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#GAMERGATE: The Threadening [Read the OP] -- #StopGamerGate2014
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The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Context only particularly matters when you're talking about seeing the whole thing. You don't need to play Senran Kagura to see what's wrong with it, but it makes sense to be fair and see the context in which it uses its stripping and not just isolated clips (though it is the same level of awful in either one).
Not that this really matters because the "Anita takes all this stuff out of context! She's never even seen the games she's talking about!" stuff is bullshit, anyway. The entire point of the kickstarter was for her to get this:
She obviously didn't use these for footage.
I am a little surprised that she didn't pull from those for footage. Did she not want to deal with setting up a capture system and the video editing entailed?
ShockingAlberto
Member
I agree that not attributing your sources is shitty. That and the thing she did with the artist were both bad. It's smarter for her not to give people ammunition and pulling footage from other people without crediting them was not smart or a good thing to do. She probably did this because recording your own gaming videos is a pain in the ass, recording literally everything you play so you can get footage of something you noticed when it's surely already on Youtube already. I have a channel with a few hundred thousand views, I know how video game video production works and it is the biggest pain in the ass in the world sometimes.
Moreover, USGamer uses clips from Youtube all the time in their videos, often unattributed. Weird that no one gives them shit about it. But it doesn't really matter where she gets the clips, there's no real denying the point of them. What context do you believe she got maliciously or ignorantly wrong?
You've kind of got a moving target here: Oh, she doesn't play games, her opinions aren't valid. Oh, she bought all those games, but if she REALLY played them, it would all be her footage, wouldn't it?!
And it's, like, do you record every game you ever play to prove you played them? How do we know you're not lying?
Neoriceisgood
Member
Yep.
http://femfreq.tumblr.com/post/79882515581/recently-it-came-to-our-attention-that-we-had
She's actually adressed the artist thing.
Son of Cervantes
Member
It's really hyperbolic.
And yet at the same time, what do you call bomb threats and murder/rape threats? It's terrorism, by definition. Gamergate (or some factions within it) are engaging in terrorism.
It's funny, I view 8chan as the outcasts from normal 4chan. That's saying something. /v/ got so sick of seeing gg threads they just kicked them out. By the way of permanent bans that is.
Lalalandia
Member
Yeah that was a hot mess and LW's abuse of Britain's amazingly awful libel laws was a major ethics scandal. Unfortunately that got highjacked by a crowd of mysoginists also and Rab felt he had to walk away.
He talked about it on his blog a few weeks ago entitled something like ' A letter to some dude on GamerGate (sorry on my phone so no link).
Nah, what actually happened is the owner of 4chan got brainwashed over a weekend at the regular SJW cult meeting, and decided to obey his feminist overlords.
call_kotaku
Member
Even if you aren't particularly convinced by Anita's videos or see flaws in how she conducts her argument (as I do), the backlash against her sort of makes her point for her. I guess the one negative consequence of precipitating this is that the gamergate advocates think that their common shared passion is videogames, when really what they have in common is that they're all assholes.
I feel like people outside the gaming space that don't already have preconceived notions of videogames understand this for what it really is, because this brand of misogyny and hate is so common and "basic" that they should be able to recognize it.
I feel like people outside the gaming space that don't already have preconceived notions of videogames understand this for what it really is, because this brand of misogyny and hate is so common and "basic" that they should be able to recognize it.
TheBaronOfNA
Banned
Pretty much this.
"The sources aren't of a quality good enough to link here, but trust me it's been proven"
I just saw this afternoon Patrick Klepek, who I trust would have done at least a little looking into it, that those claims had not been proven, re: content "stealing" which when we're talking about un-edited footage of a game is a muddy area anyway. I don't believe there's any ownership of that material.
And she's not providing an in-depth analysis of every one of the games she uses examples from. Give me a half dozen examples where the context of the trope actually changes anything she's saying about it (Good luck) and it still won't matter to her overall argument.
For all the calls of "She's cherrypicking! Those clips are out of context!" her critics sure do love cherrypicking her material and critiquing it out of context.
