Blarghagh

I think it's a vicious circle. The harassers go to work on someone and get their jollies, they get condemned and enjoy it, and the cycle repeats itself. Perhaps not giving the harassers the attention they crave would be a good way of going about this? Condeming them doesn't seem to be stopping them, if anything its only made them worse. I understand the immediate urge to seek new solutions when ones that have been tried have proven to be useless, but this kind of attitude is still putting responsibility on the harrassed party not only for their own issues, but also for gaming culture becoming objectively poorer with minority devs deciding that the current climate is actively hostile to them, and therefore they should leave. This reeks of victim-blaming and I think it should be called out. Oh push off . I'm not blaming any victims. I'm blaming the media that blew it completely out of proportion, polarized everyone, gave power to the trolls and lured them out of the woodwork to come down on the victims in force, and everyone who bought into that ridiculous narrative It's all well and good to spin the wheel of politically correct discrediting and land on victim blaming but that doesn't make it anything else. The reason the victims continue to be victims after the trolls are done with them is because Gawker medias cronies keep giving the trolls a platform to get attention for it. Of course I condemn the trolls and I believe every single threat against any of these people should be met with consequences, but with internet anonymity being what it is that's about as useful as condemning the rain. It's been my concern in the first place. It's all fine and dandy to go "gamers are troglodytes" but in reality I've never seen more people being against the mythical "SJW" than this debate has made them. It's going to take years before anyone can talk about any sort of social issues in fandom without being dismissed out of hand. The conversation is over because it "can't take place while harassment happens". The troglodytes are not so much blinking in the sunlight as they are laughing that their day in the sun has come. The reason I joined GG when it originally broke was because the opponents are hurting every cause they support by polarising, entrenching, misrepresenting and generally painting a giant target on the heads of everybody they report on yelling "trolls, go here for your lulz". The trolls have won and the moral outrage machine considers it a victory and I'm pissed because they hurt everything we've worked for.

I've been following this scene for a looooong time. Since rec.games on Usenet in the '90's at least, and BBS's from before that. Things have changed, big-time. Games are no longer a weird nerdy niche thing. If someone asks what my hobbies are, I can list "games" without getting more than the very occasional weird look. (I never minded them, but I do notice the difference.) Games are reviewed in major mainstream press. There are shows about gaming on major mainstream TV. Competitive gaming is starting to be recognized as a sport. That means that the weird little bubble that is 'gamer culture' has popped. It's no longer safely insulated from the rest of the world. That means that the kind of raging, overt, and often entirely unconscious racism and sexism that's apparent even in this thread -- although probably not to many of the people who do it, having only been exposed to the kind of culture that has the same values -- no longer passes without comment. Anita Sarkeesian would not have been conceivable five or ten years ago. Five years ago, if someone who's not white, or a woman, said on a forum like this "You know, I'd like it if more women or people of color showed up in games, as protagonists and main characters instead of just tokens," she would have been (1) completely alone and (2) run out of town on a rail. Now? The violence of the backlash against her is stronger than ever, but only because the usual methods aren't working anymore. She's not completely alone: she has people chiming in and supporting her. When the backlash runs to the ridiculous extents it has in GG and with Sarkeesian, to name just two incidents, this makes mainstream news -- and they aren't buying the manboon story. These neckbeards with fedoras ranting about "misandry" are weird, and they never realized it because in the gamer bubble their views were, until now, hegemonic and unchallenged. For the past few years, they've had to face a real challenge to their ridiculous views, and like the manboons they are, they've only dug their hole deeper. There are about 17,000 people hating on Sarkeesian on Reddit. That's an insignificant fraction of the people who play games. It's that majority who matters. The KainParkers, Orogun1's, pseudonymi, and Meshuggers of this world are being squeezed into insignificance, clutching their fedoras and throwing this gigantic temper tantrum that we're seeing. It's a zit. It's being popped, and there's bloody pus all over the place. Sadly there are some real pathogens in there and I fervently hope nobody will actually get killed before this is over, but ultimately that's all that it is. A zit. Popped. A while longer, and gaming will meld into mainstream culture and will be regarded no differently from films, TV, or books. The weird isolated misogynistic bubble where anything goes because hey, Internet will be history. It's the same thing in the atheist and skeptic communities too, by the way -- too other hitherto unsullied preserves of white, nerdy men. All those women and people of color elbowing their way in, demanding representation on their own terms. Same discourse, same conflict, same ugliness, same dynamic... and same direction. It'll be a while yet. A few years, maybe. And it'll very likely get worse—superficially at least—before it gets better. But yes, we are winning. The manboons can't stop it, however much poo they sling and however hard they scream. And I'm enjoying every step of the way. Wow PrimeJunta, you're a worse drama queen than any GamerGater. Either way, still haven't explained why you think the GamerGate you hate is losing. The part GamerGate that is genuinely asking for journalistic integrity? They could be losing. The part of GamerGate that is just using that as a front for harassment and trolling? They've already won. Those trolls have dictated literally every segment of this debate. They want attention? Well, now they've got oodles of it. They want to shut someone up? What have we heard from Zoe Quinn, Phil Fish or Anita Sarkeesian lately? What appearances were they scheduled for but had to drop? They want to keep women out of gaming? Well, all this ridiculous narrative about gamers being a misogynist hate group of basement dwelling neckbeards and development is a boys club that will keep women out has caused at least one female game design student I know personally to switch majors and I've seen a pretty large amount of messages going "what woman in their right mind would want to become a game designer". It's going to stay a boys club for a significant amount of time longer because of the big brouhaha over a couple of **** posting anonymous messages. Which pisses me off more than anything else, because we were bloody well making progress and all that work is now for nothing because the moral outrage machine blew everything out of proportion to give trolls exactly what they want. In this debate, the trolls learned exactly how in control they are. They control what people are allowed to say ("we can't talk about this until the harassment stops!"), they control what people do ("I'm selling polytron because I'm sick of it!"), they control what messages go out ("I'm not speaking at this event because some kid on the other side of the planet said he'd shoot me") and they control any movement they manage to co-opt. And because they are absolutely, undeniably in control, none of the things you want will come to pass. All because you and every other cog of the moral outrage machine bought into a ridiculous narrative because you're, at your core, a misanthrope who sees only the worst in people. So go ahead, "beat" GamerGate. I'm sure the loss of a hashtag will mean something huge to those trolls.

