encouraged her followers to swat him.
But when we must talk about them, we can use their public names and get along fine. Getting their former identities doesn't help people who want to clean up journalism, it just helps dig up background dirt.
All this shows the ridiculousness of the charges the Van Valkenburg and Flyns of this world are making, then the gullibility of their followers.
Keep digging.
Okay, so first off, "attacking" does not imply misogyny. Attacking a woman for any reason that's not directly related to her gender is not misogyny. Period point blank.
Secondly, "What GG is known for" is the perception, the thing I take issue with, "What GG actually does" is something else.
I find it somewhat telling that you (not sure if you did this on purpose or not) characterize the community's response to being called misogynists as "attacking", and you characterize the people throwing the accusations as "speaking against". I'm not sure that any reasonable person would respond with anything but derision at being pre-emptively labeled in this way. Are people not allowed to defend themselves?
What I'm looking for here are facts. It appears, and please correct me with something I can actually verify on my own if I'm wrong here, that basically three people are saying "i'm being attacked because X", without actually backing up that accusation.
The cycle appears to be:
* Person writes incisive article or otherwise does something skeevy (GJP email list)
* Community goes "WTF?"
* Person characterizes this response as harassment.
I see no evidence, none, other than the words of the people concerned (which for obvious reasons, is insufficient evidence), that GG is mass harassing them. THIS IS THE MISSING PIECE OF THE PUZZLE FOR ME. Every time I try to follow the evidence trail, it ends at, in effect "I say I'm being harassed, so I am", with a side order of "The extremists in a group define a group".
I do not accept either of those explanations as true or logical.
And as a follow up, even if we acknowledge the existence of that mass harassment, what effort does the rest of the GG community, the people that are actually part of the revolt for the purposes of journalistic impropriety, need to do that they have not already done?
Loudly state they don't support harassment? Already done. [1].
Form a group to ensure harassers are removed from their ranks? Already done. [2]
Try to assemble a code of conduct for people to follow? Already done. [3].
What else needs to happen?
The problem with your standard is that you allow any group to be trivially discredited by the existence of a minority of troublemakers, either real or invented by the discreditors. The same kind of thing happened to Occupy Wall Street, the difference here is that this is the internet, and we should be able to logically separate troublemakers from non troublemakers.
--
[1]: https://jennofhardwire.wordpress.com/2015/01/06/gamers-discu...
[2]: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23gamergate%20harassment%20pat...
[3]: https://docs.google.com/a/tkware.info/document/d/1WjidVijE_f...
Oh the corrupt journos showed up. I wonder why. https://twitter.com/totalbiscuit/status/521737847758663680
Games "journalism" has always been a stones throw away from advertising and you all don't have an ethical bone in you. Basic journalistic values such as skeptical inquiry, critical thinking or independent judgment are foreign concepts.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2014/09/17/exposed-the-secre...
Here are more emails[0].
It's put up or shut up time. Either you're going to provide a thorough counter of the evidence provided or everybody will know exactly what you are: a liar.
[0]: http://www.breitbart.com/london/2014/09/18/the-emails-that-p...
What's the conclusion? That video game journalists are secretly colluding to push an agenda? That's just about the most penny-ante conspiracy theory imaginable. That the evidence is selectively excerpting emails from a professional mailing list (that from what I've been able to discover wasn't exactly a secret) is pretty petty.
Major industry organizations have been forced to step up their efforts to protect innocent developers from GamerGate.
I oppose GameGate because:
* Every issue they've brought up has, without exception, been a minor quibble at best and an outright fabrication on the part of GamerGate at worst
* GamerGate has, as a movement, systematically refused to decry the harassment or take any kind of practical steps to curb it
* GamerGate uses charities as cover for their actions, and then DDOS the charities when the charities refuse to be used like that.
* GamerGate is still, as a movement, entirely obsessed with three specific women
* GamerGate uses anonymity for plausible deniability of its celebration of things like developer's dogs dying (multiple instances), SWATing (multiple instances), bomb threats (multiple instances).