Is it really so hard to believe that people don't post a bunch of critiques of her work because despite anti-feminist youtube stars they're really very uncontroversial. They're pretty basic analyses of trends with occasional deep-dives into the implications of those trends.
And her point has literally never been "Scantily clad women are bad!" or that characters designed to be attractive are bad, and it strikes me that anyone whose take away is that simplistic hasn't watched them very closely at all. Also, equating the ideas of "Male gaze" and "Female gaze" is extremely flawed. Beside the fact that it ignores a long-established power differential, target audiences, and frequency, I cannot think of a single game that has anything that caters exclusively to a "female gaze" whereas male gaze is an extremely common purpose for characters and situations in games and all kinds of media.
I just saw this afternoon Patrick Klepek, who I trust would have done at least a little looking into it, that those claims had not been proven, re: content "stealing" which when we're talking about un-edited footage of a game is a muddy area anyway. I don't believe there's any ownership of that material.
And she's not providing an in-depth analysis of every one of the games she uses examples from. Give me a half dozen examples where the context of the trope actually changes anything she's saying about it (Good luck) and it still won't matter to her overall argument.
For all the calls of "She's cherrypicking! Those clips are out of context!" her critics sure do love cherrypicking her material and critiquing it out of context.
Is it really so hard to believe that people don't post a bunch of critiques of her work because despite anti-feminist youtube stars they're really very uncontroversial. They're pretty basic analyses of trends with occasional deep-dives into the implications of those trends.
And her point has literally never been "Scantily clad women are bad!" or that characters designed to be attractive are bad, and it strikes me that anyone whose take away is that simplistic hasn't watched them very closely at all. Also, equating the ideas of "Male gaze" and "Female gaze" is extremely flawed. Beside the fact that it ignores a long-established power differential, target audiences, and frequency, I cannot think of a single game that has anything that caters exclusively to a "female gaze" whereas male gaze is an extremely common purpose for characters and situations in games and all kinds of media.
well 8chan is more than those GGers
Literally Wu said the same thing in a stream but 8chan was made in 2013 and it's just a normal 2chan style board
it's a pun, some GG people who thinks that GG should just ignore people like quinn, brianna and anita often say "ignore those Literally Wu people and focus on etc etc"
/v/ hasn't changed much. there still are waifus threads, Samus butt threads and some anon who pretends to be sjw. that's all
Lol is that actually true? I saw that thread and thought it was made up.
I honestly think the majority of v don't care. I remember there was a thread where someone was making a big deal out of a gaming on the 3ds for using gender equal wording and terms. Meanwhile there was a video game Waifu thread with double the posts and images.
My opinion of course. I don't see how someone can care so much over a non issue
It's 2014 for crying out loud
Neoriceisgood
Member
That's the story that GG believes and tells people. I doubt it is true. It's not like 4chan is suddenly free of the type of vile shit you'd think a SJW owner would hate.
The calls for dropping feminist issues because "games should be about fun, not politics" rubs me seriously in the wrong way. Yes, gaming SHOULD be fun. For everyone. This is what it is all about: people who ruin the fun to other people.
It's easy to ignore issues if you just attach the suitable words to them to make them insignificant. Females complaining about harassment, well, that's feminism then, innit? We don't like feminism, do we? Feminism is politics, and who cares about politics? We just want to have fun and you keep bringing up these boring things like feminism and politics that have nothing to do with me.
It's easy to ignore issues if you just attach the suitable words to them to make them insignificant. Females complaining about harassment, well, that's feminism then, innit? We don't like feminism, do we? Feminism is politics, and who cares about politics? We just want to have fun and you keep bringing up these boring things like feminism and politics that have nothing to do with me.
SlipperyFishes
Banned
Referring to her as "literally Wu" comes off as incredibly dismissive and disrespectful - you might as well say "she's not even worthy of discussion LOL"
I know 8c refer to her as such but it's a shitty term for any woman in the industry.
