How do we realistically stop harassment online?

[GeneralFungi]

I once heard what seems to be a very practical solution for abusive people using voice com on Xbox live. If a person gets enough reports for saying rude or offensive things you just mute their microphone by default in multiplayer games. Give other players the ability to unmute them if they wish to, but make it so that people who spread around verbal abuse can't get at people who don't want anything to do with it. Maybe there would be an option on the menu to mute reported players automatically so people who don't care can have the reported unmuted by default.

 

[carnex]

I once heard what seems to be a very practical solution for abusive people using voice com on Xbox live. If a person gets enough reports for saying rude or offensive things you just mute their microphone by default in multiplayer games. Give other players the ability to unmute them if they wish to, but make it so that people who spread around verbal abuse can't get at people who don't want anything to do with it. Maybe there would be an option on the menu to mute reported players automatically so people who don't care can have the reported unmuted by default.

But that's sealed off environment. In those cases you can somewhat control the behavior of participants. Especially since there is an entrance fee. Out in the wild that will never work. You can't "mute" millions that can make billions of accounts.

 

[GeneralFungi]

But that's sealed off environment. In those cases you can somewhat control the behavior of participants. Especially since there is an entrance fee. Out in the wild that will never work. You can't "mute" millions that can make billions of accounts.

That's completely true, but if we can take care of Xbox live and Playstation's online service then we've already dealt with a significant amount of the problem.

In other environments the only thing I could think of doing is making player muting as easy to do as possible. Have it well signposted, make it difficult for those being muted to rapidly change username, etc. If a player finds it really easy to mute someone they do not enjoy hearing or reading the text from then it's affect on players is limited. People who are quickly and easily silenced would have to be really dumb or desperate to go through the effort of creating new troll accounts over and over just to be silenced by those he would be getting a rise out of.

 

[Robert B. Marks]

Carnex:

First, please don't put words in my mouth. Believe me, you don't know me well enough to do it. When I talk about the mechanisms of how historical things happen, I don't add value judgements.

And please, write with more context. I would like to reply to you - you pose interesting questions. But when you start with "No, I said that because you and some other people are holding those logs as some "groundbreaking discovery"," and the only point of reference you use is a post (with its entirety snipped) where I'm talking about how small movements can become big movements by mobilizing people, which was itself an answer to your question about whether mass movements need "think tanks," I don't have the first clue of what you're talking about. You apparently made a statement somewhere...and I am completely lost as to what it was. I have no idea what that statement was with the context you provided.

I never said that reaching for support left and right was bad, or attached any value judgement to it at all. Likewise, I never said that one side was chaos and one side was order, or needed to be. And I don't have the first clue of what an "attack article" is, or who you're talking about who apparently has some secret headquarters behind closed doors.

I'm sorry, I know you wanted to see how I liked the statement in your last post, but I cannot comment on it - I have no idea of what the hell you're talking about.

The only comment I can make is about the chat logs, which were important. They sent ripples across the 'net, and changed the discussion. And yes, they were a major discovery in a few ways, not the least of which was that they answered a number of questions about who was running the sock puppets and why #GamerGate kept appearing to attack the wrong people. The logs have them planning certain stages of the operation, and they line up with what happened.

But that's all I can say based on what you've given me. Look, I'd love to have a discussion with you, I really would. But without enough context to know what you're talking about in the first place, I've got nothing to go on.

 

[Robert B. Marks]

But that's sealed off environment. In those cases you can somewhat control the behavior of participants. Especially since there is an entrance fee. Out in the wild that will never work. You can't "mute" millions that can make billions of accounts.

That's completely true, but if we can take care of Xbox live and Playstation's online service then we've already dealt with a significant amount of the problem.

In other environments the only thing I could think of doing is making player muting as easy to do as possible. Have it well signposted, make it difficult for those being muted to rapidly change username, etc. If a player finds it really easy to mute someone they do not enjoy hearing or reading the text from then it's affect on players is limited. People who are quickly and easily silenced would have to be really dumb or desperate to go through the effort of creating new troll accounts over and over just to be silenced by those he would be getting a rise out of.

