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[Dunki]

Of course these 2. Wonder were waypoint is.

 

[lifa-cobex]

 

[Radical Dreamer]

the fuck is this bullshit? the voices in cs:go are so staged it's sad actually

People these days (especially in America, I don't know maybe it's my feeling and because I'm from eastern europe but it really seems that way to me) like to blow everything wayy to much out of proportion

 

[KevinKeene]

First, thanks to the OP for the summary. I really hope Steelseries isnt behind this.

Second - for everyone saying JUST MUTE JUST MUTE. While I agree that will put an immediate end to the problem is that a real solution? For me no, because why cant someone enjoy a game with interaction and chatting as teammates without fear of being bullied?

Why can't someone enjoy life without fear of being raped or even murdered?
This is extremely naive. I share the idealistic wish, but 'have people become better people' will never work. Feminists will eventually have to swallow that one to see the practical options for an improvement of the situation.

"Just mute" is the most effective, easiest and sensible option as of now. And no other option comes close.

"Be nice to each other" is wonderful advise. But we live in a world where in this very second a child dies of starvation, where a teenage daughter is raped by her dad without anyone finding out for years to come, and where a homeless person is killed by a group of boys for the fun of it. Gamers won't stop shouting slurs and curses in the heat of an online match - but at least it takes place in a virtual environment that gives you tools to deal with it.

 

[LAMeduck]

Is this an attempt at self-immolation?

 

[Scopa]

Of course these 2. Wonder were waypoint is.

Oh, wowee! She did an interview with Kotaku and Polygon! I can’t wait for these articles to hit the press! I am sure they will be completely unbiased and report on the situation in a fair, objective manner and include all the facts!

 

[strange headache]

I'm really interested in how Kotaku and Polygon will spin the narrative on this dumpster fire. ZombiUnicorn and her motley crew have already started evoking the usual 'alt-right misogynistic neckbeard basement troll attack' defense. They'll keep spinning the narrative so hard, it will create a rift in the space-time continuum where we'll be sucked into a parallel universe where 'evul misogynistic g4m0rs' will discover her since deleted suicide girls playboy pictures. She'll use that as an attempt to vindicate herself by claiming that she got doxxed by hateful trolls who "stole" these pictures in order to damage her stellar reputation.

She'll keep putting herself into the center of attention through incendiary remarks to the point, where she'll be invited to the U.N. in order to propose the creation of a military-grade taskforce of online-hunters. The resulting U.N. report will be horribly written and terribly sourced, linking to documents on a private harddrive. She'll keep repeating how much harassment she receives and how she has to literally fear for her life while she'll keep poking the hornets nest because, apart from her shitty gaming related projects, it's the only thing she'll ever be known for.

The press will lap her story up like candy because it's good drama and provides outrage clicks. They will prop her up as another feminist messiah, to the point where she'll write a book on how the internet almost killed her. Of course the book will sell poorly, but will nevertheless receive a Hugo nomination.

In that alternate universe, it will create an ever growing rift in the gaming community for years to come. Every ounce of criticism will be quickly dismissed as 'misogynist hatespeech' and gamers will be painted as to be in support of bullying. The resulting disconnect between the press and the gaming community will be so severe, it will be claimed to impact the U.S. presidential elections... oh wait!

 

[Revolutionary]

Of course these 2. Wonder were waypoint is.

I imagine their articles will be something like this but without the satire
https://polytaku.press/index.php/2018/04/13/why-bully-hunters-doesnt-go-far-enough/

 

[Kadayi]

Of course these 2. Wonder were waypoint is.

I'm really interested in how Kotaku and Polygon will spin the narrative on this dumpster fire. ZombiUnicorn and her motley crew have already started evoking the usual 'alt-right misogynistic neckbeard basement troll attack' defense. They'll keep spinning the narrative so hard, it will create a rift in the space-time continuum where we'll be sucked into a parallel universe where 'evul misogynistic g4m0rs' will discover her since deleted suicide girls playboy pictures. She'll use that as an attempt to vindicate herself by claiming that she got doxxed by hateful trolls who "stole" these pictures in order to damage her stellar reputation.

