Was it fair how Jack Thompson was treated?

[Corran006]

When I think back years ago during the whole chaos that ensued because of the criticism by Jack Thompson I have to wonder if the Game media would condemn the community for threats and harassment aimed at Thompson.

Why did they not at least condemn gamers for their behavior rather then vilifying him along with the gamer community. Would it have made any difference in the past if the criticism had come from a woman?

How do you think Thompson would be treated by Games media today if he had appeared now and not in the past. Even though he may have been wrong did he deserve all the harassment and death threats he received.

Was his view point about games really all the different from suggestion that video games can impact woman and how they are treated which may cause more sexism? While I understand it not taken quite as far as Thompson I think its still in the same ballpark as what we are hearing today from Pop culture critics. To be fair I don't think they are that close together in their ideology but its something to consider.

 

[theSovietConnection]

I think the biggest difference between Jack Thompson and what you mention is that Mr. Thompson was actively trying to have video games censored under a law forbidding their sale to people under a certain age, if they could be sold at all. Given Mr Thompson was an actual lawyer under the bar, he posed what could be considered a real and emminent threat to not only video games, but culture as a whole, given his status.

On the other side, I haven't actually heard anyone I would take serious on the feminist side advocate for banning video gamjes with negative depictions of female characters. They mostly just ask for stronger, or at least more fairly treated, female characters in video gaming.

That being said, I don't condone the way Mr. Thompson was treated. Nor do I claim to speak with a complete knowledge of what the feminist side wants and advocate for. I'm just giving my input as a gamer who has sat on the sidelines up until now.

 

[Corran006]

I agree The feminist side is not trying to ban video games with bad depictions of female characters, but it has almost been suggested that games that do may leading to more sexist behavior out side of games and in the real world this could have an impact on violence violence against women and or increased sexism. While this is not out there as what Mr Thomson suggested its still somewhat of a similar idea. I thought Thomson did suggest that violent video games could lead to increased violence by youth.

With that all being said on a while I agree we need better depictions of female characters then we have now. I would like to think just about everyone feels that way.

 

[theSovietConnection]

Oh, I'm not suggesting that they are terribly different on an idealistic level. The biggest difference is that Mr. Thompson had the means to achieve what cold have been a terrible level of censorship in gaming, and as such, most likely invited far more malevolence on himself. While some feminists may imply similar effects that he did, such as your mentioned example of video games potentially promoting chauvanistic behavior, very few of them (none that I have seen, in fact, though I may have just not seen them) have advocated censoring games for it. Therein lies the biggest difference I think.

I guess when it boils down to it, I don't believe Mr. Thompson was treated fairly, as most of the backlash he recieved likely only ended up reinforcing his own view that video games lead to violent behavior.

Captcha: narrow-minded. Clever captcha. Very clever.

 

[Neverhoodian]

I guess memories really do fade with time. Speaking as a history buff, that can be a very dangerous thing.

The guy was a madman with a runaway ego and just enough legal clout to be worrisome. He was to video games what Joe McCarthy was to politics. If you ask me, he wasn't disbarred soon enough.

The really sad part was that his rantings and ravings were actually taken seriously for years by the general public. Thompson appeared as an "expert" on video game violence in all sorts of programs and publications, from Fox News to NPR. I'm sure there were plenty of people unfamiliar with video games who took his accusations of "murder simulators" at face value. People fear what they don't understand, and he exacerbated that with his hysterical claims of gamers being a bunch of Columbine/Virginia Tech shooters in the making. The medium was having a tough enough time being the scapegoat for society's ills without that nutjob joining the dogpile.

In the end though, as is often the case with such people, he proved to be his own worst enemy. Like McCarthy, Thompson started lashing out against his detractors in such an overblown way that the general public finally began to see him as the raving lunatic that he really was. In the end, powers higher than him finally struck him down for 27 separate legal violations, including making false statements to tribunals and harassing and humiliating litigants and lawyers. It's one thing to make up bullshit and talk trash on a Youtube video, but doing it in a court of law is another matter entirely.

