Literally everyone who has addressed that here that I can see has referred to this event as sad and/or called for her defense.
I'd spend all night telling people to leave her the fuck alone on twitter if I didn't think it would make things worse.
If you know how to stop awful people being awful, please, tell me the secret. As a person who both spends his recreational time online and works to grow the open web, I've been struggling for around a decade to find a way to believe that this isn't all a lost cause. That doesn't mean I can't also believe that game journalism is rather fucked up and anti-gamer at the moment.
I will admit that I'm rapidly losing interest in pushing the point if it's just going to leave a trail of corpses in its wake.
unfortunately im pretty sure her departure is gonna be used to demonize people with the gamergate tag, who will in turn use such a reaction to demonize the sj advocates, who in turn...
its an ouroboros of profanity, caps lock and exclamation points. what an utter shame
Yep. At every point people choose to escalate.
I have a lot of sympathy for Jenn. But I have no sympathy for some of the people saying "oh no poor Jenn!" Civilians get hurt in wars, not just soldiers - we know this. But people on both sides fan the flames of war then act upset when this sort of predictable stuff happens.
The same person tweeting at Jenn saying "oh no this is terrible!" is tweeting at that Alex guy saying "yeah, you tell those dumb nerd fuckboys off!"
People keep saying that this is a war, that it's with or against, that it's kill or be killed. Then the person standing near them gets killed. Shocking. The person who was much nicer and more thoughtful than they'll ever be. War has casualties - who knew?
I guess the problem is that we aren't warring sufficiently hard enough. Redouble your efforts troops!
Same reason there's no competition for Facebook. Lock-in. Twitter is notably bad for this stuff because they have no real motivation to make it harder for people to engage in harassment. There are some simple steps they could take (mostly making it easier to broadly block people), that they just haven't for whatever reason.
So what happened with Jenn Frank? Been away for a bit, and apparently I missed it.
Whatever small infractions there may or may not have been (and I doubt there was) is definitely not worth damaging people the way it seemingly has.
I follow several freelancers who seem just broken over this whole thing. It's extraordinarily sad to see.
This does seem cool.@ja2ke This seems cool? https://blocktogether.org
...
please tell me youre just quoting this mindset and not actually espousing that this is in any way a "war".
So what happened with Jenn Frank? Been away for a bit, and apparently I missed it.
For your analogy to remotely work there would need to be two sides actively trying to destroy each other.I use the war analogy as an analogy and because people write screeds about how we're at war with this and that.
Of course it's not a war. I mean...I guess it's a Twitter war?
My point is this: when most people involved choose to escalate the situation it becomes worse and more dangerous, not just for them but for people who don't deserve this stuff. That is predictable. People who play, write about or make games should be able to understand that. That is less hard to grasp than Skyrim.
Edit: "Am I escalating?" is a question everyone should ask themselves.
The same person tweeting at Jenn saying "oh no this is terrible!" is tweeting at that Alex guy saying "yeah, you tell those dumb nerd fuckboys off!"
People keep saying that this is a war, that it's with or against, that it's kill or be killed. Then the person standing near them gets killed. Shocking. The person who was much nicer and more thoughtful than they'll ever be. War has casualties - who knew?
I use the war analogy as an analogy and because people write screeds about how we're at war with this and that.
Of course it's not a war. I mean...I guess it's a Twitter war?
My point is this: when most people involved choose to escalate the situation it becomes worse and more dangerous, not just for them but for people who don't deserve this stuff. That is predictable. People who play, write about or make games should be able to understand that. That is less hard to grasp than Skyrim.
Scrolling through my timeline earlier today was about as low as I've seen it get.
I'm sorry if this gets ranty, but anyone who seriously cares about "Games Journalism" right now needs to take a few weeks to actually form legitimate issues and what they're going to do to stop it. All I'm seeing right now is a group only organized around the idea of harassing those at the fringe of the gaming press. This whole thing started on the basis of a lie, and has metastasized into some horrible monster flailing around trying to hurt as many people as possible. There is no goal, just a rallying cry of misdirected anger. This will sound harsh, but I think anyone who says "But I'm not x, y, or z, I just care about corruption." is not actually helping anyone right now. You're attaching yourself to a movement that is actively hurting people. You're giving it a veneer of credibility. I'm just incredibly saddened because what I've seen happen today is the goal of so much of it. To implicitly agree with them is to give credibility to a movement that says it's trying to make "gaming" a better place, but in reality is making it so much worse.
For your analogy to remotely work there would need to be two sides actively trying to destroy each other.
Last time I checked only one side is attacking and harassing the other. Is terrorism the better silly analogy for you to make?
I'm not trying to have an oppression olympics, but the nature of harassment and oppression are severely different in identifying as a "gamer" than as a "homosexual", for example. It should be obvious.
He's probably referring to the Leigh Alexander article telling gamers that 'gamers' are over. She did end it by saying she has an army and is at war.
He's probably referring to the Leigh Alexander article telling gamers that 'gamers' are over. She did end it by saying she has an army and is at war.
So I haven't been keeping up with this whole gamergate thing. Is there a comprehensive summary of what's been going on?
This is not me saying "both sides are wrong" bullshit, but when we're talking about the issue at play here, belittling people who disagree with you, even if they may deserve it, is counterproductive.
There aren't "two sides" to this anymore. It's like a bunch of city states, some with a vaguely common interest, some just want to trade and some just want me to destroy the barbarian camp near them. And some just want me to threaten and insult another city state
I've been playingtoo muchnot enough Civ
But being as an asshole as a city-state has consequences in the game.
Being an asshole on twitter seems to have none. Which is the problem.
But being as an asshole as a city-state has consequences in the game.
Being an asshole on twitter seems to have none. Which is the problem.
There aren't "two sides" to this anymore. It's like a bunch of city states, some with a vaguely common interest, some just want to trade and some just want me to destroy the barbarian camp near them. And some just want me to threaten and insult another city state
I've been playingtoo muchnot enough Civ
Yeah, that's true of course. But this whole thing becomes a bit more bearable if you think off it as an incredibly dumb game of Civ.
You could try this article... both sides apparently hate it which probably means it's balanced: http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/201409032102-0024126
Just let me know who Montezuma is so I can hate him with my entire soul.
this isn't entirely true, to be fair - have you seen the number of people who've lost their jobs over dumb shit said on twitter? not related to this particular mess, but it does happen, fairly often too
LOL. Sums up this whole shit show.
This is also not the answer. Unless they genuinely wish to not have an audience, in which case; fair enough, respect their wishes. But if they do wish to have an audience (which is why they are on Twitter to begin with as opposed to a more personal form of communication), just shutting everyone off (or at least everyone you disagree with) would just make people angrier as they would feel even moreso that they are not being heard, or can't express a dissenting opinion. They would likely seek other (most certainly even shittier) means of being heard. This is not a good idea.This does seem cool.@ja2ke This seems cool? https://blocktogether.org
You could try this article... both sides apparently hate it which probably means it's balanced: http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/201409032102-0024126
This is an amazingly terrible standard by which to judge on absolutely any subject.
You could try this article... both sides apparently hate it which probably means it's balanced: http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/201409032102-0024126
You probably realize this but that is a really bad heuristic. Anyway. I linked that same article earlier as it covers most of the territory quickly without getting too into the weeds, but it's been since pointed out that the article includes a conspiracy image smearing Jenn Frank. In fact, this may be part of what's driven her to quit.