Woohoo! I got the quote function to work!

(Sorry - to protect my computer, I tend to operate with NoScript on, which means that if I haven't turned on the right scripts, things don't work so well...)

Anyway...

I wonder if that isn't too surface level. I mean, for one thing, a lot of places has something like this (ignore lists and the like), but in most of those cases, if somebody silences you on their computer, you have no indication that this is the case, so there isn't anything to stop you merrily continuing to act badly while being clueless.

Also, if you do it in such a way that somebody is muted to everybody, for all intents and purposes, and you make it too easy to do that, that means that it is very easily abused, and you can have a new form of bullying where people get muted because somebody else is holding a grudge. I don't think this is a bad idea - actually, I think it's a rather good one (the muting, not the bullying) - but there definitely need to be checks and balances to prevent abuse.

 

[Stats ^1]

If people stop treating others like assholes, like Anita Sarkeesian has been doing, then people will stop retaliating by being an asshole.

But that won't ever happen. people like Anita Sarkeesian will continue to come out with unresearched videos with stolen content while her kickstarter money sits happily in her bank. And people will continue treating her like an asshole which forces her to live at her friends' house.

The same is true in all other areas too. Assholes will exist in every corner of the internet, so people just need to stop being offended by it. If a Tumblr user wants to have a fake panic attack because someone referred to them as a him/her, then perhaps they shouldn't be using a website built around socializing and connectivity.

 

[carnex]

-snip-

Don't know how to answer that. Not because you convinced me of something but because we clearyl don't understand what the other one means by his statements.

Now, I will try to be clearer.

Logs that you see are nothing that surprises me. This is internet. Those thing happen. I'm prepared to bet my years salary that, if detailed chat logs of other side ever pooped up, and they wont, you would find exactly the same thing. This is in essence internet equivalent of war and in war there is only one rule. You must win.

For exactly that reason I said that logs are meaningless but can be spun hard due to the fact that it's 4chan. Unfiltered language and intents plus it's 4chan. For average person who actually doesn't understand the concept of what 4chan was, and compared to most other places for discussion on internet still is, it's like saying this are Satan's diary. I understand that very well.

My original point was about how i thought you misunderstood why people join #GamerGare and #NotYourShield. By this time I'm convinced you don't care about that, that you have set yourself your goal and perspective within which you see things and that you are right not unwilling to consider otherwise. Perhaps once you finish combing those 12000 lines (if I remember the length correctly) and have time for a reasonable discussion about what this event is since that seems much more important to me than dirty fighting going on on both sides. I don't think I can influence that.

I didn't try to put words in your mouth. Posts you wrote made me come to those conclusions. Evidently I was mistaking and I'm sorry for that. Than again, in this frame of discussion I have nothing further to add. I have stated all I had to say in that first post because to me, freedom matters.

 

[GeneralFungi]

If people stop treating others like assholes, like Anita Sarkeesian has been doing, then people will stop retaliating by being an asshole.

How to make a topic politically charged in one easy, simple step!

Please stop bringing up Anita Sarkeesian. There are many other online figures and regular users that have bile thrown at them then Anita does. And I wouldn't say every single person who has ever had a rude thing said to them ever can all be considered assholes. This strikes me as an attempt to derail the topic.

I wonder if that isn't too surface level. I mean, for one thing, a lot of places has something like this (ignore lists and the like), but in most of those cases, if somebody silences you on their computer, you have no indication that this is the case, so there isn't anything to stop you merrily continuing to act badly while being clueless.

To be honest I'm completely okay with them doing that. They will only go on until they get bored of it. Most people who say these things want a rise really badly, and if they get no response they quickly run out of fuel. If we had a system in place that alerted them when they were muted then they might take that as a challenge to record the username and switch to a smurf account to try again. I think it's better that they don't know they're muted for sure simply because that it might open more opportunities for them to slip through the cracks.

