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#GAMERGATE: The Threadening [Read the OP] -- #StopGamerGate2014

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Talon

Member
Man, it really is disheartening that all this has fucking done is reinforced negative stereotypes in the general public that gamers are insane shut-ins.

Thought this was a very articulate thought that the more immature elements within the gaming community don't seem to understand.
Strong criticism is neither an act of betrayal toward a work nor the first step toward censorship; it leads to illumination and improvement.
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/gamergate-scandal-erupts-video-game-community
 
I've seen this sentiment a lot...
NEW CONSPIRACY THEORY! Gamergate was really created by Polygon to improve public appearance. And it's working! Sinister.
I still think Polygon's reviews are mostly awful and think Gies is a terrible writer; doesn't mean the hate they're getting from this movement isn't ridiculous or it isn't good they made a clear, definitive statement on Gamergate instead of a vaguer 'death threats are bad'.
 

dLMN8R

Member
I had a ridiculously long commute home today (thanks, multiple accidents on 520 in Seattle!!), so I decided to reorganize, edit, and expand on my post.

Enjoy, do with it whatever you want:


GamerGate's original claims are that Zoe Quinn slept around for coverage favors. This was debunked literally months ago. And yet it persists.



Other bullshit about Zoe Quinn


  • Zoe Quinn was and still is today regularly accused of doxxing herself.
  • Zoe Quinn was and still is today accused of faking death, rape, and other threats.
  • Zoe Quinn doesn't actually sell the game she's accused of sleeping around to get coverage of. It's a free game about Depression, called Depression Quest, created to help others learn to live and deal with the disease. She does take donations, and was accused of lying about giving those donations to charity. However, the charity confirmed the donations were actually received
  • When accusations of those lies first arose, GamerGate started donating to that charity in her place. After the charity confirmed receiving the donations, GamerGate started harassing the charity and threatening it with legal action because they claim they "didn't disclose publicly" they had received donations from her (even though that is not actuall illegal). This is a charity is made up of volunteers and a part-time paid intern, helping people deal with depression
  • Zoe Quinn is frequently accused of winning an award (instead of Papers Please) for Depression Quest because she slept with someone. In actuality, her game didn't receive an award, but just an honorable mention. Papers Please did indeed win the award. No evidence backs up the claim she slept with someone to get the....honorable mention.
  • Zoe Quinn was accused to have "deliberately sabotaged, DDOSed, doxxed, and shut down" TFYC ("The Fine Young Capitalists") because they were "competition" for Rebel Game Jam. The reality is that it's yet another bunch of bullshit accusations against her.

Other bullshit about Anita Sarkeesian



Even more bullshit



So what is GamerGate, in actuality?


  • It's a carefully coordinated attack on women in gaming, orchestrated by the underbelly of 4chan, deliberately masquerading itself as a "concern about ethics in game journalism" because that's the only way it would gather mainstream support
  • It's an attack on ethical journalism, the exact thing they have claimed to fight for:
    ]1) The main target of #GamerGate is not a journalist. She’s a video game developer. Holding her accountable for “ethics in journalism” is like telling your accountant that it’s his job to negotiate peace treaties in the Middle East.

    2) The second biggest target of #GamerGate is an exemplar of clean journalism. If what you don’t like about gaming journalism is that it’s too cozy with the industry and therefore the writers are afraid to be critical, then your fucking hero should be Anita Sarkeesian. She funded herself with Kickstarter and not industry money. She is harshly critical of video games, even as she is a fan. She is the ideal of what a critical gaming journalist should be: Knowledgeable, critical, fair, thorough and utterly non-corrupt.

    3) The biggest victory to date of #GamerGate has been an attack on ethical journalism. One of the most important ideas when it comes to ethical journalism is that there’s a wall between advertising and editorial. #GamerGaters hate this rule of ethics, because, as opponents of ethical journalism, they wish to control what journalists say and censor any ideas or opinions that they don’t want to hear. And so they have been targeting advertisers, trying to get them to pull ads from gaming websites that publish ideas they wish to censor.

    5) The most recent target of #GamerGate was selected because she engages in ethical journalism. If Brianna Wu had kept her mouth shut and just quietly developed video games, she probably would have been left alone. Instead, she dipped her toe into the art of writing ethical journalistic pieces. But, because they are opponents of ethical journalism, #GamerGaters attacked Wu like they do any other young woman that doesn’t just churn out mindless pro-sexist propaganda.