Did he deserve the death threats against him and his family that I'm sure he received by some gamers? Of course not. Did he deserve just about everything else? Yes indeed.

I leave you with the wise words of Captain Picard:

 

[briankoontz]

A buffoon is someone who invites negative treatment, for whom negative treatment is part of his social strategy. This can become confusing and complex, since lots of other types of people are also treated negatively for various reasons.

The term "murder simulator" was carefully chosen to maximize media hysteria and gamer outrage, rather than to maximize the accuracy of the description of video games. Therefore Jack Thompson was a media manipulator and buffoon.

The best way to deal with Jack Thompson would have been to set matters right in the media. But at the time and even today there's no prominent gaming public figures to come forward to deal with Jack Thompson-esque people.

This goes back to the long-time problem that gamers have with *gaming critics*, as the recent GamerGate fiasco shows is still alive and well. Gamers have this conceit of being a "pure gamer", meaning *just play games* and ignore everything else - criticism, reality, politics. This monk-like laser-focus idiot savant attitude makes gamers vulnerable to not only abuse and manipulation, but immune to criticism that can only *help* them.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Was his view point about games really all the different from suggestion that video games can impact woman and how they are treated which may cause more sexism? While I understand it not taken quite as far as Thompson I think its still in the same ballpark as what we are hearing today from Pop culture critics. To be fair I don't think they are that close together in their ideology but its something to consider.

Saying that someone would do something violent is not the same as saying something can influence their worldview. Even then, no one is saying that playing through a Mario game will suddenly make someone sexist as-if a patriarchal society wouldn't influence sexism itself in far more ways than a single video game. Basically, people have far more mental barriers to committing horrible acts of violence than accepting problematic world views. There's a reason why we tend to view serial killers as "mentally disturbed" while understanding that someone with prejudicial viewpoints may be an otherwise stable person.

But as for Jack Thompson, from what I remember, he really wasn't so much for the advancement of violent video games as a medium as much as he was for hindering people's ability to play certain games. While Anita might argue against the way women are presented in video games, she hasn't really argued that our access to them should be restricted, just that we should challenge the views that these games have and encourage developers to do a better job at making them. In other words, Thompson was recognizable for his antagonism to violent games as a medium, but Anita isn't so much against games as she is for seeing them evolve as a storytelling medium. There's a clear difference, so I don't think we can really compare game media's treatment of Thompson to people like Anita.

Now whether or not Thompson received excessive levels of hate is another question, but comparing him to the way the game's media approaches issues like the one revolving around Anita is not really worthwhile.

 

[Verlander]

Thompson didn't offer criticism of videogames, he simply blamed them for things. He didn't want to change them, or improve them, he simply wanted to remove them.

I don't think that the backlash against Thompson was as personal (although happy to be proven wrong). He got called a lot of names and his "work" was criticised, but that's no different to Sarkessian before GG. I'm prepared to bet that no one threatened to rape him, for instance.

Plus, after the high court ruling that effectively silenced Thompson, MovieBob came out with a GameOverthinker video to very specifically address the points that Thompson had been making, saying something along the lines of "We've won against the guy who tried to bring games down, but now that we've won we should probably look into some of the criticisms that he had and act on them".

What I feel his point was, is that when something threatens your very existence, then it's logical to band together to protect it, but that doesn't mean that what we are protecting is perfect, just that it has a right to exist. It should still be open to criticism.

 

[Netrigan]

The threats were not only uncalled for, but they were potentially counter-productive.

If you're upset at the man for saying video games cause violence and want to show video game players are peaceful folks, then death threats are not a particularly good way to prove your point.

The comparison to the current situations are pure apple and oranges in my mind as he was advocating the governmental censorship of video games to which there would be no recourse. At worst, the current situation involves someone trying to "guilt" an industry into changing their ways... which only requires our continued support to counter.

