So, generally I usually just lurk about the forums and don't post very much, but I've been following the gamergate thing, like a lot of gamers, and feel the need to add in my piece, despite the fact that the odds of changing someone's mind on the internet are probably about as high as walking away from Vegas richer than you entered. It can be done, with a lot of effort, but it's still pretty unlikely. Saving people time if they just want to categorize 'pro' or 'against' and move on, I'm against.
Let's put aside Zoe Quinn for a minute. It was a pretty ugly way to start any kind of movement, but both sides seem to (mostly) agree on that much, with much disagreement about whether it colors the whole movement. I do believe that positive things can come from poor beginnings (Even though, pointing to the original topic, the name is problematic. Something-gate indicates a scandal, named after the famous Watergate incident, so claiming that as a movement title while simultaneously trying to distance one's self from the original fizzled scandal is going to be difficult, and worrying about losing all the support with a name change does sort of imply a large number of people aren't going to follow to a movement focused on journalistic ethics).
Lets put aside the trolls, doxxing, and idiocy. Those things are important, certainly, but we're talking about the base of the movement now. It's the internet, which excuses nothing, but I have no doubt that both sides have their attackers. Any movement has its poor representatives and the internet has the whipped cream topping of people who care about neither side but get their kicks making other people angry. I have no doubt that some of the hacks are neither fake nor perpetrated by members of their respective movement, but are targets of opportunity to see the internet catch fire again. By the same token, I'm quite sure there's a lot of very legitimate abuse going out. I think a 'pox on both your houses' mentality is a bit simplistic, but lets examine things in a vacuum for now and pretend that it all equals out.
The problem, as I see, it with the gamergate image is that you have two very different goals that only match if you have a particular mindset. The first goal is the stated one. Journalistic integrity, to which the overwhelming response from most media personality appears to be 'Yeah, it's a problem I've been talking about for years. Welcome to the party, I hope you stay for the chips and we might have enough people to get something done.'. I never looked particularly hard, but I can remember reading articles in my usual web crawls about the nature of the gaming press and its total dependance on publishers good graces, and what a bind that puts the major news sites in. Sure, you can break an embargo date or whatever else if you want, once, but publishers are under no legal obligation to share things with particular sites. The public has no inherent 'need to know' about an entertainment game, the way they do about things on a political level, so they can't be forced to share evenly with everyone. So any site that came down too hard on things simply got cut off from the pump and the gaming public will go to whoever has the information. If I'm thinking about a game and IGN has a review and Kotaku doesn't, I'm probably not going to look into whether Kotaku wrote a scathing review a few months back from the same company. I'm just going to go to the one who has what I'm looking for. That's a problem, a big problem, and it will take us working together to make any sort of dent in it.
The second goal is the problem, and it's the issue about the so called SJWs infiltrating the medium. This is where the image problem is arising, because the 'Us and them' mentality is in full effect. On both this threat and the main one, I've been disturbed by the 'war footing' analogies people drop into. Read back through posts and you'll see countless examples. 'Their side, my side' 'We might win a battle, but lose the war' 'We will fight on, no matter what they say' 'We must hold fast, until the siege passes' and on and on. We have a side, and we have an enemy, and the enemy are SJWs. Many of the questions and ideas are about how to 'fight'. Should we call them SJWs? How about terrorists? No, that's too strong, how about parasites? How can we 'win'? Is this bad for the movement, or good for it? What are 'they' doing, and how can we counter their 'influence'. Who is corrupted by them and who is standing tall?
This creates most of the negative aspects of gamergate. Vivian James and #NotYourShield are related to gamergate, but they really shouldn't be, since they aren't related to journalistic integrity UNLESS you believe that holding these beliefs about diversity in gaming are themselves unethical. #NotYourShield strikes me as particularly ironic. I don't believe they're all sockpuppets (Some are, certainly, but my world view includes the possibility that women and PoC might think differently than me) but they ARE, doubtless, being used as a shield. It's the shield against the accusation of Misogyny or Racism in the movement, something to point to that proves it false. We can't possibly be misogynistic or racist because some minorities and women support us. #NotYourShield is a tactic, created to counter SJWs. Vivian James is an avatar created when 4chan donated to charity, again to counter SJWs. It's entirely possible I missed important details in one of the several hundred page threads, but neither is concerned with journalism. Neither is worried about ethics. Both are employed against the stated enemy, SJWS, Feminists, and so forth.