    6) One of the main leaders of #GamerGate works for Breitbart. Milo Yiannopoulos has been up front, rallying the troops of #GamerGate and even helping them select the inevitably young, female targets for harassment. He also works for Breitbart, an organization whose hostility towards ethical journalism is legendary. No surprise there, because #GamerGate is also opposed to ethical journalism.

    In other words, #GamerGate is about “ethics in journalism” in the same way Fox News is “fair and balanced”, which is to say “not in the slightest and, in fact, they are the opposite”. Fox News called itself “fair and balanced” to cover for a not-exactly-discreet intention to be unfair, unbalanced and frequently just straight up misleading. And so #GamerGate claims to be about ethics in journalism, when in fact it is about the opposite: Bullying gaming journalists until they get in line with a corporate-friendly agenda of uncritically marketing “games pitched at the intellectual and emotional level of a 16-year-old suburban masturbator“. Anyone who actually tries to talk about anything interesting or intellectually engaging, particularly if female, will be drilled out with harassment.
 

Buzzman

Banned
I don't know if this was seen already or not, but I do like this article by the Breitbart guy.

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/08/14/Players-as-young-as-12-and-13-are-being-raped-by-dorky-weirdos-on-Grand-Theft-Auto

This is who they want to task with "defending" gaming.

You can't help but feel it's a game for frustrated beta males who can't kill or shag anything in real life
There's no doubt violent games play a part in the deeds of some wackos, such as Elliot "killer virgin" Rodger.
Personally, I don't understand grown men wasting their lives playing computer games. It seems a bit sad to me.
 

frequency

Member
I don't know if this was seen already or not, but I do like this article by the Breitbart guy.

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/08/14/Players-as-young-as-12-and-13-are-being-raped-by-dorky-weirdos-on-Grand-Theft-Auto

This is who they want to task with "defending" gaming.

I believe people can change. I haven't read any current or past works of Milo and I had never even heard of that site before this thread. But it is said that he has apologized for his past remarks and actually regularly does game streams now.

So I really don't think we should be pulling up past offenses to discredit people. We really have no reason to believe Milo hasn't changed his opinion of games.

This is the same kind of thing people pull when trying to discredit Jim Sterling or Leigh Alexander or anyone else on the internet.

People change. Maybe Milo didn't change in such a way that it agrees with us, but we still shouldn't be pulling out past works he has apologized for and has shown a willingness to actually play games publicly to show that.

He's still not a very nice person and you can find a ton of current tweets and stuff to criticize him over. No need to dig up the past when questioning Milo.
 

SmZA

Member
If interested I'll take a break from the dumb crap I've been doing on Twitter and go through it in detail.

Here's a taste. I'm assuming people here aren't already intimately familiar with this.

on arguing said:
Information is a key ally, harness it
So, it seems that many people are being baited and losing arguments. Within past debates you have seen our own members being trapped by well known SJW individuals and are helpless to watch their fate fall down to spaghetti. Not going to mentions names but they were mostly in livestream. Oh the debacle!

Well, before you even initiate debate, unless you know how to, here are some sites that can help you read the enemy's baits and counter it.

38 Ways To Win An Argument:
The 25 Rules of Disinformation:
The PR Method to approach:
Rhetorical Fallacy Arguments:
Rhetorical Fallacy Arguments Infograph: (related to above)
Complete list of fallacies:
Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement:
Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement Infograph: (related to above)
Kaftatrapping:
Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals aka Alinsky Tactics: or wikipedia
Edward Bernays's Propaganda:
The Socratic Method:
Never Interfere With an Enemy While He’s in the Process of Destroying Himself:
on having goals said:
All of the following are counterproductive and damage ourselves ONLY:

No objectives, no goals, no demands, no philosophies, no lists.

