Poll: I want to change the Gamer reputation.

[Atmos Duality]

Reputation is strictly a matter of perception, not reality.
I could explain in detail, but I'll just cut this short and say that I think it's a fool's errand.
Good intentions (on principle), but ultimately pointless.

"Gamergate" and "gamer" are labels in a political arena now.
An arena where gender politics and the press wield considerably more influence.
If the press feels like demonizing gamers for their own ends (like they did with the "Gamers are over" smears), they will do so. And if you try to organize something to stop it, someone else will come along and sabotage it; either for their own agenda, or for "the lulz".

Best you can do is to just act like a decent human being despite the efforts of others. Though one could apply that to any form of politics that relies primarily on genetic fallacy.

That said, I still wish you the best of luck, and beware the social outrage crowd.
Social outrage is a big, big thing on the internet now, and I have a feeling it's never going away.

 

[gamer_parent]

lofty goals, but it will ultimately fail for the simple reason that all movements of this kind will fail. Occupy movement, beyond bringing consciousness and a name to the frustration people have with our government, ended up accomplishing not much else beyond creating more acrimony between government and people.

the root cause is simple: there is no accountability in these movements. Not to the public, not to members of press, not to it's own members, and not to itself. The nature of movements like this are inherently chaotic and decentralized, which means that you cannot control your members in any meaningful way. So if you start a new hashtag? you end up with trolls who will co-opt the label and mess up your reputation.

The best way to move forward, honestly, is to create a group that has a membership of sorts, and use what GG has done to shine a light on these issues as a lighting fuse, with specific goals in mind.

i.e. you care about game journalism? your group should be focused on creating a coalition group that is capable of acting upon / engaging the game journalism world and influence it to become better journalists. To do this, you need credibility, and this means you need to recruit people that are respected by both the consumer base AND by the journalist world. Such a group would, like I said, need to be held accountable to itself and the public for it's actions. Hell, if you're REALLY serious about it, make into a 501c, and get REAL firepower behind it. Because let's face it, what you're talking might not be about politics as people understand it, but it is most definitely political in nature and in it's inner functions.

anything less than that, and you invite failure.

 

[Olas]

What's in a hashtag? That which we call Gamergate?
By any other name would smell as controversial.

I see no reason not to support this, but I also don't see how it's any different than Gamergate.

Explain to me exactly what makes this different than Gamergate and I won't consider them the same thing.

 

[Davroth]

You really start to sound more like GamerGate by the day... I'm sorry, but now you added a part about how you don't engage in all kinds of illegal activities? I'm not entirely sure what that is supposed to accomplish other then cast a suspicious light on this whole undertaking from the getgo. This is basically like asking your future critics to rip you apart.

But it's also the essence of why you will have a hard time finding GamerGate supporters to support your new thing when it takes off. The only way for GamerGate to fail is if they quit. And you set this up in a way that even though if you don't explicitly say it, you certainly condemn GamerGate's alleged actions, and by that basically made it unwelcome for them. If that's your intention, then that is fine. I'm not sure it's a smart move.

A lot of people are shooting me the doom and gloom scenario. How do you think I should handle this?

You might as well write the playbook for anyone who wants to shoot you down if you are going to put all the things you are not doing at the forefront.

Why do you think this will go any different then GamerGate? Within the first week, every notable name in GamerGate had denounced illegal activities as acceptable. They even went out of their way to fight doxxing at this point, and raised quite a bit of money for charity. And what are they met with? Dismissal. You kind of have to make peace with the fact that no matter what you say, if you are going to touch a subject like journalistic integrity, especially in the current situation, seeing how the corruption in games journalism dates back to the printed paper days, you will make enemies who will stop at nothing to discredit you. No amount of pre-emptive denying is going to stop that.

 

[Karadalis]

Jeebus grassgremlin.. you really like your polls.. and thus far they have allways clearly come up devastatingly against your own opinion or what you try to achieve.

