Why is it that the more I read about "Gamergate," the more I think it might be the long sought after anesthetic that can put anyone into a deep sleep with virtually zero risk?
If you follow from that side, then you see that the entire ordeal is two sides that have valid points and that aren't inherently conflicting.
The "conflict" is a self-feeding circle of hatred on disgusting platforms such as twitter which only serve to point the finger. "Look at what those mysoginistic arseholes are saying" and "Look at what those unethical cockroaches are printing", more or less.
I spent five minutes reading through the feed of some gg-related (pro or against, doesn't f-ing matter at this point) "moderator". I got deeply affected. Way, way too much. The guy was fighting the "conflict" and not doing either side any favour. I got physically ill and wanted to cry.
The worst of the worst on the internet usually doesn't affect me, but this did, maybe because it showed me that sometimes, humanity is pretty damn hopeless.
Thanks a lot, Twitter, for enabling such senseless hatred to develop and literally destroy a large part of the gaming community. To enable the worst in people and harass people, I must stress, on both sides of the pointless conflict. An absolute waste.
I can only recommend people to stay the hell away from the entire subject and ignore it. If you care about ethics in game journalism, you should stay the hell away from gamergate. And if you want to improve the situation regarding women/feminism in games, being "anti-gg" won't help your cause. At this point, it's just a hopeless bunch of people arguing on twitter over the argument itself, rather than the actual talking points.
Disclaimer: I work for Curse, a gaming media company which has had no involvement in the subject. What follows is obviously my own opinion and recollection of events, not of my company.
TLDR: The conflict has its roots in conflicts of interest centering around a certain female indie game developer who had a relationship with a journalist at Kotaku. From there, the debate split between reasonable people talking about journalistic ethics and ... less reasonable people having disgusting reactions like you'd get in any heated debate on the internet (especially in a fairly younger demographic).
Several gaming news sites involved in the accusations started focusing on the mysoginy part in order to save face and the original issue of journalistic ethics was replaced by a debate on sexism in video games, the lack of female characters etc etc (a debate which, by the way, we regularly have in the gaming community).
So no, anti-gg doesn't specifically care about journalism ethics. There is a massive misunderstanding in what "gamergate" actually is and if only this pathetic debate moved to a platform which ACTUALLY ALLOWS DISCUSSION FFS, it'd fairly quickly be cleared up with the noise filtered out. This is why I recommend those who actually care about the actual issues to distance themselves from this disaster.
On misogyny:
1. Many of the gaming journalists GamerGate have specifically called out as unethical (Nathan Grayson, Ian Miles Cheong, Shanley Kane, Arthur Chu) are public advocates of identity feminism.
2. Gamer culture, in general, leans more toward equality feminism. Many of the gamer bloggers doing the calling out (Georgina Young, Jennie Bharaj, Angela Night) are public advocates of equality feminism. Christina Hoff Sommers, the founder of equity feminism (a related branch), has issued several pro-gamer videos.
3. Identity feminists consider equality feminism and equity feminism to be reactionary, misogynist, anti-feminist movements.
With these factors combined, you get a category 5 internet shitstorm. Wealthy white men are writing newspaper articles denouncing women as misogynists, because those women wrote blog posts calling out the journalists as corrupt.
Edit: actually, could you help me get any more info (or the definition) on "identity feminism" and the difference between it and "equality feminism"?
The real question is why you feel compelled to brag about it, instead of just closing the tab and reading something that suits you.
About weird-ass "gamers" whose lives are so devoid of meaning that they become psychopaths?
You're doing exactly what I spoke against in my post above. You're singling out one side and pointing the finger yelling "bad people! bad!".
Do you really think the argument is "bad people" vs. "good people"? That the pro-gg side's argument is "let's be psychopaths! being a psychopath is fun!"?
Think for a moment. Please. I looked at your other posts, you seem like a smart and completely reasonable person. Why didn't it occur to you that whatever is happening on twitter is foreign to the actual talking points?
And why didn't it occur to you that both "sides" are full of raging psychopaths who have done the worst of the worst? How can your mere association and sympathy with one of the sides make you so blind to its own actions?
Maybe we're here seeing why the two-party american political system is such a clusterfuck.
Edit: Jesus christ the downvotes. "Screw anyone who tries to bring sanity to this debate! I want my chaos back!". You're better than that, HN.
... but if I linked you such an article, that'd be a bit of a catch-22.
So, what's the point you're trying to make? Do you even have one? Or did you, too, pick a side and decide they were more right than the other, blindly ignoring the three posts I've written about it?
And will you actually try to answer, or are you, too, going to instead whine on twitter that "{pro,anti}-gg people are being mean again!"?
So Mr. Gerard, how's that hobby of attacking intelligent and fair minded people for engaging in civil discussion going?
[Above link gives context on David Gerard's standards of discourse.]
It's sad to see people don't evolve.