GamerGate WTF?

[Rageaholic]

This is looking like one of those clusterfucks where you really don't know who's right because it's obvious that at least one party (or sub party) is not telling the whole story.

All of the anti gamergate stuff I initially read conveniently ignored the censorship from review sites. Anyone who tried to speak out against that was instantly labeled as an MRA troll who supports rape and death threats. Initially, this was understandable because the No True Scottsman stuff is very suspicious. But now I see there are legit concerns within the gaming community.

But how much of that is conspiracy crap?

I mean sure, the rapid censorship is very suspicious, but some of the accusations toward Quinn seem kind of baseless. Then there's the issue of feminists influencing video games. A lot of it is comparable to the so called "Homosexual Agenda" boogeyman (when all they want is equal rights).

I gotta stop before I get confused. I'm still suspicious of gamergate, but I understand them more and assuming that their concerns aren't just hyperbole, they might have a point. It just might not be being heard.

[Gravekeeper]

Screw it. I did have a long post explaining the entire thing but even being male and on a small obscure website I do not want to speak Voldemort's name out loud just in case.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

Just an aside - but Wikipedia talk pages are hilarious. I can see why the articles end up the way they do sometimes. I was reading the Gamergate talk page... honestly it's a better of summary of what this debate ends up being than the actual article.

It's just people invalidating each other's POV. People asking for neutrality are getting shouted down.

[Rageaholic]

So now the quinnspiracy stuff is making sense. It's not so much the reviews, it's the censorship of anything bad about Quinn.

-Shit gets out about the sex life of a game developer.
-Mods on message boards go crazy censoring any thing that paints her in a bad light.
-People start to suspect foul play.
-MRA gets involved, accusing the mods of being pussywhipped (hence all the 'mangina' crap). Some assholes cross the line by sending rape and death threats.
-Now anyone who says anything about this is attacked by extremists on either side.

I still think the ones sending the death and rape threats are the worst, but on some of the sites I've been on, just mentioning this will result in a hoard of comments accusing the poster of trolling and painting them with the rape/death threat cowards.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

The Wiki editor wouldn't suprise me.

I think it was 2008-2010 when the Wiki article on MRA's (not the same thing, but the same political groups are involved in Gamergate) was mainly about the 60's, the philosophical underpinnings of feminism that gave birth to the academic MRA movement and then the criticism of it.

I'm not sure when but when I checked it last year, that entire article had been replaced by a heavily sourced (in feminism, that's easy because there's just so much out there to source) but cherry picked articles creating a very specific picture of a hate group or a tone deaf one. As of a few months ago, you could still find the old article in the internet wayback machine. Not sure if it's still there though. Many of the sources characterizing MRA positions are from feminist or feminist leaning sites which if you're going to be fair about it, is roughly equivalent to letting the Republican party write the Democratic party campaign literature.

It skips the 60's, touches the 70's and assumes the late 90's variant was the same thing as. Which is odd, because if you want to get into the history of it one is a movement from within men in the feminist movement to focus on their issues and the other is borrowing the name.

That's a long way of saying... not shocked. Seriously though, if you like rhetoric, actually reading the sources of that page are hilarious.

[lordlundar]

It was any mention of her that didn't put her on a pedestal that got locked down and the user banned. Even people asking for clarification on the matter had it happen to them. Like yourself, a lot of people were wondering what was the motivation behind such actions and were trying to find out. Then the articles came out.

In fact, most people didn't even know what the hell was happening when the mass lockdown hit it was that far below the radar. It could have been any event that had these sites doing it, it just happened to be this one. What had happened was the Streisand effect in action.

(And I would avoid wikipedia for info on this. There is a moderator going on a witch hunt on anyone detailing events that don't paint it as a hate group.)

[Rageaholic]

^

Wait did these boards ban discussions on review bias, the Zoe Quinn crap, or both? If it's the review bias, than I could see some shitstorm (though it still sounds like it was the Zoe Quinn thing that triggered this). But if it's the Zoe Quinn thing, than I wonder why the mods would react this way.

(though I should probably read up on this myself, though I tend to avoid Encyclopedia Dramatica)

[lordlundar]

I just don't see how one person allegidly sleeping around and an EX boyfriends rant can trigger this much of a shitstorm.