- It screws up the framing of the issue by forcing us to focus on specific issues.
- The corrupt journos will adhere to the letter of the list and not the spirit. They will find a way to weasel around them.
- The second nobody is looking, they'll go back to being dishonest.
- This idea was put forth by a well-meaning PR person, not someone experienced in consumer activity. PR is the journo's game. Not ours.
- It divides us into the goals we each specifically want and we don't all want the same things. What appeases you will not appease another etc.
- Demands are things that terrorists make. We are a consumer revolt. We are not violent. We are not underhanded. We are not a political movement.
- Philosophies are for philosophers, not consumer revolts. We don't need philosophy to obtain the moral high ground, the opposition has already given it to us. We have no benefit in philosophies.
- Goals are for games, not a consumer revolt.
- Objectives are for military operations, not a consumer revolt.
- Lists are for nerds.
- It is true that it may increase our numbers (in an absolute sense, but we're still divided over the goals) because people have specific things to champion. However, this will bring us fence-sitters and those of weak will and not people that will do the work of writing emails and investigation of corruption. If they aren't invested on the merits, they aren't invested and thus are not helpful.
- We do not need clear end points. If people are discouraged by a perceived lack of progress, take a break. This is an extended and long-term approach and you must take breaks. If you need specific goals for yourself, participate 2 or 3 days a week. Phrase it in those terms. Creating goals is not necessary.
- It does not help people get into this. What does help people get into this is a more coherent and concise set of facts that they can evaluate and come to their own conclusions.
- Numbers are not an argument. Facts create numbers. Numbers don't necessarily create facts.
- Phrasing these goals incorrectly will put them as lines in the sand. We cannot change them once they're satisfied. We cannot move goalposts like they do.
on 'shills' said:
gamergateop Notices_and_Pastas shills.md
shills.md 1.91 KB
Watch out for shills.

SHILL TYPE: The Changer
>Guys we need a list of demands/goals!
>Guys we need to change the narrative!
>Guys we need a leader!
RESPONSE: Comprehensive rebuttal to all of these - http://pastebin.com/p5dVp1e5

SHILL TYPE: The Fear Monger
>"I heard the SJWs are going to Doxx people"
RESPONSE: None. Do not respond.

SHILL TYPE: The Defeatist
>"IT'S OVER /V/, WE LOST"
RESPONSE: None. Do not respond.

SHILL TYPE: The Dismissive
>"Who fucking cares? Take it to /pol/"
RESPONSE: None. Do not respond.

SHILL TYPE: The False Flag
>"We should flood Zoe's twitter account and try to induce a meltdown"
RESPONSE: Condemn. Reply and clearly state that you do not agree with the shill. Report on sight.

SHILL TYPE: The Politico
>Inserts outside divisive issue into thread
RESPONSE: Ignore, report, hide post.

SHILL TYPE: The Discreditor
>"Anita Sarkeesian is such a filthy whore. I want to fucking murder her"
RESPONSE: Condemn. Reply and clearly state that you do not agree with the shill. Report on sight.

SHILL TYPE: The Misdirector
>"Hey guys, I found a totally legit chatlog with m00tykins in it"
>"Hey guys, Liana blah blah blah"
RESPONSE: Refocus. May be a misguided non-shill. Remind them and everyone else what the current actions and strategies are.

SHILL TYPE: The Uncertain
>"Guys, I don't know about this anymore. I don't know if we're getting anywhere."
RESPONSE: Encourage. May be a misguided non-shill. Inform them of any recent progress or successes.

SHILL TYPE: The Slider
>"The next poster is [insert name]. Do not believe it"
RESPONSE: None. Do not respond.

SHILL TYPE: The Self-Shiller
>[insert generic shill post] Responds to self with (You) next to reply number.
RESPONSE: Ignore, report, hide post. Carry on the current actions.

By following this guide we ensure that the shills can neither derail our discussion nor make us look bad by posting anonymous hateful diatribes which SJWs can quote for PR.
 
I don't understand. Games have been a fad in the 70s (pong!), 80s (Atari! Nintendo!), 90s (Sonic!) and the 2000s (CoD!). Lots of games are partially a toy and have a novelty aspect to them (new tech! woo!), there's nothing wrong with that. I don't think it means games are under threat on that front.

Comics were popular.

Then San Diego started making money and they became a phenomenon.

Zombies were popular. They they blew up.
 

Buzzman

Banned
He's still not a very nice person and you can find a ton of current tweets and stuff to criticize him over. No need to dig up the past when questioning Milo.

The past? He wrote the article two months ago, in the middle of the Quinnspiracy shitfest. That sure was a quick fucking turnaround.
 

dLMN8R

Member
The first article was actually Dan Golding's, according to the timestamp of this tweet linking to the article.

I wonder if Alexander wrote hers in response, or if it was just the zeitgeist?

Leigh Alexander was the person who was nearly harassed out of the industry.