She'll keep herself putting into the center of attention through incendiary remarks to the point, where she'll be invited to the U.N. in order to propose the creation of a military-grade taskforce of online-hunters. The resulting U.N. report will be horribly written and terribly sourced, linking to documents on a private harddrive. She'll keep repeating how much harassment she receives and how she has to literally fear for her life while she'll keep poking the hornets nest because, apart from her shitty gaming related projects, it's the only thing she'll ever be known for.

The press will lap her story up like candy because it's good drama and provides outrage clicks. They will prop her up as another feminist messiah, to the point where she'll write a book on how the internet almost killed her. Of course the book will sell poorly, but will nevertheless receive a Hugo nomination.

In that alternate universe, it will create an every growing rift in the gaming community for years to come. Every ounce of criticism will be quickly dismissed as 'misogynist hatespeech' and gamers will be painted as to be in support of bullying. The resulting disconnect between the press and the gaming community will be so severe, it will be claimed to impact the U.S. presidential elections... oh wait!

I for one look forward to Patrick Klepek lamenting once more on Twitter how he didn't do enough to stop Gamergate Bullygate and the inevitable meteoric rise and election of President for life Alex Jones.

 

[lvl8]

Vertagear, Steel Series and Diverse Gaming Coalition are severing ties with Bully Hunters.







I'm surprised they didn't double down.

 

[Bwesh]

The first response from Steelseries was an "at least it created a conversion" type. But good on them to at least create a clearer second statement about dropping support.

 

[WaterAstro]

Guess it's done. They have so much bad rep now that no one will support them.

Fighting bullying with bullying is a terrible idea to stop bullying.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Wow it's amazing to see how this site has slummed into allowing dog whistle alt right language, with openly hostile anti feminist and misogynistic posts.

Good fucking job gaf

 

[Dunki]

Wow it's amazing to see how this site has slummed into allowing dog whistle alt right language, with openly hostile anti feminist and misogynistic posts.

Good fucking job gaf

1 Where do you see this in this thread? Alt right really?
2. Anti feminist =! misogynistic Modern Feminism is an ideology most people in the world reject even though they stand for equality. If you believe that anti feminist means anti equality or misogynistic thinking I can not help you at all.
3. If you can not have an actual discussion and you feel uncomfortable with different viewpoints and if you put everything in this corner you do not agree with than maybe this site is not for you.

Think long and hard about what you can handle and then decide.

PS: This has not even something to do with feminism or modern feminism this is a terrible scam and nothing else.

 

[shinkai]

I can't believe these people don't have the same belief and opinions as me so I am offended by it so I will just call them misogynist despite strong evidence suggesting that one of the people involved is a bully herself and the information they are providing is false and inaccurate

I think this is what you meant to say

 

[zelhawks37]

This was beyond cringe and the concept of it bugged me since all you need to do is mute the other player. Not hard. Besides, trashtalking has always been a part of conpetitive culture. Bully hunters will only fuel the kind of people it is targeting too.

 

[Revolutionary]

Edit: redacted because responding to a banned person is pointless

Anyway, the Bully Hunters website seems to have gone down. It lasted a whole two days.

As for SteelSeries, it seems ZombiUnicorn "has receipts" that they had a larger hand in this than their statement implies. Seems like this shitshow is far from over.

 

[Kenpachii]

Edit: redacted because responding to a banned person is pointless

Anyway, the Bully Hunters website seems to have gone down. It lasted a whole two days.

As for SteelSeries, it seems ZombiUnicorn "has receipts" that they had a larger hand in this than their statement implies. Seems like this shitshow is far from over.

A company i sometimes work for decided to drop the entire line of steelseries products because of this. So yea i could see this happening.