How do you figure?

Somebody on the internet once doxxed me because I said Ewoks were worse than Jar Jar Binks. Which just goes to show that if you get threatened, it doesn't give legitimacy to your argument.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZqb_9qnXKM#t=67 Just going to leave this here and go break my guitar now.

Now I kinda feel like I missed out because I never heard of it.

There are groups dedicated to trolling? D:

What's GNAA? I didn't expect them to be less overt, if anything I expected them to be more overt. Most media will not call them on their ****, no matter what his low they sink. You are very much right. There are a lot of lazy journalists out there. I found an article in a Dutch newspaper, one which normally rarely ever covers anything to do with games, decrying the terrible abuse suffered by women at the hands of the conservative angry white males known as GamerGate. The journalist who wrote it had obviously just copied everything from the Forbes article without doing any sort of research of his own into the subject. And I imagine this sort of thing is spreading to local newspapers everywhere. The force of lazy journalism is strong indeed. For those who speak Dutch : http://www.ad.nl/ad/nl/5595/Digitaal/article/detail/3770903/2014/10/17/Gamevrouwen-bedreigd-Bitch-ik-weet-waar-je-woont.dhtml It can't even get the basest facts right because it specifies that the attacks are against "topvrouwen" a.k.a. those who are at the top of games hierarchy. I haven't heard anything of Jade Raymond getting threatened, just some nobodies that literally nobody would know if they hadn't been threatened. EDIT: WikiLeaks on GamerGate: "The say movement is tainted, they're right. Keep going anyway."

I am not, I just thought they would be less overt about it.

Nope. Here's a collection of screen grabs that explain it far better than people whining about people on the internet. You'll note the GNAA involved in egging the harassment on. ... What the ****.

I thought this video was much more interesting, not because it's particularely good but because it made me laugh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmYaAkL_m7E

Yeah that's another video about the state and nature of GG. I thought this guy was entitled to have his own opinion though I disagreed with it and his assessment that #GamerGate started with the Quinnspiracy harassment as the whole point of #GamerGate was for gamers to distance themselves from that harassment as their culture got mass condemned for it. (Which then got co-opted by the same nuts, so obviously they bloody bungled it.) I also disagree with the assessment that nothing good came out of GG. The revelations about IGF racketeering are pretty damn important. So yeah, let's stop ignoring facts over opinions like "it's all bad" or "it's all good".

Good luck man, if you're as good out there as you are on here you're going to knock it out of the park.

You know what my issue is with people who say you can't discuss ethics in journalism as long as harassment is happening? They are giving trolls agency and control over what can and cannot be discussed. I reject that out of hand. This filth wants to be acknowledged and I refuse to do that. I consider any statement of "come back when guys making the same argument as you stop being jerks" to be giving in to them. Boogie is being a wonderful man again, trying to get #EndTheHate trending to get the smart people on both sides to start talking. I don't know what it will do but it makes me happy that people keep trying.

I dunno, to me Ben Grimm was never about who he was *before* he got turned into the Thing, it was about him dealing with the changes. Like I said, this specific change doesn't phase me. Changing the entire origin, themes and design for no reason, that bothers me.