(definitely not cuz she was a woman tho. ethics 'n stuf)
 

Orayn

Member
Do these people even know what shill means?

They honestly believe that nobody can disagree with them unless they were paid off, brainwashed, etc. Goobers are the chosen people, the only sentient beings.

The past? He wrote the article two months ago, in the middle of the Quinnspiracy shitfest. That sure was a quick fucking turnaround.

He said sorry and streamed a game on Twitch, that makes it all better to GG because they care about "sticking it to the SJWs" more than anything else, as evidenced by all the shit quoted in SmZA's post.
 

JackDT

Member
The past? He wrote the article two months ago, in the middle of the Quinnspiracy shitfest. That sure was a quick fucking turnaround.

Yeah ironically its only a few weeks earlier than the articles that caused such an uproar they spawned boycotts and it's much more offensive than those by any measure.
 

Corpekata

Banned
The New Show, hosted by Ross Everett (also was/is a SourceFed host) just held a very balanced and well moderated discussion/debate, with both sides on the issue.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RWD7h_isXHM

If this has been mentioned already I apologize, I'm really sleeping, and I'm doing this all from my phone.

This is a pretty perfect example of why GG can't be "balanced." Their rep is MundaneMatt, the type of guy that devotes videos to whether a girl that was raped and killed herself was really raped. Couldn't get Boogie or TotalBiscuit? Erik Kain?
 

frequency

Member
The past? He wrote the article two months ago, in the middle of the Quinnspiracy shitfest. That sure was a quick fucking turnaround.
He said sorry and streamed a game on Twitch, that makes it all better to GG because they care about "sticking it to the SJWs" more than anything else, as evidenced by all the shit quoted in SmZA's post.
Yeah ironically its only a few weeks earlier than the articles that caused such an uproar they spawned boycotts and it's much more offensive than those by any measure.

But he still apologized for it. If we can't take his word for it and are justified in pulling up previous statements to discredit people today, then we can not stand behind Jim Sterling or Leigh Alexander either.

It's garbage that GG people forgive him for it and then turn around and pull up previous statements from Jim Sterling and Leigh Alexander to attack them. So we should not be hypocrites in this and do the same to Milo. The action is garbage no matter who is the target of such character attacks.

That's my opinion anyway.
 
But he still apologized for it. If we can't take his word for it and are justified in pulling up previous statements to discredit people today, then we can not stand behind Jim Sterling or Leigh Alexander either.

It's garbage that GG people forgive him for it and then turn around and pull up previous statements from Jim Sterling and Leigh Alexander to attack them. So we should not be hypocrites in this and do the same to Milo. The action is garbage no matter who is the target of such character attacks.

That's my opinion anyway.

The problem here lies with you placing the original issues on the same level

Gah, edits
 
They honestly believe that nobody can disagree with them unless they were paid off, brainwashed, etc. Goobers are the chosen people, the only sentient beings.

This self-imposed blindness is why they can't be moderate. If you deny that anyone can disagree with you, you literally can not be moderate.
 

RiccochetJ

Gold Member
The half-problem with Patrick is that he's already brought up diversity issues previously, and that's why they want him to speak up more. I don't think they expect the same from people at Gamespot or IGN.

I think that's the part that's rubbing me wrong. He's been front and center a long time before Gamergate was even a thing and he's not even getting the benefit of the doubt by some people.
 

frequency

Member
The problem here lies with you placing the original issues on the same level

Gah, edits

Some of the things Jim Sterling said were very very very offensive and hurtful. I find them to have been on equal level of hatefulness to what Milo said. They just targeted different things. As a woman, Jim's past hurt me more than Milo's statements about gamers.

But now I quite like Jim.

I just don't think we are being fair by taking one person's words that they've changed as true just because they are "on our side" while dismissing another's because they're not.

The "new" Milo is just as detestable to me but for different reasons than being offensive about people who play games.
 
During the day today it feels like GGing has started to unravel a bit. With much broader media coverage and a lot of high-profile industry editorials today covering the issue awareness is up. Morale increased!

They need to recruit new heroes! One such candidate is Fox News resident Benghazi truther and jello-pile-held-together-by-conservative-catch-phrases Erick Erickson after he tweeted this--
Best I can figure, #GamerGate is the byproduct of what happens when women and gender studies majors have to find a real job.