It is for sure and when I heard her saying those things I actually felt terrible even though I don't consider myself part of that group. I do not agree with what she has had to go through, but I also cannot respect someone's opinion when they paint with a gigantic brush. Everyone here is part of a forum, group, sub-culture within gaming, etc. I do not support gamergate, but this generalization mentality needs to stop. I'm sure many people here have been part of a group or culture that has been generalized and/or marginalized because of a subset of that group/culture and understand how that feels.
ShockingAlberto
Member
Insisting there should be no political stances in video games is inherently a political stance.
i honestly don't know why she is even involved. i only know she made a game for iOs, i would leave her alone if i was a GGer
she said that herself, it was "literally who" but she changed it into "literally wu". nothing offensive
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Lots of people just think that their default experience is apolitical. Their positions are "normal" and the deviations from that are where those icky politics get in
LiegeWaffle
Member
Yes, I do know a plenty of professional critics who would happily cite a book they have never read (or read only in fragments) in order to demonstrate a certain point about literature in general. There is a considerate volume of literature which summarizes such things; such literature is written by experts in that particular sub-area of their field of study (say, Victorian-era poetry) so that people outside of that narrow area can learn about the key facts of it, and enhance their understanding of literature as a whole. This works even in STEM fields the same way. There are too many important books to be read in one's lifetime, and now just think about how much longer are video games.
The important point you are missing here is that she is not criticizing any particular game. Her analysis is the one which requires building upon wide variety of examples, and for such kind of analysis it is a completely accepted thing to build upon secondary sources.
Yeah, it is disappointing if she did not credit the sources of footage videos (which is kind of disputed, because those kinds of claims are hard to verify); merely disappointing, though. I am not aware of any precedents (and I am not a lawyer), but I would assume that such footage is not copyrightable in spirit of Bridgeman v. Corel.
Taking and maintaining the gameplay footage for a ton of games in proper quality is kind of a laborious task. There are people who are enthusiastic about it (think James Rolfe and his cabinet full of VHS), but I suspect most people would avoid the hassle and time sink if possible.
She is not talking about things like controls or athmosphere or any aspects of her personal experience while playing the game; pretty much all of the aspects that are important for the issues she tries to examine are just as feasible to analyze from gameplay footage as it is from playing the game itself.
FF Seraphim
Member
Lets be honest here, the people behind #GG more than likely don't care how disrespectful they are to people they disagree with.
As someone who doesn't use social media much and doesn't really have any connections or anything of that sort, is there anything I can do to help out this anti gamer gate movement? I hate seeing what's going on but also feel like I can't do much about it other than talk about it.
Posted? Storify showing that GG is just the newest version of years old harrasment.
Is their anyone who still believes that GG is about corruption? It's just the latest cover for years of anti-feminist and misogynist garbage spewed by the same people.
Is their anyone who still believes that GG is about corruption? It's just the latest cover for years of anti-feminist and misogynist garbage spewed by the same people.
ShockingAlberto
Member
They found a populist message of "Bad ethics are bad" and it was a really convenient way to garner support.
Honestly, as terrible as they can be, it was a pretty smart way to see their agenda of harassment gain support.
Galactic Fork
A little fluff between the ears never did any harm...
Ah, I really really don't want to get too deep into a talk of feminism cause we're really not supposed to in this thread. But the "male gaze" is still a thing in third wave. Game characters have no agency of their own. They don't choose what to wear. The designer chooses for them. Soo, in real life, whatever a woman wears, she's doing it because she wants to, it's her own choice, she has the agency, and if she wants to attract men, or women, or just wants to feel attractive for herself, it's her own business, and all about her. Her agency should be respected. But as mentioned, in games, there is no agency, and this is expanded into other media, the way a woman is displayed often isn't about the women at all, it becomes about men. Her very image becomes about men being attracted to her. About turning on dudes. She's reduced to an extension of what the dudes want. The "male gaze" thing isn't a criticism of what men are attracted to, it's about content makers trying so hard to satisfy the male gaze, as if that's the most important concern. So the question isn't "what's wrong with the male gaze?" it's "why is the male gaze so important?" In real life, women like sex, too, they want it, and not just to please men, but to please themselves. But so rarely is sex actually about the woman, and when women make sex about them... it often results in horrible names.