But these are rooted in deep conspiracy theories that seem to be built on the shakiest of foundations, assuming coordination when a simple disagreement of thought is much more likely. One of the most difficult things to learn as humans is that other people might legitimately see things differently than us, and as a result we tend to describe a certain amount of malice to things where there is none. 'That person KNOWS what's true, but they still insist on being dumb' we say to ourselves, with a certain sense of smugness, unaware that the other person is doing the same. If a site posts an article that describes a shooter as good, but describes the protagonist as 'The same grizzled white guy with brown hair as always', maybe it's a strike for a feminist agenda to remove male characters from video games...or maybe that person is tired of those type of protagonist, and would like to play something else. If many different gaming publish articles exploring the idea of female, or gay, or PoC protagonists in games, the reaction of publishers, and the reaction of gamers, perhaps they're trying to tear down the games we know and love in coordination with one another for maximum impact while generating endless clickbait...or maybe some of their audience actually finds those studies interesting and hopeful for a future of games that explore new viewpoints in addition to the old. If threads about the issue were banned almost as soon as they could appear for days around the incident, perhaps its a conspiracy in the industry to silence anyone who speaks out against the narrative...or maybe some sites were nervous about publishing salacious details on a shaky evidential foundation (proven by the fact many of the initial claims proved to be incorrect or at least incomplete, though not all) and, given the internet's usual lack of calm and reason for these things, decided they wanted no part of it on their site.
If you've ever wondered how people seem to get so twisted up in cults or the strangest, least logical systems. If you've ever laughed at religious people doing what you consider to be silly or stupid things, or politicians who opened their mouth when they really should have kept it closed, this is how. (Note: For clarity, not calling Gamergate a cult by any stretch. Those are the sort of thing that develop over years and years). First, everyone else is wrong, but they're deliberately hiding the truth (the infamous 'red pill', in feminism discussions, but there are many versions). Second, this is affecting you deeply, and will ruin what you care about. Third, our voices are not mainstream because they're being silenced by a coordinated effort, which is why the information is so sketchy or hard to find. Fourth, here's a list of terminology to use among members. Use it enough in conversations between one another, and you stop thinking about whether its really true. Its a way to build walls and separate dissenting opinions out, so that people are truly shocked when they repeat what they always say in the echo chamber, and find the world incredulous and hostile, thus reinforcing the conspiracy theory. Skepticism is your best defense, and apply it everywhere, but most particularly to anyone who tries to tell you a secret 'they' don't want you to know. A lack of skepticism in a movement that should be full of it (given the journalistic leanings) has been a real issue. People spend pages and pages talking about a good review exchanged for sex, only it didn't occur, rally around a tweet that a police report was never filed, only it was, and spend the first twenty or thirty pages laughing at reddit mods for 'trying to spin' the shadowbanning of a poster for asking Julian Asange a question...only he was already banned before the question (Thank God the poster came forward. I doubt anyone who have believed the mods). Step back a bit. Maybe go "That would be bad, what's the source? Has anyone else looked into it? What does the accused say?" The more rational ends of the movement are not helped when they have to spend all of their time trying to answer the numerous times the gun has been jumped.
The point is, there are people out there who disagree with you, some of them rational thinking beings. The idea that your enemy can only be described as malicious cis straight white male haters or poor innocent sheep mislead because 'social justice warriors' sounds like too noble a title is not giving your fellow human beings much credit. I'm for journalistic ethics, I'm against gamergate because I don't feel that it will lead anywhere near those goals. You don't have to change your views, you don't have to stop fighting, you don't have to join hands with the opposition and sing a song.
But think about what's important to you and ask yourself if the people around you seem to be interested in the same thing. If they are, all power to you, but this is my stop.