Also, if you do it in such a way that somebody is muted to everybody, for all intents and purposes, and you make it too easy to do that, that means that it is very easily abused, and you can have a new form of bullying where people get muted because somebody else is holding a grudge. I don't think this is a bad idea - actually, I think it's a rather good one (the muting, not the bullying) - but there definitely need to be checks and balances to prevent abuse.

It would probably need to be timed. Maybe a week or so of being muted? Maybe the muting could become a permanent thing after multiple offenses. I'm also not quite sure what to do with the bully thing, since any report system can be abused like this if you're not careful. Having staff hired to overlook the punishments being given out could either solve the problem or make it much worse.

 

[Inglorious891]

My mind is blown this thread even reached 4 pages when these were the very first fucking words:

With Anita going into hiding

So Anita tweets "I'm going into hiding!", clickbait journalists jump to it like a pack of hungry wolves, blow that tweet 100000x out of proportion and scream it from fucking rooftops (since that's their entire job these days), and people are just expected to believe it as the unquestionable truth. Despite knowing that Anita has NOT proven herself to be particularly trustworthy at all. Holy shit.

And then massive "discussions" erupt around sites like Escapist/Kotaku/etc all revolving around that 1 fucking tweet that is impossible to verify.

Unbelievable.

I can't even comprehend how something like this can happen. Human stupidity is my first guess.

I'm not saying that Anita is 100% lying, but 1 fucking TWEET?? Seriously?

Calm down dude, I said she went into hiding because it was the first idea I had that summerized what had happened. Had so many other things I actually wanted to talk about I just typed it and moved on.

You're looking way deeper into that statement then I implied, and I realize other people have blown that one tweet out of proportion, but I didn't mean to imply that I think she's some kind of political prisoner hiding from an angry mob or something.

 

[Robert B. Marks]

-snip-

Don't know how to answer that. Not because you convinced me of something but because we clearyl don't understand what the other one means by his statements.

Now, I will try to be clearer.

Logs that you see are nothing that surprises me. This is internet. Those thing happen. I'm prepared to bet my years salary that, if detailed chat logs of other side ever pooped up, and they wont, you would find exactly the same thing. This is in essence internet equivalent of war and in war there is only one rule. You must win.

For exactly that reason I said that logs are meaningless but can be spun hard due to the fact that it's 4chan. Unfiltered language and intents plus it's 4chan. For average person who actually doesn't understand the concept of what 4chan was, and compared to most other places for discussion on internet still is, it's like saying this are Satan's logs. I understand that very well.

My original point was about how i thought you misunderstood why people join #GamerGare and #NotYourShield. By this time I'm convinced you don't care about that, that you have set yourself your goal and perspective within which you see things and that you are right not unwilling to consider otherwise. Perhaps once you finish combing those 12000 lines (if I remember the length correctly) and have time for a reasonable discussion about what this event is since that seems much more important to me than dirty fighting going on on both sides. I don't think I can influence that.

I didn't try to put words in your mouth. Posts you wrote made me come to those conclusions. Evidently I was mistaking and I'm sorry for that. Than again, in this frame of discussion I have nothing further to add. I have stated all I had to say in that first post because to me, freedom matters.

THANK YOU. That gives me some context. I have to go shortly, so I'll type fast, and hopefully give you a reply that does justice to your own post.

First, I think you're assuming a unity on the side of games journalism that doesn't really exist. Yes, people do know and talk to each other, but it isn't a case where you have concerted pre-planning and the issuing of propaganda. I know there's a conspiracy theory about some shadowy PR firm apparently running things behind the scenes, but I also know that when somebody looked into that firm, as I recall, it turned out to be a small indie games developer who didn't own or control anybody. So, it's not two sides bashing away at each other, each with their own headquarters planning every next move.