But, best thing I've read all day--
We need more publicity, and Fox is likely to at least give us a fair shake.
A fair shake at what, you ask? No one knows! Not even they!
Should #GG have an official mission statement / goal?
Pro's
It makes it much easier for new people to find out what we are about.
It let's us focus our energy in a single direction.
Con's
We need to chose our words very carefully so they can't be twisted

If your movement is looking at Fox News for a popularity bump it might be time to reevaluate your priorities.
 
They honestly believe that nobody can disagree with them unless they were paid off, brainwashed, etc. Goobers are the chosen people, the only sentient beings.

Yeah. I had a curious conversation with someone over my claim that GamerGate people think opinions on sexism should be left out of game reviews, and how it was a stance I disagreed with... and they twisted and twisted in the wind to keep denying that that was their stance, but reiterating that the Polygon review of Bayonetta 2 was bad because the journalist brought his personal biases to it.

It was like he didn't know what to do with me because I was disagreeing with GamerGate based on something it overtly and demonstratably said. He started arguing with me about how Adam Baldwin didn't coin 'gamergate' because it was used for some other controversy years ago, and since I'd mentioned that he had coined it.

So I said 'okay... so he only thought he coined it, but unknowingly used a term that had been used before. whatever.' He came out all 'you don't know that!' so I linked him the interview where Adam Baldwin said he came up with it.

It was like he was desperately searching for something I'd said that he could prove wrong. Anything. Even if that something was me taking Adam Baldwin at face value when he said he came up with the term in an interview. Because... you know... what's important is demonstrating I am wrong about *anything* because then everything I say is obviously invalid. When I linked him the interview he wouldn't concede anything. He just said 'and that was all you took from that interview?'.

It was such a bizarre conversation.
 

MYeager

Member
Here's a taste. I'm assuming people here aren't already intimately familiar with this.

"No objectives, no goals, no demands, no philosophies, no lists."

Aside from the other 100 nonsense things, that should tell you everything you need to know about the movement. It has no objective, no goal, no philosophy. It's noise.
 
I don't know if this was seen already or not, but I do like this article by the Breitbart guy.

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/08/14/Players-as-young-as-12-and-13-are-being-raped-by-dorky-weirdos-on-Grand-Theft-Auto

This is who they want to task with "defending" gaming.

Wait this Milo guy was being held up as some champion of gamergate or am I wrong? That's funny because based on what I just read, it seems as if he holds video games in contempt considering his belief that its sad for grown men to waste their time playing computer games, a statement that most on neogaf and myself for the most part, probably wouldn't agree with.

Worse than that though (much worse) is the rape stuff, which is just plain gross. I wasn't even aware people had made such hacks, I thought that type of thing would only be possible with a pc version? Couldn't rockstar ban players who do that, or come up with some way of blocking it from the game?
 
Yeah. I had a curious conversation with someone over my claim that GamerGate people think opinions on sexism should be left out of game reviews, and how it was a stance I disagreed with... and they twisted and twisted in the wind to keep denying that that was their stance, but reiterating that the Polygon review of Bayonetta 2 was bad because the journalist brought his personal biases to it.

It was like he didn't know what to do with me because I was disagreeing with GamerGate based on something it overtly and demonstratably said. He started arguing with me about how Adam Baldwin didn't coin 'gamergate' because it was used for some other controversy years ago, and since I'd mentioned that he had coined it.

So I said 'okay... so he only thought he coined it, but unknowingly used a term that had been used before. whatever.'

It was like he was desperately searching for something I'd said that he could prove wrong. Anything. Even if that something was me taking Adam Baldwin at face value when he said he came up with the term in an interview. Because... you know... what's important is demonstrating I am wrong about *anything* because then everything I say is obviously invalid.

It was such a bizarre conversation.
The best part is when he said how the review was pushing SJW ideals on people, as reading the review will corrupt their weak feeble minds
 

JackDT

Member
But he still apologized for it. If we can't take his word for it and are justified in pulling up previous statements to discredit people today, then we can not stand behind Jim Sterling or Leigh Alexander either.

It's garbage that GG people forgive him for it and then turn around and pull up previous statements from Jim Sterling and Leigh Alexander to attack them. So we should not be hypocrites in this and do the same to Milo. The action is garbage no matter who is the target of such character attacks.

That's my opinion anyway.

I agree basically, on the list of problems and hypocrisy within gamergate you'd have many pages full of better examples before needing to pull from that one.
 
