How do we realistically stop harassment online?

[Robert B. Marks]

Carnex: Regarding how this one got started, the chat logs (the massive, 3,000+ page ones) are being analyzed by people who have far more time than I do, and from what I've seen and read, Quinn's allegations about them are being independently verified. So, even if the people behind this didn't invent the #GamerGate hashtag, they certainly appear to have orchestrated how it was used and who got targeted. But, we'll know more as time goes on. We're still in early days, and there's almost 4,000 pages to go through. So, I know you may disagree with me in my analysis (assuming it was my analysis you were quoting...you snipped the entire thing, so I'm going on your first paragraph to provide the context), but I think it will prove in the end to be the right one.

So, all the evidence points to this having been a bona fide conspiracy. You don't see that very often. Even though I spent the last two weeks getting my heart broken as the video game media I spent years agitating for - one that treated games as a medium, rather than a toy - and actually got to see built was viciously attacked, I kind of feel honoured. When you study history you do see real conspiracies, but you don't expect to experience one in real life.

Anyway, I think this needs to be teased out, because it seems to me there are a number of things at play here.

1. The beginning, where a small group of people launch an attack with sock puppets and the like and use corruption in game journalism as a smokescreen.

2. The attack attracting people who are, for any number of reasons, afraid of change in the industry or angry for some reason at the targets, and continue the attack independently (one of the people analyzing this discovered that apparently the hacking of Phil Fish came as a complete surprise to the chatters, who didn't know it had happened until it was announced - I wish I could provide a link, as I was reading it just a bit ago, but time is short and I don't have time to look it up).

3. The cover story attracting people who are legitimately concerned about corruption in game journalism, and approach it from this angle.

So, we've got three separate movements, with the original instigators trying to maintain control and keep control of the targets (and, sadly, appearing to succeed for the most part). It's fairly clear that once the chat logs were published, we got over the hump, if for no other reason than the active role played by members of the chat became clear. So, just spitballing here, how did this one get defused?

1. The publication of the chat logs made a HUGE difference. Seriously, when I think about it, things calmed down a lot. I think it allowed the smokescreen to disperse, the attacks to be seen for what they were, and the legitimate issues to stand on their own.

2. The legitimate issues were heard and dealt with. So, reform did happen in a number of places, which means that those in category number three actually got to see some progress with their concerns.

So, bringing it back to the original topic (particularly relevant since there is a 4Chan message telling everybody to try again next year, but next time do all the conspiratorial planning anonymously), how do we prevent a repeat in a case where harassment begins in a such a orchestrated way?

Well, it really seems that the thing that made the difference this time was the chat logs. Maybe that old saying is true, "the truth will set you free." Trying to discount it only made it worse, trying to shame it intensified it instead, but somebody posting chat logs proving what was really going on took the wind out of its sails.

All that said, let's be fair, most of the time online harassment is not going to be this coordinated, and it is very unlikely to have a conspiracy behind it. This probably was a special case.

 

[Aaron Sylvester]

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?

 

[carnex]

-snip-

Allow me to ask you just one question. Do you think that anything like this can happen without being organized by some think-tank?

That Russian revolution just happened?
That American revolution just happened?
That any event that included more than 1000 people and didn't disperse within few days just spontaneously happened?

I'm seriously asking this.

 

[Sticky]

Carnex: Regarding how this one got started, the chat logs (the massive, 3,000+ page ones) are being analyzed by people who have far more time than I do, and from what I've seen and read, Quinn's allegations about them are being independently verified. So, even if the people behind this didn't invent the #GamerGate hashtag, they certainly appear to have orchestrated how it was used and who got targeted. But, we'll know more as time goes on. We're still in early days, and there's almost 4,000 pages to go through. So, I know you may disagree with me in my analysis (assuming it was my analysis you were quoting...you snipped the entire thing, so I'm going on your first paragraph to provide the context), but I think it will prove in the end to be the right one.

I know this wasn't addressed to me, but something immediately stood out, particularly that other people are analyzing the chat logs that have far more time than you do.

So you didn't read it, that's fine, 4000 pages is a lot to go through and there are people who can independently verify it. I just wish earlier, when you said you HAD read it, that you had been truthful with me in the argument. Not showing that you've been truthful with the argument, or worse, that you've been generalizing an entire group of people based on evidence that you had not observed yourself, in which case it turns out that you had been neither truthful or fair with people in the argument. That makes you look fairly dishonest, does it not? Should your opinion and arguments be construed as truthful if you've just been demonstrated to have been unfair in your argument in the first place?

But then, you go a step further and you say this

So, all the evidence points to this having been a bona fide conspiracy. You don't see that very often. Even though I spent the last two weeks getting my heart broken as the video game media I spent years agitating for - one that treated games as a medium, rather than a toy - and actually got to see built was viciously attacked, I kind of feel honoured. When you study history you do see real conspiracies, but you don't expect to experience one in real life.

It hasn't even been verified yet and you're doing a little victory lap. Are you wondering why people are still calling your posts 'assumptions' yet? We don't know ANY of this, all of what you've posted is supposition based on chat logs that, again, we cannot verify are even truthful to the movement it's taking place in and are also not verified with anyone as of yet. PLUS we don't even know the people who are verifying it, whose to say that those people aren't also trying to frame the conversation in an unfair light and you're only agreeing with them because they reaffirm your biases?

I have to say, if you've been trying to remain the impartial observer, you have been allowing your biases to slip more than a few times into your narrative.

I read the chat log in full (again, it took some time for me to do) and even I was able to come to the conclusion that it was merely a place to generate noise, idle chat, and discussion for people who were arguing on the #gamergate tag. So the escalation here that everyone is trying to make without sufficient proof makes your postings come across as someone with an agenda to push instead of a point to discuss. Especially when every one of your posts is pockmarked with loads of assumptions and attacks on your opposition and filled to the brim with unprovable bias and snide remarks.
People who are arguing in all honestly, they tend not to do that.

