Robert B. Marks said:
And again, you continue to misconstrue and misrepresent my argument, why is that? If my argument had anything to do with gamergate at large and not you accepting Zoe Quinn's baseless interpretation of it, then your post would make a lot of sense and be very insightful.
Unfortunately, this seems to be another repeat of you continuing to insist that her interpretation and claims are law and then making lots of speculation regarding it. Which again, is like asking Pravda their opinion on NATO and then assuming Pravda must be correct on their interpretation.
Then, at the end, you insist she must be absolutely correct in her interpretation because of your opinion that #gamergate is a dishonest movement full of dishonest and viscous people. Most of your post is an attack on gamergate instead of anything I said, which I'm sure I don't have to explain to the trained history major is a dishonest tactic meant to mislead the casual reader of our conversation. Especially when you claim that Zoe must be a trustful source of information BECAUSE of the other side also being distrustful, when in reality you just proved what I've been saying all along: We can't take either side at face value because they both have a history of lying. Your opinion on #gamergate doesn't make Zoe Quinn any more of an angel when we've seen her attack her opponents in the past with dishonest and underhanded framing of information.
We've gone fully into the territory where you're arguing with your opinion and attacking strawmen you've made of your opponents. Nothing you posted, again, is telling or damning of any kind of 'online conspiracy' outside the realm of your opinion. If that's the argument you wish to play, that your opinion on #gamergate is enough evidence on its own to label members of #burgersandfries with a bunch of mean terms and labels, then we shouldn't be having this conversation in this thread. Or any thread for that matter.
But, I will respond to your post, even if most of it doesn't address my points, just so you can feel that I have read and paid attention to what you said.
Now, there are times when bias comes into play. Part of my education was learning to detect that bias (for example, there is one quote where Quinn says that her ex is trying to coach them in how to attack her, when it really does look like he's trying to get them to stop instead - that is a case of bias, but you never know.
If you have to end your argument with 'but you never know', you can assume there's probably a baseless claim inside of it [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_probability]. Here, again, is a quote taken out of context from an IRC chat channel, a PUBLIC IRC chat channel. Why you think this anonymous person in the IRC channel is an informational authority is honestly, quite baffling. Reading the same quote, it seems to me like he was actually asking for information if that was true or not, and was quickly corrected. Again, for someone who prides himself so much on his history major, you seem to have immediately made up your mind on the context of what he said and assumed that it must be the only way to interpret it.
Which is, again, your opinion pulling ahead of the facts.
But think of it in terms of science for a moment. Bias is a potential source of error, but there must first be that error. Shifting to the larger topic, the degree to which this started as an attack on Quinn herself and her sex life
I don't support Gamergate, but this is the biggest attempt at confusing the argument I've ever seen.
No, it didn't begin as an investigation into her sex life, it began as a leak about the Indie Scene giving each other favors. I don't even care that much about gamergate and that's information that I know from just lightly reading about it on forums. Again, you've taken a piece of information and liberally applied your opinion to it until it became another argument entirely. The facts that were found afterwards were part of the larger investigation into corruption in the indie scene.
Then there's also the fact that few, if any, of the allegations of professional victimhood make any damn sense to begin with. Somebody with a history of being the victim of public harassment campaigns would have to be a bloody idiot to fake a death threat and post their OWN real address to do it.
I don't know where 'faking it' came into account in this argument. I never posted that as my argument and trying to construe it as mine is extremely dishonest on your part. It seems to me that you're just ranting at this point about things that belong in the gamergate thread instead of responding to my post. Please tell me how any of what you just wrote here relates to a big conspiracy happening in #burgerandfries.
This was supposed to be about ethics in game journalism. So, approach this from scratch - where is collusion and corruption between the video game industry and the video game media going to manifest? That's simple: reviews and previews. You'd see games that shouldn't get good scores get good reviews. You'd see game features that should be condemned get praised instead. And yet, most of the invective was against "SJWs" - "Social Justice Warriors" - the people most critical of what the game industry is doing and most likely to push for diversity and reform. Think about it - how many previews and reviews were actually mentioned in this entire thing? And of those that were mentioned, how many of them were actually glowing reviews to undeserving games (for example, Joystiq gave The Sims 4 an average review, and got accused of collusion - if there was collusion, wouldn't the game have gotten at least a 4/5)?
Are you seriously suggesting that there's no collusion in the games industry based on one example? I think Jim Sterling would like to have a few words with you on that. Maybe you can go talk to that nice Phil Fish person who won the Indie Games Fund twice in a row while being financed by the judges of the indie games fund.
Maybe #gamergate is the wrong way to approach this, but saying it's nonexistent because you don't want to look at it is another very dishonest attempt to slander based on your own biases.
I've seen good smokescreens - my MA was in military history as a civilian student at a military college, and I took a signals intelligence course. The Ultra (British codebreaking effort in WW2) smokescreen was so good that not only did it fool the Germans, but until it was declassified in the 1970s historians for decades after the fact couldn't figure out what was missing from the Battle of the Atlantic, even though they knew that their picture of it made no sense.
Great, this has nothing to do with our conversation at hand. Please stay on topic.
#GamerGate is NOT a good smokescreen. It's an obvious one. It declares it cares about journalistic corruption while launching concentrated attacks against unrelated targets. That's why it got called out so quickly by so many, and only gained any measure of credibility once people who actually did care about games journalism jumped on the bandwagon.
I would call a gigantic post that doesn't address a single point in any post I've made so far as 'smokescreen'. Instead, you've tried to veer the conversation off into gamergate at large with it. When again, we aren't talking about gamergate at large, we're talking about Zoe Quinn's basis into her claim that #burgerandfries represents part of a larger conspiracy. In which you haven't even tried reinforcing those claims and have instead made a huge post ranting about gamergate. And that doesn't belong in this thread to begin with. If you wish to talk about that, there is a nice big thread that we can move to if you don't wish to continue the conversation on if the IRC chat room is part of a shadowy conspiracy.
Coming back to your original point, Quinn's evidence and the chat log released by the chat members works because it fills in gaps while remaining consistent with the picture we already have, without contradicting any of it.
Please prove this point, you're letting your bias slip into the argument again. If you're going to paint #gamergate as merely a puppet by the people in this chat room because you, personally, think #gamergate is made by a bunch of scumbags. Then I shouldn't even have to explain to the history major about how this is both slander and a strawman.
That ridiculous graphic Sticky posted was an argument from absence - it was based on things supposedly missing rather than things being present. The evidence from Quinn and the full chat log is based on things people ARE saying in the chat.
And you know what's missing the chat logs? Proof that everything about gamergate links back to the people in this chat room. In which none exists, because the log only shows people talking about gamergate in the chatroom about gamergate.
Then, to top it all off, you insist Zoe Quinn must be a factual, accurate source of information because you don't like the other side of the argument. DESPITE the fact that Zoe Quinn has proven to have, in the past, used underhanded tactics against her opponents. Even if we can't trust the opinion of the chat room, that doesn't mean we can support the opinion of Zoe Quinn. Your attempt to conflate the two and insist that Zoe Quinn's word can be taken as truth because you think #gamergaters are being dishonest
If your next post will be another attack on gamergate instead of the argument at hand: If #burgersandfries represents a larger conspiracy, then you should take it to the gamergate thread where arguments against gamergate belong.