Second, I understand quite well why somebody would want to join #GamerGate and #NotYourShield. I may not have been too active in the video games field for the last five years, but I was paying attention. I remember the scandals too. The problem was that most of what #GamerGate did was try to silence "SJWs" through harassment instead of actually addressing the issues. You say it splintered because of lack of leadership, but frankly, it more likely splintered because #GamerGate was full of hatred, misogyny and invective, and celebrated every time a female freelance writer got driven out of the field. Moderates don't like that, and they don't tend to stick around for it.

Third, as far as the chat logs go, you're talking to somebody who was once homebound for several months, and who was left so weak that his only way of interacting with the outside world ended up being IRC (and yes, it was hell). I know what IRC logs look like, and I know the territory. I also know what 4Chan is. They are not damning because they have misogyny or bad language - they are damning because they have people openly planning things which then happened.

Gathering support for a cause is not in itself bad, unless that support is gathered under false pretenses. If you want to reform game journalism and help implement more professional and rigorous ethical guidelines, that's fine. If you're saying that you want to do that while actually using that support to attack female writers and game developers for saying things you didn't like, or even worse just because they're female, that is morally repugnant and deserves to be called out.

 

[Stats ^1]

If people stop treating others like assholes, like Anita Sarkeesian has been doing, then people will stop retaliating by being an asshole.

How to make a topic politically charged in one easy, simple step!

Please stop bringing up Anita Sarkeesian. There are many other online figures and regular users that have bile thrown at them then Anita does. And I wouldn't say every single person who has ever had a rude thing said to them ever can all be considered assholes. This strikes me as an attempt to derail the topic.

I never brought her up. She's mentioned in the opening post.

 

[Sticky]

Sticky: This is likely the last thing I'm going to say to you, so I'm going to be very clear. I said that I opened the document and started reading. I read enough to create an informed opinion. That didn't take long. Now, you say that you read it, and you found nothing incriminating, which means that you missed stuff like this:


Cyberserker, by the way, is a channel mod. He's also the one who gave the instruction to start the spamming campaign of the Zoe Quinn material on 4Chan. You can find that in the link - and the file - too.

If you can't find this stuff, that is your problem. Leave the personal attacks at home.

Then why did you personally attack me before?

Your posts have really only been proving me right in this whole matter: No one's hands are clean in this and everyone has an agenda to push regarding it. So why do you put so much faith in the anti-gamergate side when it's clear they aren't being truthful with you either as demonstrated by aforementioned group collaboration against 4chan?

Again, none of this proves a part of a giant conspiracy and instead proves that #burgerandfries needs to do some housecleaning on trolls who join. Because once again, they have an open door policy. Anyone can just join and start posting anything they want. Too bad about Cyberserker, but the admin probably needs to get him out of the channel as well (Yes, IRC is divided into admins/sysops and operators. There are no 'moderators' in IRC).

This also has nothing to do with Zoe Quinns character and doesn't prove that she's a trustworthy source of information. You've once again gone around the point I was trying to make, which is that we can't trust the chat OR Zoe Quinn OR Anyone else with an obvious bias to report on this. Which includes your own source that you keep posting, I might add, because you left out some key context in those IRC logs AND many of those quotations are missing numerous lines between each event. As indicated by the ellipses after most of the lines, let's have a good look at how removing those lines changes the context:

Two lines above your SECOND quote.

Aug 18 18.31.52 Also informing 's wife

Oh look, your 'source' left out a key lines that put that into context: They were referring to trying to find 's wife and inform her that her husband was caught cheating on her. Which is still a scumbag and underhanded move against an opponent. But still not what your quote frames it as: as an attempt to target family members of people involved with gamergate. Again, I would imagine a history major would know the value of context in a quotation.

And again, if your 'source' wasn't trying to hide or distort the issue at hand, it would still be a fairly shocking and damning revelation. But since your source has left that key line out in order to vilify the channel, they've completely changed the meaning of what the quotations meant. Which if you're trying to tell me that your source is trustworthy, then your own source has done an amazing job harming their own argument by doing this. What else would have to be pointed out to you for you to realize that, while you've avoided being netted into the #gamergate propaganda, but you've instead been pushed into the hands of the opposition and their opinions?