If your anonymous imageboard thread gets regularly co-opted by trolls, maybe they're the real movement and you're the outsider.
Celebrating dogs dying: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/01/brianna-wu-dog_n_62...
http://www.dogster.com/the-scoop/brianna-wu-dog-dies-gamerga...
SWATing: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/13/gamergate-...
http://gawker.com/8channers-sent-cops-to-wrong-house-in-atte...
https://storify.com/a_man_in_black/baphomet
Bomb and Shooting Threats:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/16/technology/gamergate-women...
http://www.newsweek.com/feminist-video-game-critic-receives-...
http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/anita-sarkeesian-forced-to...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/10/15...
http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/17/anita-sarkeesian-gdc14-bo...
http://www.cnet.com/news/anita-sarkeesian-cancels-speech-in-...
https://twitter.com/femfreq/status/521072241673379840
http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/15/7551417/nightline-gamergate
http://zennistrad.tumblr.com/post/100805680213/analyzing-the...
Other GamerGate-related information:
http://ohdeargodbees.tumblr.com/post/107838639074/august-nev...
https://pixietalksgamergate.wordpress.com/gamergates-misconc...
https://storify.com/a_man_in_black/there-s-no-money-in-it
https://storify.com/a_man_in_black/gamergate-condones-harass...
https://storify.com/a_man_in_black/how-gamergate-harasses-vi...
https://storify.com/a_man_in_black/why-i-still-oppose-gamerg...
https://storify.com/a_man_in_black/actually-gamergate-is-abo...
http://blip.tv/foldablehuman/s4e7-gamergate-7071206
http://www.zenofdesign.com/gamergate-hits-rock-bottom-keeps-...
Indeed you link to Sarkeesian's (or rather Jonathan Mcintosh) Twitter as evidence ... don't you think even random people might find such a source ... how can I put it delicately ... somewhat partial?
Indeed you admit "It's immensely hard to tie the events to specific people". So if it's hard, why do you do it? Given this methodological misinformation that you've carried out, I wonder if you are somebody who has something to hide, has skeletons in his cubboard and throws shade at anyone who challenges the official, mainstream narrative.
Let me close by challenging you again: please present concreat, actionable evidence, usable in a court of justice, that the alleged threats against Sarkeesian, Chelsea Van Valkenburg (aka Zoe Quinn) and John Walker Flynt (aka Brianna Wu) were carried out by who had a substantial GG affiliation.
See, here's the thing: because of the way that GamerGate works, anyone who says that they're part of GamerGate is a part of GamerGate. To use just one example, the shooting threat in Utah was by someone explicitly claiming a link to GamerGate.
(And I never said that GG killed dogs, I said they celebrated the dogs being killed. Which is obvious if you read 8chan at the time.)
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/16/technology/gamergate-women...
[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/10/15...
You really don't understand (or pretend you don't understand) how modern newspapers work.
1. Newspapers have ideological bias. In terms of domestic news, it's a liberal newspaper, so would automatically add a sexist anti-male spin.
2. Journalists are under heavy deadline pressure and badly paid. Typically most stories in a newspaper like the NYT are slightly edited press releases from some PR agency. The corrupt games journalists who are trying to cover up their wrong doings know this and produce press releases that smear GG, knowing that mainstream news outlets like the NYT will uncritically print them. You only need to look at the Wikipedia article for Chelsea Van Valkenburg (who currently calls herself Zoe Quinn) to see a prime example of a PR-agency hit-piece. Having worked in PR and journalism, I can smell the PR-style writing from a million miles.
3. Newspapers like the NYT are doing financially very badly and are desparate for page-views. And the damsel-in-distress narrative reliably generates such page-views. That's why the likes of Sarkeesian, Chelsea Van Valkenburg (aka Zoe Quinn) and John Walker Flynt (aka Brianna Wu) use them, and that's why the NYTs of this world print them.
Rest assured that the NYT writer responsible for editing the press release you linked to has done no fact-checking of substance.
