And in all your experience and wisdom you haven't thought about not using Appeal to Authority as an argument? Calm down, take a breath, think, then write, and I'm sure we can have some sort of meaningful discussion.AkaDad said:
Over 1,800 Gaming Professionals Condemn Hate Speech in Open Letter
- Thread starter Karloff
- Start date
Is it just me or is there just this consistent theme among those that defend the gaming media lately, where the sentiment seems to boil down to arguments stemming from ignorance? I just can't help but notice that subtext always seems to be that:
1. They don't know what is going on and they don't honestly care to know because either no one should care in the first place about something they don't see the big deal about and therefore not worth the effort to find out. or...
2. They heard that this is all about gamers ganging up on women and they buy the smoke screen that the media journalists themselves are under attack because they dare to defend women in the industry because they saw some tweets or comments put forth by the less disciplined or articulate among the "gamers" and decided they we are all bad people by association with no real purpose rather than to be sexists.
I don't think I have yet ran across any comments from anyone in opposition to the "gamers" who actually seems to know what this is even about. What is even worse is that the ignorance appears entirely willful or just a product of laziness or apathy. I can appreciate that maybe they don't trust that any of our sources on the matter will be unbiased. The irony is that neither is the information that you likely have about this already, and that is precisely why the "gamers" are mad.
1. They don't know what is going on and they don't honestly care to know because either no one should care in the first place about something they don't see the big deal about and therefore not worth the effort to find out. or...
2. They heard that this is all about gamers ganging up on women and they buy the smoke screen that the media journalists themselves are under attack because they dare to defend women in the industry because they saw some tweets or comments put forth by the less disciplined or articulate among the "gamers" and decided they we are all bad people by association with no real purpose rather than to be sexists.
I don't think I have yet ran across any comments from anyone in opposition to the "gamers" who actually seems to know what this is even about. What is even worse is that the ignorance appears entirely willful or just a product of laziness or apathy. I can appreciate that maybe they don't trust that any of our sources on the matter will be unbiased. The irony is that neither is the information that you likely have about this already, and that is precisely why the "gamers" are mad.
My deepest and sincerest apologies for not being calm after someone accuses me of lying. What was I thinking?AlexKerscher said:
Thanks for suggesting the proper way to comment, I'll take that into consideration.
Anyone who wants to ignore the abuse that gamers, reviewers, and journalist have taken over the years can, that's up to you, but it doesn't mean that it didn't happen. Jim Sterling still gets shit on for his Vanquish review.
I also shouldn't have to put up a disclaimer that says I'm not talking about all gamers, I mean come on.
Thats how ive always seen it. I dont play MOBAs i guess the cloest thing is Dawn of War 2 but either way it does get very competitive, and if the game is going on the anger rises and the spew of hateful commments come out. Its not based on the players gender, sexuality or race. They cant know this all the time i mean all you have is a mic to find out if its male or female. But its just that game is going bad FUUUUUCCCKK SHIT DICKS GAY MOTHER FUCKING DAMIT FUCK ***** CARPET LICKING N00B !!! or somthing along those lines.NuclearKangaroo said:maybe, tough i wouldnt dare say anybody playing dota 2 is over 12 years old heheAstaresPanda said:
theres harassment and hate in MOBAs, but its pure undirected hate, it has nothing to do with gender or race, if you are sucking in one of those games (or if everyone else is sucking but they dont want to admit it) you will get insulted
You're also not going to find a bigger hive of people who should have taken one of those corporative e-learnings on how to behave yourself professionaly on the internet.GamerMage said:
But then again if these glorified bloggers were actual professionals they wouldn't have got themselves into this mess in the first time, ese.