 

[Ridcully]

I'm kind of sad the scam got busted before the handbook or whatever was released, I wanted to know how they were going to tell people it "worked" outside of a staged context.

 

[Grinchy]

The first response from Steelseries was an "at least it created a conversion" type. But good on them to at least create a clearer second statement about dropping support.

Yeah, I always hate that stupid justification that used to be used all the time.

"Sure, what we did or said was completely wrong, but it got people talking about this situation, so our actions are justified." It's like the punch-a-nazi group mentality.

 

[Kadayi]

I read somewhere that the timeline on the Steel series 'creating a conversion' thing was before the event actually started, rather than in response to it turning into a clusterfuck, so I'm inclined to give them a pass rather than reach for the torch and pitchfork

 

[Hanon]

we went from goofy shit-talking on our mics in Halo, to This.

i miss the 6th console generation,

 

[GenericUser]

If I'd be a woman, I'd be embarassed for my own gender. Real women don't need cyber bully hunters, they can stand up for their own and if you do not feel like agueing with somebody on the internet, there's alwyas a mute button.
This whole thing looks more like a platform for attention whores and for hardware manufacturers selling "anti-bully" headsets to edgelords.

This hurts women and gamers alike. Glad this whole thing imploded quickly.

 

[louis89]

...

 

[Silvawuff]

This is extremely cringey, and I'm a woman myself. Just mute and move on, problem solved.

 

[WaterAstro]

If I'd be a woman, I'd be embarassed for my own gender. Real women don't need cyber bully hunters, they can stand up for their own and if you do not feel like agueing with somebody on the internet, there's alwyas a mute button.
This whole thing looks more like a platform for attention whores and for hardware manufacturers selling "anti-bully" headsets to edgelords.

This hurts women and gamers alike. Glad this whole thing imploded quickly.

That's actually a good point too. We should really empower women to be confident and to stand up for themselves against cyber bullies. The idea of hiring a person to do that for you is very counterintuitive to dealing with bullies.

 

[iconmaster]

Everyone involved: "We were barely involved." Apparently the campaign sprang fully-formed from the forehead of Zeus. Well, that happens sometimes.

 

[DryvBy]

This is one of the funniest stories of the year. I've been following this for a bit and laughing all the way to the lawlz bank.

 

[DonF]

Remember, my fellow gamers, there is mute button and a report button! Use it! By buying this stuff you are not really helping abuse and such, you are just giving money to a company, that uses that as an excuse.

 

[mushy tailspin]

When I first saw this I thought for sure Anita Sar..something's hands were all over it. Unicorn must of took a page out of her playbook.

I mean if you have no love for gaming or people in general this subject is big money these days. It's kind of genius I mean really there's no bad press I'm sure they roped people through this

 

[strange headache]

So the Kotaku and Polygon articles have dropped and it goes as well as predicted.

Kotaku

“Speaking personally, although the hateful comments aren’t easy to look at, I still firmly believe it’s important for me and like-minded individuals to speak up on behalf of victims and share our truth no matter what the trolls may say.”

ZombiUnicorn, who emphasized that while she’s only consulting on the Bully Hunters project and is not heading it up, believes the Bully Hunters organization has heard the criticism and is open to change. “They are gonna be working on changing stuff and coming up with more ideas,” she said over the phone, also claiming that Bully Hunters began as a campaign to raise awareness around online harassment, with the hunt element only being added a few months ago as a stunt to kick off the larger campaign. “I am still working with Bully Hunters to come up with more solutions and other ways of taking all the feedback.”

She added, however, that from her perspective, the campaign has already kind of succeeded in that it got a lot of people talking about harassment, even if a lot of that talk was directed at the campaign itself. “If it’s gonna help a few more people understand that this is not OK—all these people are speaking up saying that we shouldn’t do the Bully Hunters thing because that might harass the bully—then it did its job,” she said. “It’s bringing more attention to the fact that harassing isn’t OK. You can debate the merits of the execution, but I’m always gonna remain supportive of the overall goal.”