Which is why you should have gone and read the IRC log before you made an opinion on it: because now you've been force-fed opinions from whoever aggregated and redacted the logs for you in a way that spins everything to be far worse than it is. Which is exactly what I was saying in regards to bias.

Which is why these supposed 'links' to 'conspiracies' are spotty at best and are completely unprovable. You can keep posting out-of-context IRC postings, but that doesn't prove anything in your argument and doesn't prove that these people are part of a larger conspiracy. PLUS it again points to you generalizing hundreds of people involved on twitter because of the actions of a few. AND they only work if you generalize all of #gamergate to be just like that channel (which is a HUGE fallacy, but I'm sure I don't have to explain that to you).

When your conclusion has to generalize hundreds of people in order for it to make sense, it's not those hundreds of people who are wrong.

EDIT: And I have to agree with carnex, do you seriously believe that the other side isn't doing almost exactly the same thing when Adam Sessler tweeted Zoe Quinn and her friends, in a bar, browsing 4chan? [https://twitter.com/AdamSessler/status/502633907817570306] Which again brings up why you trust Zoe Quinn so much to take her word as truth when she's on the other side doing the exact same thing. Not that she would tell you, because that might make her look bad.

 

[carnex]

-snip-

For starters, let me comment you latest quoted excerpts from IRC logs. You are doing exactly what I said logs will be used for, spinning it against #GamerGate and #NotYourShield

First is clearly poking fun at #NotYourShield deniers. I mean blackface? Really? I couldn't be more clear if it came with disclaimer.

Second and third are obviously deplorable act but it's at the best of my mental capacity to deduce not attempt to publish one's data but rather to spam someone's wife with something. Someone suggested cheating. Still wrong but not the implied meaning or what I perceived as implied meaning.

Now for the rest

Saying that there is no coordination between members/employees of certain gaming media outlets is wishful thinking to sa so not to go into harsher words and accusations. There is enough recorded messages and tweets just as there are way to convenient timings and types of articles as well as specific terminology used to happen by itself. It would make events surrounding death of Franz Ferdinand everyday occurrences and that event was unlikely enough to make many scholars contemplate possibility of predetermined fate. Only other explanation would be that those "journalists" really are brought together into hive-mind state but that would be too scary to contemplate and I do give those people more intelligence and capability of critical thinking to consider that. It's clearly gambit by those people to protect people themselves, people they love and like and their livelihood. I don't subscribe to Silverstring media theory, but actions are clearly not totally independent.

It is actually funny to me that people telling group named "SJW" "get of my case" and "you don't represent" me as trying to shut them up. Actually i find it hilarious. Read my post here

Spoiler

So what's my point then? Well, most people involved are in for one form of personal benefit or another. It's always about that. And I would say that most people that are in are in because of following reasons

- being insulted, shamed and humiliated simply because of their hobby or fact that they are combination of certain race, gender and sexual orientation
- being abused as weapon against the first group through generalizations, exaggerations and lies while at same time being marginalized and pronounced irrelevant or nonexistent
- being told what to say, think and feel or being told that someone else know better than you what you actually are saying, thinking and feeling.

And all that by persons that are often shown morally worse than people they verbally attack.

Now that I can stand behind. Because I want freedom of thought, freedom of word and freedom of expression. Real freedom. I'm willing to pay the price. For millenniums people died for those same ideals because for millenniums people actually felt what oppression means.

and see what i see in there. I do understand that there are people who want to use whole movement as hammer against their perceived enemy but they are failing hard to do so. People actually don't give a crap about them.

You might know how to recognize IRC chat log. Those things happened. As long time 4chan user that actually left that portal some 3 years ago due to their fall from position I liked I also can clearly say that that is clearly how 4chan sounds at the best of times. That much I agree. As for the rest, it's 4chan. Freedom does have it's dirty burdens and people do plan events they put into practice. It's just that guilt should always stay on individual level otherwise we are no better than worst of both sides.