 

[Saltyk]

I remember when Jack Thompson went on TV during the Virginia Tech Massacre and stated that he knew the killer would be a gamer. First off, it wasn't. Second, we didn't even know who the killer was at that time. Third, we didn't even know how many victims there were. Fourth, the bodies were still fucking warm, you ass hole! (Should note that the ass hole comment is directed at Jack Thompson)

No. Jack Thompson was a terrible person. He deserved all the hatred he got. Remember the lawyer speaking at his disbarment trial that broke down into tears talking about the stuff she put up with while working against him?

 

[Starbird]

He was a total idiot. I cheered a little inside to he him get disbarred.

It still makes me uncomfortable seeing him and people like him (and their families) suffer insane harassment because they put forward a stupid opinion that just happens to be connected to games.
There is a nasty undercurrent that comes out thanks to the anonymity of the internet and unfortunately tends to be excused as such.

I also hate it that the same people who say 'oh get a thicker skin, it's the internet - the people making bomb threats and putting your family's details out online do not represent us' tend to focus in on idiots like Jack Thompson when trying to dismiss a certain point of view.

Violence in gaming is a daft issue and one I've never bought into. That said, I don't mind it being discussed and it bugs me that it seems to be almost acceptable to resort to bomb threats, death threats and doxing these days when someone says something stupid about games.

 

[j0frenzy]

Probably. The large problem with this sort of retrospection is that we are being asked to look back on actions from a long time ago. Jack Thompson was disbarred almost 7 years ago at this point and the last couple of years he was a lawyer (if I recall correctly) he was more of a laughingstock than a serious threat. It makes it kind of hard to hold people accountable for actions taken when Thompson was an actor on the stage of gaming. Additionally, while this doesn't excuse any harassment or threats against him, he was sort of the ideal villain. He not only stood directly in opposition to video games, but he was hostile, confrontational, unethical, manipulative and opportunistic. He jumped on tragedies to proselytize his politics. He responded to criticism with browbeating, law suits and police actions with little basis in the law. He filed wild lawsuits and took actions based more in sensationalism than in any legitimate basis in the law. He was not a good person. Thompson was really not a good person.
All of that said, threats against his life and safety were not appropriate and we probably should have been a bit more responsive to the negative aspects of gaming culture.

 

[Robert B. Marks]

Well, that's a good question, and a bit of a troubling one.

If you've read enough of my posts on the forum, you'll know that I was there for part of this (I even managed to have a brief back and forth with the man in the Escapist forums, or at least somebody posing as him). The harassment he received was certainly unwarranted (you attack the man's words, not the man himself). The disbarment was self-inflicted - he had reduced himself to a laughing stock, as many have pointed out.

The thing is, as somebody who was there, I was completely unaware of the harassment. I probably should not have been - and the fact that Thompson's harassment had not crossed my (and likely a lot of other people's) radar is disquieting.

But as to why the game media didn't call out the harassment, I've only got two theories:

1. With Thompson trying to implement a nasty form of censorship, the games media was too busy trying to fight back to call out bad behaviour in the community.

2. The community wasn't as bad back then (there's a considerable difference between some people going overboard against somebody who is a legitimate threat to the entire industry to the point of trying to disrupt freedom of speech, and people going overboard time and time again over piddling matters like Call of Duty gun modifications - the first is understandable, albeit not condonable, and the second is terrifying).

And that's all I got. I'd like to think that had I known about the harassment against Thompson back when he was a real threat, I would have spoken out against it, but the truth is that I don't really know. It's really easy to take an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" approach when you're engaged in an actual struggle, and let things pass that you really shouldn't.

 

[DrOswald]

Jack Thompson deserved most of the flak he got, including being disbarred and all that. It was not right that he received death threats or other threats of violence.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

Did jack Thompson reserve scores of death threats and harassment? I didn't notice it happening. Twitter wasn't a thing back then and I don't think you had the same kind of backlash for saying something unpopular. Actually JT wasn't even saying anything unpopular at the time. That is I think maybe the big thing gamers need to realize. We aren't the underdogs anymore. Things have changed.

