MarsAtlas said:
runic knight said:
I've used this comparison before and I still think it is apt.
Think of this as someone trying to figure out a murder. We have a body, we have stab wounds and the general conclusion drawn is it was a stabbing. As such, the weapon would most likely be a knife.
Now, because of that, p[eople are talking about a knife in relation to the stabbing. It isn't about the knife so much as how the knife was used in relation to the event.
Now, what if someone started protesting that we were talking about knives to much, that we shouldn't keep talking about knives and how it is knife-ist and we should be ashamed. What would you call that, exactly?
The knife in question was the tactics of dismissing and deflecting criticism by calling "misogynist". It relates in how thee SJ movements were used here, but the protest is not social justice itself but rather the use of it to cause harm like it has.
We aren't attacking knives even if the conversation often mentions it.
That was really confusing as hell, to be honest. I re-read it three times, and I'm still pretty sure I don't completely understand it. I think you're talking about editorializing of social issues and their relationship to gaming, but then your description of the knife kind of throws that out the window, and it just kind of seems all over the place, no offense.
So GG proponents are against punditry and commentary then - except they're not, they're only against punditry and commentary they don't like. Its pretty easy to find "SJW" or "Feminism" in the discussion, but nothing against editorials - which wouldn't be possible anyways, because gaming sites need that content to stay afloat, because otherwise they're just regurgitating press releases that are already put out on the company's twitter.
If you're trying to use that comparison in relation to Anita Sarkeesian, don't. She is irrelevant to GamerGate, period. She's not a journalist, not a developer, not a publisher. She makes videos on youtube talking about videogames, and she has about as much to do with GamerGate as a random LPer with twenty subscribers does. If you're relating it to Zoe, well, some genuine evidence would make the pursuit of her credible, but as it stands, there's nothing. The only thing corroborating the idea that Zoe is involved with any breach of journalistic ethics is that Nathan Grayson had a relationship with her long after he gave her coverage, so while it wasn't transparent, no breach of ethics existed on the part of Grayson. Usually journalists only start with leads from credible sources, and usually have this source to point them in the direction of substantiating evidence before they decide to go on an all-out goose chase. The most that has provided regarding Quinn is that, gasp, people working in an industry together met each other at one point! Yet, people persist with Zoe Quinn, despite no real evidence of any of the allegations that she was involved in corruption. Hell, there's no evidence she boinked any of the other four men she allegedly did, let alone that the act was done in some sort of favour exchange.
I'll try again, I just got home so probably more mentally garbled then intended.
Gamergate is against journalistic impropriety in general. Corruption, collusion, generally being dishonest when they are suppose to be a news source... that sort of thing. That would be the crime.
Now, the way they get to keep doing this is in defining people who ask questions as "misogynistic man children" and other slanderous titles meant to dismiss and deflect. Because of they are using Social Justice causes as a sword and shield in this case, both attacking people for "not being inclusive", "hating women" and so forth, they are using social justice as a knife in which to commit the crimes. Whenever someone starts to talk about the topic, they quickly claim it is about harassment of a woman, silencing women in gaming, being misogynists and so forth.
Thus my analogy went as such. You are complaining people are talking about feminism and social justice when they are talking about journalistic impropriety. In this case, you are raising more concern about the people mentioning and discussing the weapon and tactics of the crime, then the crime itself, as if talking about the weapon in this case was some how more important to shut down.
It does feel as if you are arguing that because people are talking about SJW negatively, that it is an attack on social justice itself. If that is not the case, then I am sorry, but that does seem to be your predominant beef on that comment before.
You are arguing that we should not be talking about the knife used in a murder because it makes the knife makers look bad.
as for Anita, you are both right and wrong. Yes, they do not have anything to do with people's complaints about journalism. That said, how they treat her, and how she deflects criticisms, has jumped into this discussion and her ties to many involved has made her at least tangentially relevant as an example of journalistic impropriety.
To carry on the analogy, if the tactics and social justice causes were the weapon used, then Anita would be seen as a common manufacturer and promoter of knives. Perfectly understandable why her name would come up in general (because of weapon of choice), and even more so after she jumped into the investigation and has previous stabbed a paperboy in a similar manner as the crime (though in fairness, that was deemed in self defense so it was not a crime)
as for Zoe, well, she exactly the same as Anita. She isn't anyone important and her relevance here stems entirely from her being the spark that started the investigation, as well as her being an example of the crime itself. There are examples of her exerting influence that she should not possess in the journalistic industry to affect others such as TFYC, Wozniac and the wizardchan thing.
Now your claim of what journalists are suppose to do is spot-on. They should start with a credible lead, investigate and then go from there. That is exactly the point of why people are pissed, as they stopped doing that a long while ago. Hell, the wizardchan thing is a prime example as even Tito admitted he didn't investigate. And then there was those whole Max Tempkin thing and countless other stories where they didn't do their jobs right. Really this zoe quinn thing was a powderkeg waiting to happen since Doritogate before it.
Finally, you are right, there is no evidence she had sex with the 3 other men (if I recall, the journalist and her boss have been confirmed). But then again, there was no investigation by journalists into the matter and all inquiry lead to a massive vitriolic response of calling people misogynists, shutting down all conversation on it they could, reaching out to shut down conversations elsewhere and so forth. At that point, it stopped being about Quinn having sex and became about what the journalists were hiding and how they had abandoned journalistic propriety to cover a friend. And that started this whole snowball.