As to "because of the way that GamerGate works": I'm afraid it's the other way round. Since there is no organisation, no formal membership, everybody can claim to be GG; moreover, Sarkeesian, Chelsea Van Valkenburg (aka Zoe Quinn) and John Walker Flynt (aka Brianna Wu) et al and their friends have strong financial incentives to run false flag operations, see their Kickstarters and Patreons and media adulation. So the only reasonable default assumption must be that they are running false flags. This default assumption should only be reversed in the presence of concrete, actionable evidence that would work in a court of law. So far none of this has been forthcoming.
I would also like to point out that the police clearly doesn't take these claims seriously, for otherwise we'd probably have seen some people being arrested or charged. After all anonymity on the internet is hard these days, and beyond the abilities of most.
As somebody that has watched GG from the outside out of fascination, I don't think this point is true and I think think it points to a broader problem online that I feel is becoming increasingly troubling - a failure to recognize that trolls are attracted to conflict and not necessarily representative of anyone on either side of an issue.
What practical steps to curb the actions of anonymous internet trolls would you have considered sufficient?
Like I said, I think it's a larger problem of shitty behavior on the internet in general, and I don't think anyone has a real solution at this point. I find it unfortunate that people use that behavior as an excuse to talk past each other.
That story was broken by TotalBiscuit, a prominent YouTube game reviewer who's generally considered to be part of Gamergate by its opponents and has been under attack by them for supporting it for months. (I believe they're currently trying to get his Steam curator privileges pulled for supporting it.) The gaming press didn't even report on it until over a week after it'd already blown up in Gamergate circles, the PR company behind it had apologized and promised not to do it again, and the Youtubers who took the deal had been scrutinized. Even then, I think TB was the main driving force behind them reporting on it.
The whole narrative about Gamergate ignoring it started a while after the gaming press finally reported on it, so about two weeks after GG got those responsible to apologise and back down from their decision. (By which point there wasn't much new GG discussion of it because they'd won and it was old news.)
But you go right on saying that, person who made an account to post this one comment.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2014/09/17/exposed-the-secre...
Besides being gendered, the other bit I've noticed is that it seems very anglosphere. We had a brief discussion in class here (Denmark) about gamergate, which I was initially very cautious about because I didn't want to be leading, but it ended up mostly fizzling because afaict students just viewed it as foreign and not their problem. They didn't seem to view it as an active debate here that they should be for or against, but rather some weird debate in America that they could only shrug about (weird debates in America that you can only shrug about are a dime a dozen). Well, maybe America plus some tagging along from CA/UK/AU. That perception is probably strengthened by the fact that the high-profile "pro-gamergate" articles have come from right-wing Anglo-American media outlets like Breitbart Media, whose politics start from a position that's pretty weird/foreign by local standards.
[1] There was a period when a bunch of people had a conspiracy theory about how DiGRA (http://www.digra.org/), a small and mostly ineffectual professional society for academics studying games, was taking over games. Being vaguely on the fringe of that organization provided good opportunities for trollish hashtagging (I attended a DiGRA conference once, which I believe made me a member for 1 year as a result of paying the conference registration fee). It was fun to imagine ourselves as all-powerful conspirators directing the future of games, when almost no game developers have even heard of the conference (much less read its papers), and the organization's powers are such that releasing a timely call for papers once a year remains an aspirational goal.
Women get more attention in general, both negative and positive, both online and off. You spent your time trolling GG, I spent my time arguing for GG. Both of us were largely ignored. There are quite a few women arguing in support of GG and they also get a large amount of attention (positive from GG, negative from antiGG). It's human nature to pay attention to women.
... it seems very anglosphere.
Considering all of the companies involved are American, this doesn't surprise me. I don't even think the UK would bother with it much if it weren't for Milo. It just doesn't affect anybody outside of American culture, thank god.
There was a period when a bunch of people had a conspiracy theory about how DiGRA ... was taking over games.
HAHAHAHA, oh man. I've never heard of DiGRA until just now, but that's hilarious. You should put DiGRA Illuminati on your business card.