 

[antigodoflife]

If you have a name for yourself and you use it to purely discredit something, especially when you obviously have no clue as to what you're talking about, you deserve anything non-physical that happens to you. This includes being discredited yourself and having your history dug up.

 

[sageoftruth]

I despise Jack Thompson. Still, I'll never condone online harassment. It never helps. It gets in the way of honest discussion, and simply makes everyone associated with the harassers look like creeps to the rest of the world.

 

[upgray3dd]

Personally, I hated Jack Thompson. I don't mean I disagreed with him, and I don't mean I dispassionately thought he was a bad person. I hated this guy on a deeply personal level, like he was attacking me specifically. I thought of him as a symbol of everything wrong with the world.I would seek out all the news of his exploits and seethe to myself about how full of shit he was. When he got disbarred, I chalked it up to a win for the good guys and stopped thinking about him. I feel like a lot of us felt this way back then

After GamerGate blew up I saw a lot of people trying to turn people into the new Jack Thompson. Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, and Devin Faraci were frequent targets, and I thought it was all completely absurd. None of these guys, in my view, had done anything even remotely comparable to Thompson. I had perfectly good reasons to hate Jack Thompson, while these guys were just hating...

The problem with this line of thought was that I actually didn't have a good reason to hate Jack Thompson. It's obviously impossible for a person to be a perfect symbol of evil. He was no threat to me, his rants were never going to be taken seriously and he was never going to impact my life at all. Hating him was like hating a bum on a street corner that I went out of my way to visit every day. My behavior back then was pathetic and empty and sad. It took GamerGate to make me realize this.

Jack Thompson deserved the criticism he received and thoroughly earned his disbarment, but I can't help but condemn myself personally for the way I thought about him back then.

 

[Netrigan]

Personally, I hated Jack Thompson. I don't mean I disagreed with him, and I don't mean I dispassionately thought he was a bad person. I hated this guy on a deeply personal level, like he was attacking me specifically. I thought of him as a symbol of everything wrong with the world.I would seek out all the news of his exploits and seethe to myself about how full of shit he was. When he got disbarred, I chalked it up to a win for the good guys and stopped thinking about him. I feel like a lot of us felt this way back then

After GamerGate blew up I saw a lot of people trying to turn people into the new Jack Thompson. Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, and Devin Faraci were frequent targets, and I thought it was all completely absurd. None of these guys, in my view, had done anything even remotely comparable to Thompson. I had perfectly good reasons to hate Jack Thompson, while these guys were just hating...

The problem with this line of thought was that I actually didn't have a good reason to hate Jack Thompson. It's obviously impossible for a person to be a perfect symbol of evil. He was no threat to me, his rants were never going to be taken seriously and he was never going to impact my life at all. Hating him was like hating a bum on a street corner that I went out of my way to visit every day. My behavior back then was pathetic and empty and sad. It took GamerGate to make me realize this.

Jack Thompson deserved the criticism he received and thoroughly earned his disbarment, but I can't help but condemn myself personally for the way I thought about him back then.

By the time Thompson came along I had been to this dance a few times already and didn't think terribly much of him. He's just the kind of person every medium has to deal with at some point in their history. The music industry had Tipper Gore in the 80s and the whole PMRC thing ended up having the opposite affect on the industry it was meant to clean up, as warning labels allowed artists to really do whatever they wanted with only Wal-Mart providing any kind of barrier to extreme content.

And it really comes down to the government's unwillingness to censor anyone. Just about everyone has faced down Senate Hearings and created some kind of ratings board, which in the long run has done little to stem the tide of extreme content. The game industry just had to make all the right responsible noises and Thompson was never going to come close to winning.

 

[chinangel]

Jack Thompson...I hate to say it but, 'made his own misery'. Basically he stood there poking the hornet's nest, actively trying to anger people. It wasn't just gaming either: he targeted music and other things that were different from the culture he grew up in. It got so bad that he was ordered to get a psychological evaluation.

Eventually he was permanently disbarred but recently has decided that the rules don't apply to him and he's going to start practicing again. So no, I don't feel bad for a man who has decided to make an enemy of the world.