Heres the problem with your attempt of creating something new:

People rallied behind gamergate not because of a single person, they rallied behind it because of the idea. Its a hashtag, not a tightly organized group with strict rules or a code of conduct to follow. Its like those aids ribbons you can wear to show that you want people to be aware of aids. Only that this time the media ran a smear campaign against it because it was them the symbol was targeted against.

You on the other hand... yeah.. its YOUR hashtag, YOUR ideas and ideals and YOU would be the go to man/oman/person.

And this is not how it works. Things like these arent created with planning ahead in some corner of an internet forum, they happen spontaneus and are a thing of the moment.

You cannot catch lightning in a bottle and it wont strike twice on the same spot. The people that support gamergate wont support your "gamergate+" and the people that are against gamergate will also be against you.

And the "rules" you put up? They are the same rules that gamergaters advocate... and you can see for yourselfe how successfull that is going along by all the accusations.

And you honestly believe this time it would be different?

Stop trying to achieve your 5 minutes of internet fame Gremlin... it is not worth it... unless you have a patreon account and this is just a lame attempt of getting the attention of trolls so you can pull a Sarkesian.

I am pretty sure they are not the reason that things like LoL and xbox live have such toxic reputations. That is because of gamers and only gamers.

And yet blizzards Starcraft 2, World of Warcraft and hearthstones communities (the actuall ingame communities not the minorities that actually use the forums) are well and healthy. Sure they have their occasional trolls but maybe.. just maybe... its the highly competitive nature of LoL and the fact you have alot of little kids on xbox thats the real reason why these two are so toxic?

And WoW numbers alone dwarf the users of any other AAA multyplayer game out there... yet you never hear about the toxicity of the WoW community. (their forums are a whiny mess thought.. but wich internet forum isnt?)

 

[Mastemat]

"2) Rally against social justice and feminism. This is about video games not political issues!"
While I applaud the anti-anti sentiment...

You can't just not have those discussions... for they are not political... they are existential.
Whether people like it or not, women and homosexuals exist... and them having representation and how their representation is presented in games is a fundamental part of many video games.
You can't just stick your head in the sand and think that those are alien things that shouldn't be allowed in on the "gamer" tag.
Because women play video games.
Because homosexuals play video games.
And we would like to have similar experiences to our heterosexual male peers:
eg: having fucking fun with an interactive media.

This WHOLE THING is nothing BUT "social justice".
Gamergate is "social justice".
Anti-Gamergate is "social justice".
Any movement like this is nothing but another form of "social justice".

In truth, if you don't want to do "social justice"... you shouldn't be in ANY movement at all.

 

[Silvanus]

What's in a hashtag? That which we call Gamergate?
By any other name would smell as controversial.

I see no reason not to support this, but I also don't see how it's any different than Gamergate.

Explain to me exactly what makes this different than Gamergate and I won't consider them the same thing.

I don't expect this is the OP's main differentiating point, but the origin of GamerGate is pretty important.

This would be free of that baggage.

 

[Simonism451]

Yeah, but is it still about gamers being afraid about other gamers recomending them games that the first set of gamers might not necessarily end up enjoying?

 

[Duster]

/v/ and gamergate are pretty dead and so are my expectations for game journalism. It will just be poop forever.

 

[Gestapo Hunter]

/v/ and gamergate are pretty dead and so are my expectations for game journalism. It will just be poop forever.

At least when big game company screw us gamer they do it with a smile and kind words.

 

[MrBaskerville]

In my mind Gamer is a word that is forever tainted and has been so for many years. It's an insult, the kind of people that pop up with pitchforks in hand whenevet some reviewer gives an 8/10 instead of a 9/10. It's the worst parts of the mob screaming about Mass Effect 3's ending, it's the people who are constantly outraged whenevet a game is 900p instead of 1080 and the people foaming with rage in League of Legends and on Xbox Live. Not the people who disliked an ending to a videogame, but the people who was blinded with rage and throwing a tantrum. The people that killed comments on Rottentomatoes because somebody dared speaking ill of The Dark Knight Rises, it's this guy: http://youtu.be/JBqPkMQ2ToU. The biggest assholes of the gaming community, that's how i see it, the rest of us are merely people who play videogames. To me, the loud minority ruined the word for good.