That said, learn the meaning of the word "misogyny". Real meaning not the meaning people who attack gamers as a groups use it, but the real meaning, meaning that common person not drenched in certain ideology uses. It represents state of mind that is considered worthy of observation and perhaps even treatment. It means hatred or distrust to the level that it seems hatred like of entire gender. Not a small part of gender, not even a significant part of a gender based on some common trait they share. Hatred of entire gender based on traits that person believes entire gender shares. It's a really strong word. A damning word. A word that should be used with extreme caution not only of the power it carries by itself but also because it got weaponized by certain group or groups. You throw it casually and carelessly yet it demands extreme caution and personal conviction. Out of all this shit that is going on there is exactly one case I would argue that someone is misogynistic. Exactly one.

Yep, that really agitated me. Congratulation, you are first who actually caused me to put my agitation into words on this board.

I see your angle. But here is another to consider. There is no way for me or anyone to stop people doing deplorable crazy shit. This is internet, once you raise voice, no matter how insignificant you are, people are going to start polarizing around your opinion. It's the nature of the beast, environment we all are part of. If nobody could stop MovieBob, a Internet Celebrity in Gaming Media World, to call his audience subhuman vermin, how do you expect anyone to stop anyone that has cloak of anonymity on them from doing anything?

Most people I was that are for #GamerGate and #NotYourShield actions do call out those actions. Even more they denounce they association and agreement with those actions, label them as inappropriate and violation of one's basic rights and distance themselves from those people. And that's all you can do without having time, influence and power to go after them legally which would be thrown out of the court on firs chance anyway.

 

[Plunkies]

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. Think of Occam's Razor - what makes more sense? That Anita Sarkeesian received a number of death threats with her home address from a sock puppet on Twitter, got her family to safety, called the police, and then decided to draw some attention to it as a "F*** you!" to the stalker, or that she decided she needed more publicity, faked a death threat in public using her own address (thus endangering her family), filed a false police report (exposing herself to criminal charges and jail time), and then draws attention to it all on Twitter (increasing the odds of her family being endangered and the scam being exposed)?

This isn't something you should even have to think about - the second scenario is just ludicrous.

I knew you wouldn't try to refute any of the evidence. Instead you just write off the entire idea as crazy and beyond consideration. That's not the purpose of Occam's Razor. It's a heuristic that suggests not making superfluous assumptions. By your logic every liar must be telling the truth regardless of evidence to the contrary.

I mean really....Why on earth would someone who directly profits from death threats possibly make a fake death threat prior to the release of an upcoming video, post it on the internet, and then immediately ask for donations. I mean, does that sound at all logical to anyone? Surely someone known for lying and attention seeking wouldn't lie for attention, right?

You say she called the police? Well she certainly said she did, unfortunately....

http://www.gamerheadlines.com/2014/09/anita-sarkeesian-faked-death-threats/

Multiple people went looking and, as it turns out, local pd has no history of any such report. Isn't that odd?

You say she wouldn't risk giving out her address but you're assuming that's her address based on her word alone. Despite not being logged in or even searching she, miraculously, was the only person on the entire internet to see the threats. There is no third party confirmation. For all we know it could have said anything.

The timing is suspicious.
The content of the messages is suspicious.
The screenshot itself is very suspicious.
And her behavior after the fact is both opportunistic and dishonest.

 

[GladiatorUA]

We can't. Realistically. It's a shitty and complicated issue that can't be resolved. Assholes... No, shitty people exist, they always did and they always will. What has changed in last one or two decades was the internet. Earlier, the number of shitty people you encountered was limited by the size of your social circle. Now, you interact with much more people on a daily basis, so more shitty people. And somehow they hijacked good name of an asshole. Being an asshole doesn't make you evil or a shitty person. But that's a different issue.