It itself it wasn't. I said in another thread and it's been mentioned here all of this crap has been a powder keg ready to explode for a long time. And in of itself the rant wasn't even the real catalyst. The real catalyst was that a number of sites who have readily put up far worse content not only did not cover it (fair enough, largely a personal choice and not one I take issue with) but that any and all discussion on it was completely banned. Not just moderated with the assholes being banned (as they should) but ANY discussion was banned and anyone even talking about it got permabanned no matter how civil they were. Reddit's /r/gaming was particularly bad with several thousand posts wiped out, most engaging in civil discussion. When confronted with just how bad the sites and their staff were behaving in the manner (mostly respectful but definitely some assholes, same as any criticism) the response was several articles on these sites attacking essentially anyone who was called a gamer.

That's when the explosion hit. Despite the claims of acting with the best of intentions, had the discussions been allowed to happen in a proper moderated environment, it would have largely blown over after a couple of weeks at most. It was how poorly it was handled that caused the blowout, not the original incident.

[Rageaholic]

LOL that editors note is pure gold. Well deserved snark.

[KabeRinnaul]

My favorite statement on all of GamerGate remains the editor's introduction to the Cracked.com article that Zoe Quinn herself wrote:

A few weeks ago our message board and general inbox were bombarded with demands we address something called the "GamerGate Scandal", posts written with the urgency and rage one would associate with, say, discovering that Chipotle burritos are made entirely from the meat of human babies. It's apparently a big deal in some circles, so we followed the links and read the piles of data presented, and had to stop and take a deep breath just to grasp it all. "Gentlemen," we said amid the stunned silence, "do you realize that if what they're saying is true, then this is still the most pointless fucking bullshit anyone has ever forced us to read?"

[Rageaholic]

I've seen the idea of "saving gaming" brought up elsewhere but I still don't see what it needs to be saved from in regards to the people GG is attacking. the ones ruinging gaming are the big companies wandering around with their heads up their ass not the reporters. Even so it doesn't feel like gaming needs saving very much to me. Console gaming maybe but again it's more that the companies can't understand people buy a video game console to play video games and everything else is gravy.

Pretty much this. I don't play many video games, but I never got the feeling it needed saving and if it did, the Zoe Quinn thing seems so small scale that I don't see it would be the focus. I just don't see how one person allegidly sleeping around and an EX boyfriends rant can trigger this much of a shitstorm.

GamerGate is looking like the tea party. Claiming to stand for one thing while being a haven for other stuff (in this case MRA idiots).

[gremcint]

I've seen the idea of "saving gaming" brought up elsewhere but I still don't see what it needs to be saved from in regards to the people GG is attacking. the ones ruinging gaming are the big companies wandering around with their heads up their ass not the reporters. Even so it doesn't feel like gaming needs saving very much to me. Console gaming maybe but again it's more that the companies can't understand people buy a video game console to play video games and everything else is gravy.

[Kheldarson]

My main thought on this is that the ex that started this shitstorm must be loving every minute of it...

[Hyena Dandy]

My views of it are... Complicated. I know people who think it'll save gaming, I know people who think it's a horrible mess trying to drive women away. I think it's a damn headache not worth my time.

I think that some people are upset for a very good reason. A lot of feminist criticism in games has been lackluster. Game reviewers are, for the most part, people who got some following or impressed with their reviews, but aren't really great critics. The reviewers are not given enough time to actually give critical analysis to games that even PLAYING them is a full time job.

I think a lot of people in the reviewing business have struggled to provide cultural commentary, and often come off as condescending and insulting to a portion of their readership. I know I was super pissed off by Moviebob's Big Picture/Game Overthinker crossover. Similarly by his "Expendables" review a few years back, which, though a movie, was still pretty insulting to anyone who liked the movie.

I think that people got kind of sick of feeling attacked for liking the games that they liked, and that became a powderkeg ready to explode. Some damn fool thing in the balkans kicked it off, and there was a huge fight.

Meanwhile, there are also people who really are just jackasses, and they saw an opportunity to direct that explosion in the right direction. Some people just want to cause chaos, or are allowing their grudges to say "Hey, here's a chance to fuck over that person!" Angry people are being guided by anger. I can certainly empathize with their anger, since they felt they were being attacked and insulted for having an opinion, for liking games, or some type of game, or whatever. Then they lash out, which is a mess, and get pushed by people who are already actively malicious, and people fight back. And it's a mess.

[lordlundar]

That is probably the best summation I've heard on this mess. Two packs of loudmouth extremes shouting past one another and accusing everyone that doesn't agree as being the enemy. Meanwhile anyone trying for reasonable discourse is shouted down and harassed by both groups. The extremists are more intent on winning than trying to find solutions which is sad because those who are not extremists being lumped in with them are really saying the same things about the problems. They're just not being heard or ignored due to the extremists on both sides.