Here's a taste. I'm assuming people here aren't already intimately familiar with this.

I don't even know how to respond to this. I've seen this kind of stuff posted before and it gets no less baffling every time. This is lunacy. What is the endgame? What are they trying to accomplish? How do they think they can accomplish anything like this? We're trying to use reason against a movement completely and utterly devoid of such. It's hopeless.
 
I don't even know how to respond to this. I've seen this kind of stuff posted before and it gets no less baffling every time. This is lunacy. What is the endgame? What are they trying to accomplish? How do they think they can accomplish anything like this? We're trying to use reason against a movement completely and utterly devoid of such. It's hopeless.

Can you only imagine the tweets if Colbert did a story?
 
I don't even know how to respond to this. I've seen this kind of stuff posted before and it gets no less baffling every time. This is lunacy. What is the endgame? What are they trying to accomplish? How do they think they can accomplish anything like this? We're trying to use reason against a movement completely and utterly devoid of such. It's hopeless.
I mean, I know I am harping on this point repeatedly, but it is literally designed to just harass women until they leave the gaming community. That's it, that's their endgame. The only women they want are the ones that carry the same ideals as them; the dreamgirl who will finish a round of local Halo with them with a celebratory blowjob because he just played so well.

When people say "You're generalizing, Gamergaters aren't all sexist! They just want to prove a point!" I am still waiting to hear that point. Literally all the evidence points to the main point of Gamergate being "driving the kind of people we don't like out." If there's people who really think it's about ethics, maybe they should figure out a way to make that point without harassment.
 
I mean, I know I am harping on this point repeatedly, but it is literally designed to just harass women until they leave the gaming community. That's it, that's their endgame. The only women they want are the ones that carry the same ideals as them; the dreamgirl who will finish a round of local Halo with them with a celebratory blowjob because he just played so well.

When people say "You're generalizing, Gamergaters aren't all sexist! They just want to prove a point!" I am still waiting to hear that point. Literally all the evidence points to the main point of Gamergate being "driving the kind of people we don't like out." If there's people who really think it's about ethics, maybe they should figure out a way to make that point without harassment.

I've honestly had multiple GamerGaters admit to having no issues with anti feminists being part of the movement, while simultaneously going 'but I'm not an anti feminist'. So I've just been going with 'GamerGate welcomes anti feminists with open arms' instead, and so far no one has taken me up on that one.
 
I've honestly had multiple GamerGaters admit to having no issues with anti feminists being part of the movement, while simultaneously going 'but I'm not an anti feminist'. So I've just been going with 'GamerGate welcomes anti feminists with open arms' instead, and so far no one has taken me up on that one.

I've noticed in my discussions with Gamergate people today that they use the words "a few bad apples" a lot.

This amuses me, since the phrase that traditionally had always followed was "A few bad apples spoils the bunch."
 

Xscapist

Member
I mean, I know I am harping on this point repeatedly, but it is literally designed to just harass women until they leave the gaming community. That's it, that's their endgame. .

More specifically, they want to drive out anyone who discusses gender in gaming. They're convinced gender discussions only exist to make them feel guilty, and consider it a personal insult when a problematic aspect of a favorite game is pointed out.

Gamergate can be summarized in the old quote: "Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them."

It's about issuing physical threats to people who used words they found offensive ("sexist," "misogynist," "gamers are over').
 
I wonder who will get to gamergate first: Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central, or John Oliver on HBO.
Interesting. There's a thread over there on "which would be best for the cause" of Stewart, Colbert, Oliver or Maher they could recruit! Someone suggested John Stossel which is, just, I can't even. He's perfect! The man once opened a fake store in a mall and reversed the "women get paid XX% less than their male counterparts" and gave men the discount instead. The hook was getting them women to admit "that's not fair" which is like super damning I guess?
 
I think that's the part that's rubbing me wrong. He's been front and center a long time before Gamergate was even a thing and he's not even getting the benefit of the doubt by some people.

People were giving Patrick shit for not being outspoken enough? I feel like it's been pretty obvious for a while where he stood, in the sense that him and Alex talked about it on the morning show a bunch of times. And I say that as someone who wanted Giant Bomb as an organization to make some kind of statement about the harassment (which they have subsequently done, and good on them for doing so). You could maybe argue Giant Bomb as a whole could have responded faster, but Patrick? Maybe my memory is bad but I feel like he's been very consistent in his rejection of the movement almost from the start. He doesn't have to prove anything to me.
 