As for Anita's videos, you'll notice a few themes. Agency, passivity vs activity, and the women's roles in relation to men. Women being passive sexualized background object to better tell the story of men. Women being a prize to be won in a battle between two men. A woman being harmed just to make one man look evil and give the other man a reason to fight him. A female character who's essentially only a female version of the male character. The male character being the default, the female character being an extension of the male. All these things things have something in common. The women's existence isn't about herself, but about how her existence relates to the male characters. A big part of feminism is to drive the point home that women's existence isn't just a support role to the men in the world. They have their own independent existence.
So back to sex objects in games, while not bad in moderation, when it's sooo prevalent, it tells people a few things. It tells people that games are told from the male perspective, even when it's a female character, it's still made in such a way that it's for men. Hell, even lesbians are usually told in a way to be about the men playing the game. This will serve to drive many women away because it's so rarely about them. It also tells people that even if games are for men, that they should expect women to be objects for their gratification in games at such an extreme prevalence. Perpetuating the idea that women are there for men. So I don't believe Anita has a problem with the scantily clad women in games because she hates sex, but because the sex is being owned lock stock and barrel by the men.
It was never that calculated, they're just feckless morons who believe their own horseshit.
call_kotaku
Member
It feels a lot like right-wingers constantly going on about Obama's birth certificate. I think if you presented the question in a vacuum they'd say "why would anyone give a fuck?" but because it ties conveniently into a bunch of pre-existing opinions and concerns it gets traction til the argument matters more than the facts.
It's a cover to push an agenda that you can't say out loud. "We want to see his birth certificate" is just a cover for "because of his race and heritage I don't believe he's American enough to be President", just like "we need ethics in gaming journalism and we need to keep politics out of gaming" is just a cover for "we don't feel like people with beliefs or opinions different from ours should be allowed to have a voice in my community".
tonysidaway
Member
I don't hear that criticism in the videos. The argument seems to centre on two problematic and related traits:
1. Lack of agency
2. Use as decoration
This has nothing to do with waves of feminism. It's pretty fundamental stuff that women don't exist for the purpose of male enjoyment. Think "booth babes."
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/09/08/videogames-are-for-everybody/
And I'll admit, this is my first visit to this thread. I thought it'd be the opposite of what I'm seeing, I figured everyone would be spouting Quinn links with "proof" and shit. I am happy to be wrong.
plagiarize
Banned
Being against the notion that women should have equal rights... yeah. I'm going to call that harmful to all women. Someone doesn't have to hate women to think they shouldn't have equal rights I guess. If that's what you mean by them not being 'anti women'.
But it's being *for* something that harms women, whichever chromosomes someone might have. You can be a parent and be anti vaccine. It doesn't mean you want to hurt children... it just means that you do.
Edit: Oh and today's nonsense from GG is dusting off their pariah Allistar Pinsoff and claiming that it's illegal for the people who fired him to advise other people against hiring him. Because COLLUSION.
Oh, but let's totally skirt around what he actually did and never mention it.
partyphone
Banned
well this goes well beyond a polite disagreement.
yeah gamergate sure is a nice polite consumer rights movement.
yeah gamergate sure is a nice polite consumer rights movement.
ShockingAlberto
Member
More_Badass
Member
I've been discussing with a dev who's pro GG and I'm still trying to wrap my head around the mindset and way of thinking
First, there's the insistence that Zoe was banging journalists to get better reviews, "sleeping her way to the top". I pointed out that 4 of the 5 were developers, not journalists, and Grayson only gave DQ a short mention in an article about a Greenlit batch. And the notion of "sleeping to the top" just didn't make sense to me. The top of what? The list of best freeware games ever? This isn't some expensive game where reviews mean more revenue. It's a free game in a super niche genre
Two, turns out "to the top" isn't about money, but networking. The proof is how her circle of friends that came to her aid. How there was no outrage back in December (DQ on Greenlight) but now everyone releases Gamers Are Dead articles and turns the harassment story into a big thing. Basically, Grayson, with his connections and journalist friends, decide to focus on Zoe and the harassment, due to his past relationship with her.