Also, somehow, internet knocked out a certain limiter in a lot of people, and now they deal in absolutes. Don't like someone or someone's being an asshole? "Get cancer and die!"... WTF?! I don't want to take away the right to lash out at someone, but get some degrees appropriate to the "crime". "Hit your toe on the table leg really hard!" or "Get a hemorrhoids the size of an apple!" are much more reasonable for most "crimes" committed on the internet. But the way people lash out today is really uncomfortable.

Then, there is bandwagonning and crowd mentality. Not so vocal people join the cause that resonates with them, follow people with loud and strong voices and lose their own nuanced opinions a moral limiters.

There is also corruption/perversion/hijacking of causes. Strong loud voices derail bandwagons and use them for their own agenda.

And "us vs them" thing combined with labeling.

You would think that internet would help to lessen rumors and misinformation when information is readily available, but comments on reddit with recaps of ZQ scandal, for example, prove otherwise.

None of these issues can be solved fast or at all. Bandwagonning can be attacked by Pavlovian training of new generation in critical thinking. Won't solve it, because humans are social creatures, will reduce it though... But, *tinfoil hat on* critical thinking is harmful for all sorts of agendas with money, marketing being the most harmless of them *tinfoil hat off*.

And even band-aids don't work on these issues. Community moderation and counterattacks against shitty people turn into attack squads that fight criticism and different opinions.

Twitter turned into a force for evil, because 140 symbols cuts out any nuance and makes it impossible to have any discussion...

Any solutions? Condition yourself to ignore harassment. Shitty people want reaction. Stick to moderated communities and demand muting and moderation(reporting) options in games.

Tl;dr: everything is shitty, nothing can be solved, and funnily enough it has nothing to do with gaming, and only about 20% to do with internet.

 

[Robert B. Marks]

Carnex: I actually have to move on now (other things require my attention, and I need to stop reading message boards for a while and actually get some work done). But, before I do, I just wanted to thank you for the conversation. A good, challenging discussion is something I always relish, and you provided a good one indeed. Thank you.

Plunkies: I discounted you the first time because you were making a number of allegations in a conspiracy theorist manner without any evidence to back it up. That said, your latest post is indeed worthy of attention, and thank you for posting the link. My only comment would be that to prove the allegation, you would also need to follow up with the other local authorities in the San Francisco area (as she did not specify that she had talked to the SFPD) - if indeed it turns out that she did fake the threats, that would be a serious matter indeed, and quite shameful.

 

[Robert B. Marks]

Hi all - back for a moment after getting my work and various things done, because there's a bit of information that is tangentially related to the conversation.

Today a reporter named Milo Yiannopoulis received confirmation that Anita Sarkeesian IS working with the FBI at this time. It is possible that the reason the police report didn't appear in the SFPD records is that it was transferred when the case went federal (or, likewise, it could be that she went through a different local authority to get to the FBI).

The link is here: https://twitter.com/Nero/status/510484796943114240

Either way, unless new information pops up, I think we can put the "faked death threat" theory to bed now.

Considering it was a topic of conversation, I thought people would want to know.

 

[Sticky]

HUGE EDIT: I've changed my mind about something; arguing in this topic is a little pointless when everything that could be said about it has already been said. We're just arguing about gamergate at this point, and we don't need a second gamergate thread on this forum.

I will say: The chances of Anita 'faking it' are low, especially on the public sphere of twitter where hatred is only a mouseclick away. At the same time, three tweets from an associate editor at Breitbart, the same tabloid that reported that the NWO would take over America by 2014 [http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/05/29/VP-Biden-Tells-Air-Force-Cadets-to-Create-a-New-World-Order], does not a credible source make. Especially with the lack of any police reports. All we have is 'good faith' that this one reporter who hasn't written an article on the matter somehow has access to which files have and haven't been transferred to the FBI.

Not wanting to get into an argument with you again, but one post before that, you made an allegation to someone else about this same topic:

because you were making a number of allegations in a conspiracy theorist manner without any evidence to back it up.

And I have to say: if the problem is baseless conjecture without credible evidence, then he isn't the only one.