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?

Look at this thread and the current conversation that this thread is having and ask yourself that question a second time. We're to the point where this entire thread is spinning in circles with no way of escape.

 

[Robert B. Marks]

Carnex: I'm trying to parse your question correctly here, so forgive me if I get it wrong (it does seem to move in a couple of different directions at once).

Lots of big things can have very small beginnings. A movement involving thousands of people doesn't need a think tank - it just needs a lot of like-minded people and a few people to get it started. So, for example, if you take the biographical details of Jesus' life from the Gospels as being more or less accurate, Christianity started with about 14 people, was defined in many ways by one person (Paul), and is still going strong today with billions of members two thousand years later.

The Russian Revolution, the American Revolution, the Arab Spring (which I think should be added to your list), none of these things required a "think tank" - they just required the right people at the right time who knew how to mobilize popular support for something people cared about. Once enough people get involved who have enough investment in it to keep it going, it takes on a life of its own.

#GamerGate being started by four or five people is something I find completely plausible - all they had to do is tap into that portion of our community who are easily outraged and mobilized (and let's face it, there's been outrage in the past against publications over the scores of pre-release game reviews not being high enough). And there is a segment of the community who are very exclusionary, very fearful of the industry changing on them, and very angry and quick to mobilize over perceived threats. Convince them that the "SJWs" are destroying gaming, and they'll act.

A good friend of mine once put it this way - if you want to sway a group, you frequently need just three people. One person says "X is a good idea," two others agree with it, and the rest will follow. It's very possible that the people orchestrating #GamerGate had two more people than they actually needed to pull it off.

I think that answers your question...if it doesn't, please let me know and I'll try again (I like good and interesting questions).

 

[Robert B. Marks]

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:

Sep 03 00.56.24 Hi guys, #notyourshield squadmember reporting in, seems like we hit a vital point ?
Sep 03 00.57.15 recursiveAnon: you?re doing the lord?s work
Sep 03 00.57.20 I already joined ?
Sep 03 00.57.23 as a Latino
Sep 03 00.57.25 :3
Sep 03 00.57.41 if I show up in blackface can I help #notyourshield ?
Sep 03 00.57.48 lul

And this:

Aug 18 18.32.15 The wife is the key ?
Aug 18 18.32.36 Yeah the Wife is the main objective as of now ?
Aug 18 18.32.52 Dox the wife, find her email/mailbox
Aug 18 18.32.58 and then send letters en masse

And this:

Aug 18 17.34.56 Any luck on the wife hunt?
Aug 18 17.35.04 Once someone buys the dox, yes
Aug 18 17.35.05 <Five-Guys> facebook yields nothing
Aug 18 17.35.12 Err pipl throws this on Joshua facebook profile ?
Aug 18 17.35.12 Josh Boggs, [other name redacted by DF]
Aug 18 17.35.13 The dox might not yield much.
Aug 18 17.35.16 Its that his full name?
Aug 18 17.35.19 who the fuck is [name redacted]?
Aug 18 17.35.26 has this info been brought to the game journalists for their comment/denial?
Aug 18 17.35.31 That page is his facebook profile
Aug 18 17.35.49 He?s deleting all his shit
Aug 18 17.35.54 Someone dox [name redacted]
Aug 18 17.35.59 searching
Aug 18 17.36.14 You know, it might be his middle name or something
Aug 18 17.36.47 http://www.whitepages.com/name/%5Bname redacted]
Aug 18 17.36.56 Also his page is gone and the google cache throws back to his twitter ?
Aug 18 17.37.46 looking for a chinaman is tough shit.
Aug 18 17.37.50 their names are common as fuck.

(Source: http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/09/10/spamming-doxxing-and-sockpuppeting-4channers-dirty-tricks-straight-from-their-irc-log/#more-13205 )

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.

 

[carnex]

-snip-

No, I said that because you and some other people are holding those logs as some "groundbreaking discovery". It's a bunch of people that had enough of influence and will to propagate events, hold then further and try to steer then in direction they deem desirable. And in every event there is at least one of those groups. They are so god damn secretive that they advertized time and place of meeting publicly.

While "short fat otaku" has some amount of conspiratorial bias in his video, you blow it out of the milky way.

Now let me make a following statement and see how you like it.

Every movement like this needs some form of leadership or it will fall apart. #GamerGate has several and exactly because of that is flailing aimlessly loosing people. Luckily for it, new people keep coming. Chat logs are nothing surprising or even notable, especially not conspiratorial. Time and place was constantly advertized on 4chan in /v/ and /pol/. Everyone could see it, how do you think Zoe and others were there? You are getting worked up about a whole bunch of nothing. And while I can grant you that excerpts from those logs can be spun and are spun to damage #GamerGate but in reality what I saw of logs, that's just 4chan being it's own chaotic self.

Now, you act like reaching for support left and right is somehow bad? How do you think one gathers power, numbers and awareness? You seem to think that one side should get organized and consolidated while other has to be pure chaos. I will tell you something more interesting to consider.

Given the timing of attack articles and their content I would say that it's safe to say that was coordinated counter-attack. That means for both sides had some form of leadership. One, however had publicly announced it's headquarters position and times of assembly while other kept everything behind sealed doors. Which side looks significantly worse there?

I have no horse in #GamerGate race. I know that things will quickly degrade back no matter how much ground movement gains. You don't get high up by being honest and moral. What I hope for is that more people recognize who are hypocrites among people who feed their thirst for news, intrigue and lies.

 

[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.