Buddy that is NOT their statement. Sarkeesian herself was caught on tape talking about how she didn't play video games until a couple of months before starting her KS, and the exact same video game footage used on her videos can sometimes (not always, sometimes) be found to have come from Let's Plays on youtube. Their statement is that YOU, GAMER, don't know what is best for your hobby. THEY, political activists, know. And that you need to be taught what to think by professional activists.GamerMage said:
Well, certainly looks like you are. You're utterly incapable of seeing anything in the other side of the argument. Which makes you the definition of a Fanatic.AkaDad said:
We have many women/black/gay gamers in the Zoe Quinn thread. Are you gonna tell them about their "internalized misoginy/racism"?
I don't quite know how to express just how right you are, just how perfect your post is, as it encompasses EXACTLY what nearly everyone that isn't part of the minority of misogynists/harassers/trolls has been saying for the past two (three?) weeks.Aramis Night said:
Luckily, gamers as a whole are seeing through this massive misdirection and the massive media blackouts.
I'd like to make a point here.
Who didn't stop those trolls? Who didn't report them? Who didn't at least post a reply saying "No, it's not okay to say that, I don't care what medium of speech you're on"? Who refused to stop any of these trolls because "Well, there's just so many so let's not even try"? And then you're getting all mad at gaming journalism because it has the GALL to finally stand up and respond to the tide of shit we let them get away with?
I mean, you don't need to call the cops or anything. Just reply to them. Just say something back. "Don't feed the trolls" is not a good excuse to let them run wild and post hate with impunity. You wonder why this happened? It's because you didn't do shit.
People still smoking doesn't stop anti-smoking campaigns. People still dying in car crashes doesn't stop others from trying to prevent as many as possible. The point is, they're at least doing shit. And we're sitting around here feeling all sorry for ourselves because "Games journalism" actually decided to give a shit and respond to these assholes. Could they have used a better word than "Gamers"? Sure they could have. But we refused to call out toxicity when we saw it and now we're dealing with the fallout. You want to know why the press is against you right now? This is why.
Who didn't stop those trolls? Who didn't report them? Who didn't at least post a reply saying "No, it's not okay to say that, I don't care what medium of speech you're on"? Who refused to stop any of these trolls because "Well, there's just so many so let's not even try"? And then you're getting all mad at gaming journalism because it has the GALL to finally stand up and respond to the tide of shit we let them get away with?
I mean, you don't need to call the cops or anything. Just reply to them. Just say something back. "Don't feed the trolls" is not a good excuse to let them run wild and post hate with impunity. You wonder why this happened? It's because you didn't do shit.
People still smoking doesn't stop anti-smoking campaigns. People still dying in car crashes doesn't stop others from trying to prevent as many as possible. The point is, they're at least doing shit. And we're sitting around here feeling all sorry for ourselves because "Games journalism" actually decided to give a shit and respond to these assholes. Could they have used a better word than "Gamers"? Sure they could have. But we refused to call out toxicity when we saw it and now we're dealing with the fallout. You want to know why the press is against you right now? This is why.
Speak for yourself, who says people don't try? I've told people they're being tools before, i've seen and still see plenty of people take very activate stances against harassment. Is it our fault they're still around? Are we meant to change human nature and the ease anonymity gives?Racecarlock said:
Besides, this petition is yet another article decrying gamers because of all the accusations of corruption which we've seen over the last few weeks. They're doing something good for (partially) the wrong reasons (not to say there isnt plenty good in it as well of course)
These type of comments baffle the shit out of me.R0guy said:
I'm used to the insults, so that's not what baffles me. It's when I make a comment about one thing and then get accused of saying things I didn't, like when I get accused of blaming every gamer on the planet when I'm clearly talking about the assholes. Or when people completely ignore the point and bring up things that have nothing to do with what I'm saying. Or when people accuse me of being fanatical because I haven't made a comment about what they want me to talk about.