I don't moderate Way Off Topic, otherwise I wouldn't participate in this debate because I would recuse myself. Here's the thing, though I originally supported #GamerGate, I stopped doing so over the harassment once I determined the trolls actually identified as #GamerGate supporters, have denounced trolls and consistently fought them and very clearly distanced my problems with journalistic ethics from them and their ridiculous witch hunts. I'm not sure where I'm throwing in my lot with them. Because I care about an issue that a jerk cares about? Well, gee, a lot of jerks care about eating. I better stop doing that too. Either way, the way I see it: we can wait forever for online trolls to go away and never get anything done, or we can talk about actual issues while ignoring them. They're never going away, so your solution to them isn't so much a solution as it is an unethical and cowardly capitulation to them. A.k.a. giving them exactly what they want. So yes, use unwarranted personal attacks to prove your superiority all you want. It's not going to work. By the way, for someone who doesn't care, you surely seem to. Think about all the talking about the problems of capitalism you could have done in the meanwhile.

Journalistic ethics and harassment may usually be two completely separate things. In this context, however, they're not. Like it or not, you're throwing your lot in with the harassers, and soiling both yourself and the cause of ethics in journalism in the process. If you're not a neckbearded manchild yourself, then you're, as Lenin dubbed Western milquetoast lefties supporting, or at least not opposing, the Bolshevik revolution, a "useful idiot."

I had a few minutes to waste. That said, this thread has opened my eyes to just how many neckbearded man-children inhabit this very forum. I'm frankly shocked. I thought more of us were fully-socialized adults, more or less. I also think that if you're more upset about indie games not getting the exposure you think they deserve than lives and careers being if not ruined at least severely harmed by this stuff, you are one of those neckbearded man-children. I see. All it took was someone to disagree with you to label them as a misogynist man-child who supports harassment. Because I care about those things, I automatically care less about harassment? I can't count the amount of times I've reported harassment and gotten twitter accounts banned for it, or the amount of times I've denounced the harassment against these people even only in the threads about it on this forum. Journalist ethics and harassment are two completely seperate things and condemning one does not equal supporting to other. But you know this, all you're here for is to pretend your superior. Too bad you can't claim superiority unless you bloody well possess it. Here's a misrepresentative label for you if you're so fond of them: Considering you don't care about it, I can consider you just another online troll trying to get a rise out of people, lumping you in with the same group sending the death threats too. Since I don't have time to waste, I'm not going to bother with that kind of nonsense anymore.

I dunno, Jamie Bell has some pretty extensive motion capture experience and did a lot of training with Andy Serkis. Literally everything I learn about the new FF flick weirds me out except that.

For me personally, considering 90% of my income comes from indie game devs that I freelance for, I find the fact that they cannot get an audience regardless of quality because they aren't chummy with reviewers or forking up cash for reviews to be a pretty damn pressing concern. With all the shovelware around, you need exposure and I'm sick of good games getting passed over for dreck like Gone Home because it happens to have some kind of moral in it or seeing good games that people threw their lives into lose out to run of the mill platformers because contest judges invested in their winning game. To see those concerns sidelined because "guess what? people network" or "criticising them right now means you're a misogynist" or even "psh there's other problems in the world" is getting pretty irritating. If there's other problems you find more pressing, go bloody talk about them. Instead you wasted a couple paragraphs proving your superiority by talking about something that you don't even care about at length. Productive.

I'm going to do some deliberate strawmanning here. Like I've been telling all my football loving friends, by supporting a specific team they are associating with the football hooligans also supporting that specific team. They must condemn the following of that team before they can talk about football!

I can say with absolute certainty that if not for this harassment, I would not know who any of them are.

How is this GamerGate's work? Ultimately if you take the bait from a troll, do not be surprised when it keeps happening. TotalBiscuit did a great little speech about how if they truly want the death threats to stop, they should STOP ****ING ANNOUNCING THEM ON TWITTER TO STRANGERS ON THE INTERNET WHO CAN'T DO **** ALL TO HELP YOU. All that does is feed and acknowledge the troll, alerting them that it worked, and encourages copycat crimes. Yet they do it, and we all know damned well why. Because deep down they enjoy this coverage and they enjoy this shield of being able to say "look see! It's sexism!" I meant the situation, not the movement. You made the same point I was trying to make but in more detail. The reason people keep threatening Anita is because it's an easy way for trolls to get the attention they want because she consistently reacts exactly the way they want her to.

I find the only consistent message #GamerGate sends to actual trolls is "hey look, your trolling works, it pisses people off and stops the people you want to bother from doing their job, GO KEEP DOING IT!"

I decided to look into Brianna Wu's games (I and pretty much everyone else would never have heard of her if not for her "involvement") and found Revolution 60. It's a game about well-endowed barbie dolls, apparently.