Polygon

“Love it or hate it, it did its job. It’s brought a lot of attention to this. It’s opened up the discussion to more people. Yeah, it’s brought a lot of trolls, but it’s opened the discussion.”
The more that comes out about Bully Hunters, the less anyone seems to want to be attached to the project at all — financially or otherwise.

Although most of the companies involved, including SteelSeries, have fled Bully Hunters, and the situation raised plenty of eyebrows, Casanova stands by the organization. She believes the campaign proves more than ever that there’s a problem with harassment in the industry that she wants to keep fighting against.

“We obviously need it,” Casanova said. “Look at the fact that so many people are pretending like they’re tearing apart Bully Hunters because of the bad execution, and in the process are harassing me and multiple other people so badly. Go through my timeline. Look at all the rape threats; the ‘whore’; the ‘cunt’; the ‘stupid idiot, you’re a slut, you’re an idiot, you’re not even a real gamer.’ That’s real harassment.”

Standard go to defense of "doesn't matter, started conversation" and "criticism is harassment". Oh they certainly started a conversation, unfortunately it's a conversation about anything but harassment. In fact, this whole stunt only poisoned the well for other discussions about real issues related to bullying. Well done.

I'll never understand how they can peddle their bullsh*t online and then react so surprised when the people they are sh*tting on bite back. Did they really expect that demonizing a whole demographic would pass without a hitch? Never mind the fact that females are equally as engaged in online bullying as males are. But no, gotta make it another needlessly divisive issue instead of talking about the problem itself.

It's history repeating itself. Never change Polytaku, you predictable fools, never change!

 

[Scopa]

So the Kotaku and Polygon articles have dropped and it goes as well as predicted.

Kotaku



Polygon



Standard go to defense of "doesn't matter, started conversation" and "criticism is harassment". Oh they certainly started a conversation, unfortunately it's a conversation about anything but harassment. In fact, this whole stunt only poisoned the well for other discussions about real issues related to bullying. Well done.

I'll never understand how they can peddle their bullsh*t online and then react so surprised when the people they are sh*tting on bite back. Did they really expect that demonizing a whole demographic would pass without a hitch? Never mind the fact that females are equally as engaged in online bullying as males are. But no, gotta make it another needlessly divisive issue instead of talking about the problem itself.

It's history repeating itself. Never change Polytaku, you predictable fools, never change!

Did they ask her about her own usage of the term “f_gg_t” online? I’d check myself but I never give them clicks. I’m gonna guess no.

 

[KevinKeene]

Absolutely shameless on Kotaku's and Polygon's part. And then everybody acts surprised when video game journalism is laughed at.

 

[klosos]

Sorry this is hilarious to me , how many more times do little opportunist outside of gaming keep getting caught with the same rhetoric , with the end goal of walking away with cash in there pocket.

Its getting extremely embarrassing that games media fall for it every time

 

[Floyd]

I wish woman would stop infantilizing other woman for financial gain. Its grotesque. Hurts them and the industry i love.

 

[BPoole]

First, thanks to the OP for the summary. I really hope Steelseries isnt behind this.

Second - for everyone saying JUST MUTE JUST MUTE. While I agree that will put an immediate end to the problem is that a real solution? For me no, because why cant someone enjoy a game with interaction and chatting as teammates without fear of being bullied?

Assholes/jerks/pricks exist in all aspects of life. To think video games can be this sterilized Utopia where everyone is nice to one another all the time is a pipe dream. Ignoring, muting, and possibly reporting is the best course of action.

 

[Grinchy]

So the Kotaku and Polygon articles have dropped and it goes as well as predicted.

So both of them pulled the, "It doesn't matter if our side does something wrong as long as it starts a conversation" routine? How shocking.