Just because I didn't comment about Zoe Quinn or the guy that compared gamers to ISIS, it doesn't mean I'm on their side.
yupAstaresPanda said:Thats how ive always seen it. I dont play MOBAs i guess the cloest thing is Dawn of War 2 but either way it does get very competitive, and if the game is going on the anger rises and the spew of hateful commments come out. Its not based on the players gender, sexuality or race. They cant know this all the time i mean all you have is a mic to find out if its male or female. But its just that game is going bad FUUUUUCCCKK SHIT DICKS GAY MOTHER FUCKING DAMIT FUCK ***** CARPET LICKING N00B !!! or somthing along those lines.NuclearKangaroo said:maybe, tough i wouldnt dare say anybody playing dota 2 is over 12 years old heheAstaresPanda said:
theres harassment and hate in MOBAs, but its pure undirected hate, it has nothing to do with gender or race, if you are sucking in one of those games (or if everyone else is sucking but they dont want to admit it) you will get insulted
granted is not the best thing ever either, but competitiveness often generates a level of aggression, its human nature, and people are doing things to control the most toxic of communities, any MOBA worth its salt has a report and mute system in place, and many other online games have this as well, and vote kicking
and hell even this level of aggression is somewhat rare in TF2, another reason why i love that game, what other game allows 2 groups of competing complete strangers to put their differences aside and do a conga line? no other, it just doesnt exist, TF2 is the best online game ever, end of story
what the... he didnt insult you dudeerttheking said:
hell last time i saw you, you seemed very bummed about all this, and it was in that thread, you should know better, you know most of us there tried to discuss respectfully
captcha: good morning!
atleast you seem better now
I'm not saying you are a liar, friend. But I was saying you are wrong. Either someone lied to you, or you went a little lazy with your research, or just haven't really gave it much thought. Hey, this sort of things happen, right? That's why we have conversations with other people, so we can share our thoughts and compare notes and come to conclusions together. Otherwise what's the point of foruns, right?AkaDad said:
Ahem. (This one got a lot longer than I planned).
People who voice their opinions publicly often "get shit" from others who disagree with 'em. In order to understand how this happens I will ask you to bear through a brief interlude about my nation's favorite hobby: soccer.
Why don't you see soccer managers whine about how Soccer Fandom is Dead and how Soccer Fans are the most horrible people on Earth? Mind you this is a fandom where people travel several miles, into foreign countries, to kill each other over their club. Not figuratively, literally. These people kill and die by the hundreds, in the whole world, every year.
Now all these people, the fans, the players, they all have twitter and instagram accounts nowdays. Like most (but not all) journalists, players sign contracts about expanding their personal media presence, their online relevance. They get hassled, they receive, every week, more harassment than Zoey Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian have ever received and will ever receive in their entire lives. Not to mention that week-in week-out they will have to perform great acts of physicality in front of a crowd of several thousand people who will scream and chant horrible insults at players, refs, and coaches. So, you know, they have to perform their job under a little pressure.
Why don't you see any of these people whining like a fucking pussy on Twitter about how they receive death threats (please refer to how soccer fans kill each other by the hundreds every year) from their fans, and how their fandom is the worst kind of people in the world?
Because they are professionals who are prepared to this. They have classes on how to handle social media, how to behave online, what to do when someone harasses you for doing your work in ways that are unpleasant to some people. And they act like fucking professionals.
Now let's get back to Game Journalists.
Game Journalists are not very good in what they do. They have little training on anything, they sometimes fail at doing their job correctly in one way or another, and most (but not all) do not have an academic background in journalism.
Let's take Stephen Titilo for an instance: the editor-in-chief in one of the biggest game news websites of the world proudly has a Master's degree on Journalism. In my professional area if you don't have a master's degree and at least two MBAs and dozens of publications nobody's even gonna call you back after reading your job application. Because, like any adult like yourself knows, serious business require people with preparation and who are armed with the best practices available on the market.
But on game journalism, you see, there's this paradigm that anybody can write and be a journalism. Because writing stuff that other people have done is something that you used to do on your homework back in high school, so anybody has some experience and knows how to do it properly, emmareet fellas? The general consensus seems to be that you don't really need to know how to do your job in order to perform it correctly.