 

[Olas]

What's in a hashtag? That which we call Gamergate?
By any other name would smell as controversial.

I see no reason not to support this, but I also don't see how it's any different than Gamergate.

Explain to me exactly what makes this different than Gamergate and I won't consider them the same thing.

I don't expect this is the OP's main differentiating point, but the origin of GamerGate is pretty important.

This would be free of that baggage.

By 'baggage' I assume you really mean the shitstorm that most of the industry threw at Gamergate prompting the rest of the world to view it as a misogynistic hategroup?

Ya, I guess since most of the internet has refused to let Gamergate pry itself free from that baggage, a rebranding might be the only choice.

 

[TomWiley]

The question I have is; do we really need a new movement? The second you start to collect a diverse collective under one hashtag, that's the second your movement has lost. Because all a disgruntled critic needs is to find one bad egg in your group, write about him (or her but let's be serious) and then your group is Gamegate 2.0.

The only way to do this is to walk away with dignity, continue to play our games and avoid eye-contact with the Tumblr-community.

 

[Silvanus]

By 'baggage' I assume you really mean the shitstorm that most of the industry threw at Gamergate prompting the rest of the world to view it as a misogynistic hategroup?

Ya, I guess since most of the internet has refused to let Gamergate pry itself free from that baggage, a rebranding might be the only choice.

I was referring to the origins in the Zoe Quinn debacle, which, of course, turned out to be pretty baseless. I understand that this is not central to the movement any more, but it will always be the starting point when people hear or read about the movement.

 

[Otakun]

"2) Rally against social justice and feminism. This is about video games not political issues!"
While I applaud the anti-anti sentiment...

You can't just not have those discussions... for they are not political... they are existential.
Whether people like it or not, women and homosexuals exist... and them having representation and how their representation is presented in games is a fundamental part of many video games.
You can't just stick your head in the sand and think that those are alien things that shouldn't be allowed in on the "gamer" tag.
Because women play video games.
Because homosexuals play video games.
And we would like to have similar experiences to our heterosexual male peers:
eg: having fucking fun with an interactive media.

This WHOLE THING is nothing BUT "social justice".
Gamergate is "social justice".
Anti-Gamergate is "social justice".
Any movement like this is nothing but another form of "social justice".

In truth, if you don't want to do "social justice"... you shouldn't be in ANY movement at all.

Technically, GamerGate is a consumer revolt, not a movement. So, it's not exactly what is modernly known as "social justice", more like consumer justice.

 

[sageoftruth]

Funny thing is, just a few days ago, I was saying how the non-trolls in Gamergate should jump ship and start a new group. I'm in.

 

[Olas]

By 'baggage' I assume you really mean the shitstorm that most of the industry threw at Gamergate prompting the rest of the world to view it as a misogynistic hategroup?

Ya, I guess since most of the internet has refused to let Gamergate pry itself free from that baggage, a rebranding might be the only choice.

I was referring to the origins in the Zoe Quinn debacle, which, of course, turned out to be pretty baseless. I understand that this is not central to the movement any more, but it will always be the starting point when people hear or read about the movement.

I know you're referring to the "Zoe Quinn debacle" or the "Zoe Quinn slut shaming" or the "Zoe Quinn harassment campaign" or the "Zoe Quinn avalanche of misogynist death threats" or whatever people want to call it. Sorry, I still get a little butt-hurt over it.

I'm a little confused what you mean by "baseless" though. I think we can certainly agree that the scandal was not a big deal worthy of the attention it got, but I wouldn't categorize it as "baseless". Even if you insist that all the evidence people found was part of some massive elaborate hoax, you can hardly blame us for thinking it was real.