Three, a chat room for "discussing what to cover and what not to cover, shaming others for not covering things the way you see fit" isn't professional and is illegal.
I mean I respect the dev and appreciate his work, but I just don't understand the rationale. I checked and there was media coverage of the Zoe/DQ/Greenlight incident, but I'd say the fact that this time there's bomb threats, etc., and a public banner for people to rally behind, is the cause of the increased coverage compared to then
This is a great summary of what she's saying. It's bizarre that more people don't get it. (It's not as if she's being subtle about it.) But my guess is fewer than 1% of the discussions about her latest video have actually addressed these points in any way --- pro, con, or otherwise. As I say, it's bizarre.
plagiarize
Banned
Yeah. Today on twitter we're going to be mostly yelling about collusion. Because professionals having a conversation about their profession in private... is ILLEGAL.
Oh, and random GG guy on twitter just tells me 'GamerGate' isn't a movement. Because if you can't disagree with my point, you've still got to find *something* to disagree with.
Neoriceisgood
Member
A general feeling I've seen long before GG amongst friends that have anti-"SJW" feelings is that there's an enormous issue of "undeserved merit".
In their eyes one of the biggest crimes in the industry is getting exposure you "don't deserve".
A lot of the narrative used around people like anita/zoe stems down to this:
- they don't really believe what they're saying, they just want attention.
- they sleep around for attention.
- they actively try to get harassed to get attention.
It's honestly kind of like the narrative often voiced by republicans who seem to genuinly believe they'd have an easier time if they were a minority. (Mitt Romney outright said this at least once.)
tonysidaway
Member
Please delete this tasteless and disturbing suggestion. Jokes of this kind have no place in this thread on a very sensitive topic where human lives are at stake.
Lalalandia
Member
The mentality of someone who thinks 'A doesn't agree with me, I'll shame them by saying his close personal friend B who died recently would agree with me' is just beyond my comprehension.
Neoriceisgood
Member
Let's not joke about violence, it's not funny.
SlipperyFishes
Banned
i honestly don't know why she is even involved. i only know she made a game for iOs, i would leave her alone if i was a GGer
she said that herself, it was "literally who" but she changed it into "literally wu". nothing offensive
The point is that the whole "Literally X" is just another attempt by the #GamerGate community to marginalise women in the industry.
EmCeeGramr
Member
Don't even joke about this kind of thing, it's disgusting.
More_Badass
Member
I find it funny/sad (can't figure out which) that TB is on twitter saying that he agrees with Polygon's editorial about gamergate. Then why the fuck are you still supporting gamergate then? But it kinda makes sense since he also tweeted that he doesn't think this has to be political. Everything in your life since the day you were born in political and so is this. Can't believe he's still reaching for this false middle ground. Can't be neutral on a moving train etc.
Just goes to show that most of these people have no idea what their talking about and are just trying to say stuff to hurt people. Anyone who's spent any amount of time over at GiantBomb knew this about Ryan.
Just goes to show that most of these people have no idea what their talking about and are just trying to say stuff to hurt people. Anyone who's spent any amount of time over at GiantBomb knew this about Ryan.
plagiarize
Banned
This refers to stuff from a couple of pages ago, but I love how people don't see a problem with telling Anita what her videos should be like. I mean it's not like she provided an example of her work, and promised to make more videos just like them if people helped fund them.
Oh... sorry... that's exactly what happened.
I'd be pretty annoyed (as would all the people who kickstarted her I'd imagine) if she produced a different product to the one she promised.
Oh... sorry... that's exactly what happened.
I'd be pretty annoyed (as would all the people who kickstarted her I'd imagine) if she produced a different product to the one she promised.
Galactic Fork
A little fluff between the ears never did any harm...
I really really hope you weren't serious, and even then, nooooo.
Yeah, I usually don't like the "if you don't like it, make your own" argument, but seriously people, if you want a video series so completely different than what she's offering, go make your own.
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