Which brings us to the current events.
Nevermind that this whole shitstorm happened because the editor-in-chief of one of the biggest game journalism websites of the world let one of his writers publish an article about another one of his writer's girlfriend-ish without checking the sources (I'm talking about the article where a certain game developer was allegedly harassed by people from Wizardchan. Journalism 101, always attempt to contact all the involved parties), just take a look at how this so called professionals react to criticism, about how Sarkeesian is scared shitless of people having doxxed her, even though there little or no evidence of people killing each other on real life over this.
This is the kind of tantrum that people used to throw on Blogger, usually when another user criticized their picture years ago. This is the behavior of amateurs. Knowing how to deal with your fan base and especially how to deal with internet comments is part of the fucking job, and is something that every single "journalist" seems to suck really fucking bad at doing.
This thing that is happening, all these journalists "harassed", this really, really sucks for the individual people involved, but it's really fucking good for game journalism as a media. This is the time bigger media corporations like Gawker start throwing some money on training their employees on the basics of their roles, or to review their current "we're like a blog, only not" business model.
Now, while I can understand empathizing with the people involved (because I do empathize with 'em. I've seem smaller-scale similar shit at my office and it was brutal), while I support that people should always keep civil in conversations, I can't agree with your position that the public is at fault on this one. Sure, some people are not helping at all, but placing the blame on how the public because they got mad after going to the best restaurant in town and getting served a plateful of crap when they ordered the steak of truth, seems to me like trying to oversimplify something over-complicated on it's own nature.
The "Shattering your world view" line didn't sit well with me.NuclearKangaroo said:
Yeah...I should. I suppose I'm too stubborn for my own good. I think I'll take a break from these threads before I get myself depressed again.
Thank you.
Ok, so my inability to police the internet to the satisfaction of yourself and game journalists means that I do not deserve to have an aspect of my identity treated with respect. It also makes me clearly unworthy of expressing any views that illustrate my grievances with the state of gaming journalism. I am a "gamer". When someone fires shots at that, it hits me and many others. I have issued no death threats and made no threats or harassment to anyone. I am far from alone in that. Sacrificing the innocent in the name of attacking the guilty is unacceptable and is a far worse crime than the apathy we are being accused of on the matter of enabling harassers. Especially given the scale of guilty to innocents.Racecarlock said:
If they wish to call out harassers, that is their right. That is not what they did. They instead chose to draw a line in the sand and lambast "gamers", not "harassers". They chose to make me an enemy because of what I choose to do with my free time. If you think that harassment justifies what the "game journalists" are doing, then you could justify all manner of evil to anyone since every group has undesirable individuals. We did not promote harassers to be our representatives. Their is no grounds to assign us collective guilt by association.
As it stands now, the "gaming journalists" have not been the only side receiving harassment on this issue. But much like the rest of the "gamer" side of the story, there is no spotlight illustrating that in anywhere near the same level of coverage if any at all. The difference is that the "gamer" side of the story actually doesn't have nearly as much to gain by making this an issue of harassment compared to our other grievances. We have bigger fish to fry.
I stopped reading at you're first sentence. Just the few examples I've provided shows way more abuse towards journalists than in the opposite direction. I could sit here for week and provide example after example of the abuse gamers dish out and you would probably ignore it all. You remind of the people who ignore all the scientific evidence and still claim that the earth is 6,000 years old. You know what you know and that's all you need to know.AlexKerscher said:
I'm done talking with you.
no problem manerttheking said:
if you think thats the best for you, go ahead
to be fair there HAVE BEEN some hot heads in both sides, but that thread is super tame
"Hate Speech" is a meaningless, impossible-to-define marketing catchphrase.
A more apt title would be, "Game journalists sign open letter calling for censorship of their critics."
A more apt title would be, "Game journalists sign open letter calling for censorship of their critics."