Interesting. There's a thread over there on "which would be best for the cause" of Stewart, Colbert, Oliver or Maher they could recruit! Someone suggested John Stossel which is, just, I can't even. He's perfect! The man once opened a fake store in a mall and reversed the "women get paid XX% less than their male counterparts" and gave men the discount instead. The hook was getting them women to admit "that's not fair" which is like super damning I guess?

I could see Maher getting on board, actually.
 

SmZA

Member
"No objectives, no goals, no demands, no philosophies, no lists."

Aside from the other 100 nonsense things, that should tell you everything you need to know about the movement. It has no objective, no goal, no philosophy. It's noise.

It is 100% right-wing dog whistling. They have deliberately modeled their campaign on Benghazi or Birthers. Not coincidentally, Breitbart has conducted similarly grotesque but vaguely defined scare campaigns and Hoff Sommers has made a career of this stuff for twenty years. Baldwin just seems like a useful idiot; the original IRC logs imply it.

The strategy is to complain about 'SJWs', 'corruption', unfair or 'bullying' opinion pieces - whatever seems to stick with their desired audience - and build their movement. They don't define specific goals because all they care about is numbers. That's why they're constantly crowing about whichever hashtag is 'trending' or is being falsely inflated up by 'bots'. Because when there are enough of them complaining on whatever forum they will frighten off dissenting voices. Also, the people they want joining them, tweeting for them, will only take part when they feel they aren't alone in their resentment.

It's the madness of crowds in 140 characters or less.
 
But he still apologized for it. If we can't take his word for it and are justified in pulling up previous statements to discredit people today, then we can not stand behind Jim Sterling or Leigh Alexander either.

It's garbage that GG people forgive him for it and then turn around and pull up previous statements from Jim Sterling and Leigh Alexander to attack them. So we should not be hypocrites in this and do the same to Milo. The action is garbage no matter who is the target of such character attacks.

I think the broader question this gets to is whether, when a person apologizes for past behavior and claims to have learned something they previously did not understand, they actually demonstrate that they have internalized their new knowledge in order to become a more well-rounded and empathetic person and less willing to use ignorance as a bludgeon. In the case of Jim, it's not just that he's apologized for past comments, but that he's consistently demonstrated through his work since then that he has a much better understanding of feminism and gender-related issues, that he understands the uncomfortable and sometimes hostile relationship this industry has with women and minorities, and that his overall style of criticism is less focused on other-ing people and more about identifying systemic issues within the industry. In sum, he's become a more nuanced and empathetic critic.

On the other hand, how has Milo demonstrated his newfound appreciation of video game culture and his brand new empathy for the disenfranchised and disgruntled 18-35 male audience? By focusing his attention on constructive ways to address the issues of gender in the industry? By trying to find ways to act as an advocate to publicly correct the very misperceptions about gamers he used to have? Or by opportunistically stoking the flames of the movement's worst behavior, encouraging further harassment campaigns against women, displaying a by-now-unsurprising lack of empathy toward anybody who doesn't fit into his worldview, and thus perpetuating the very behavior that characterized his negative images about gamers in the first place?

He hasn't actually turned around on anything. Women and feminism are still the enemy, as they always have been to conservatives who flock to Breitbart and co, he's just added feminist gamers into the list. The "media", being a monolithic hive-mind entity controlled by liberals in academia, are still the enemy as they always have been, he's just added the gaming media into the list. All that happened is he stumbled upon a previously untapped but rich source of outrage in the set of young angry sexually frustrated gamers convinced that there are massive external forces conspiring to keep them down and emasculate them, and realized they were a perfect fit to be drafted into his existing audience. To the propagandists who run the perpetual outrage machine that is conservative media, this is pure gold, like discovering a new animal species that survives off cheap feed and shits foie gras -- a convenient, rich, untapped source of a scarce resource ready to be herded up and exploited for pure profit. But it does absolutely nothing to demonstrate anything that could be considered a genuine change of heart or growth as a human being.
 
I could see Maher getting on board, actually.

I think that's a possibility, too. He can be remarkably uninformed on many topics.

But with the midterm elections coming up soon, I think it's quite possible that this relatively minor item will be ignored by most of the US comedy shows.

If it's still going in mid-November it could be picked up. I could actually see Milo going down well with Maher's audience.
 
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