Was it fair how Jack Thompson was treated?

[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.

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.

Exactly. He wasn't a nice person or a good person, sure, but he wasn't special. People like him just kind of show up at a certain point in a medium's history. I blew him way out of proportion, and I feel like I wasn't alone in that.

 

[TaboriHK]

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.

This. Jack Thompson was actually attacking the medium of free expression that is gaming, and through legally murky means. Murky enough to get disbarred. So yes, what happened to him, he did deserve.

 

[Schadrach]

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.

The biggest difference is that one case involved a lawyer looking to use legal approaches to fix things the way he saw fit, the other is a great number of people belonging to similar political positions trying to use shaming to fix things the way they see fit. They have more in common with the satanic panic of the 1980s than with Jack Thompson, except that they have the internet. Including being bullshit.

 

[DoPo]

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?

Yes. He is the person behind these quotes

The Bible doesn't promote killing innocent people, Grand Theft Auto does. Islam does. Islam promotes the killing of innocent people. The Quran requires the infidel, whether Jew or Christian, to be killed. ... That's a core essence of the religion. ... Muhammad was a pirate who killed infidels and who advocated the killing of infidels. Not a nice guy. Osama bin Laden is in keeping with his fine tradition.

The 'video game community' (what's next, 'the necromancy community'?) surely seems exercised about someone who is a 'joke' and who is accomplishing nothing. You all seem rather bothered and worried about a nonentity. God is in this battle, and I am privileged to be a foot soldier. You all should be concerned, not about me, but about Him.

I am a one-man violent video game wrecking crew

GTA is a Sony/Take-Two game. It was made by Take-Two exclusively for Sony's Playstation 2. Sony has led the planet in the distribution of mainstream porn. I don't have time to document it for you. As for the offensiveness of the Pearl Harbor comment, it's accurate and it's needed. The Japanese have a contempt for our culture which is patent. There [sic] dumping of garbage into our culture is a slow motion version of Pearl Harbor.

With enemies like you Pixelantes and like Game Daily Biz, why, I don't need any friends. You honor me with your hatred. I serve the Lord Jesus Christ, and you hate me because the world first hated Him. I follow the Creator of the Universe, and He has taken me to the Gates of Hell, and I kind of like it in here.

You all need to put down the controllers, get a life, and join the Force, thereby leaving the Dark Side behind. Hooah! Praise be to the Lord, Jesus Christ, the author of all things, even of The Florida Freaking Bar.

And more. He is the person who said Sony are accomplices to murder because the Playstation is theirs [footnote]or something to that effect - the idea was that there was Sony, murder and the Playstation was the link between them.[/footnote] He is the person who sought out young people involved in crime so he can claim video games were responsible. He is the person who sued Penny Arcade for making a donation in his stead because he refused to keep to his word. He was the person who got thrown of court, and not one time, and finally was just banned from practising law. it wasn't gamers who did that, it was Jack Thompson himself.

And his claims weren't in any way, shape or form similar to what you describe. They were in all ways, shapes and forms like the vitrol thrown against what you describe. Yes, he was the "vocal gaming community" acts like Jack Thompson...or vice versa....well, they both act the same way. Point is, he wasn't "criticising" as you seem to suggest. In fact he was way more dangerous that just a bunch of vocal people, as he wielded power. Something mere "criticising" does not do.

 

[Entitled]

Even if some feminist critics would be literally saying that certain games directly cause sexism and need to be banned, they wouldn't have the same effect on the community as Thompson had, they would still only get vilified by a reactionary side of the community, while tolerated by the SJW side along the lines of "...I disagree with some of their specific content, but really, they do have some fairly good points too".

Because we are beyond Brown v. EMA, Thompson has lost, the actual threat of censorship is gone, so from here on, it's discussion all the way around.

Thompson wasn't just a jerk, but a threat, on his way to hold back gaming culture for decades with a regulation like the Hayes Code or the Comic Book Authority, or even worse by appealing to legal enforcement. And he almost did it! Brown v. EMA was only rejected based on minor technicalities, a slightly better worded attempt would have settled a legal precedent for video game censorship.

What everyone has to understand, is that the current climate is totally different from that. Gamers feel free to criticize gaming culture's aspects, criticize certain games, or even explicitly mock the mainstream "gamer" identity, because it's all just discussion. There is no pressure to circle the wagons and fight for survival.

 

[Uriel_Hayabusa]

As a gamer who isn't immediately dismissive of the idea that violent video games (and violent media in general) could encourage or engender violent behavior, I find it a pity that Thompson was as idiotic as he was. Partially because it made him all too easy to hate and target, and because it meant very few people took him seriously in any aspect, even when he reported receiving death threats for his work.

I've voiced this opinion in previous topics with a related subject, and it goes unchanged: the fact that the gaming press and the gaming community ignored the harassment and threats Jack Thompson received set a worrying precedent. If gaming media had taken a stand and said ''Hey kids, sending death threats to the guy who says that games make people violent only proves his point!'' then maybe the whole #Gamergate mess could've been more civil too.

I honestly find it worrying that some people in this topic are okay with the fact that Thompson was threatened. Hell, some of the content creators on this site feel the same way. To quote Moviebob:

I think that was necessary at the time, in the same way that I think sometimes ''civil disobedience'' protests about far more important things DO have to break a window or vandalize a wall sometimes to get the point across: It was a "war," at least as much of one as the situation could allow, we did what we had to do at the time.

Source: http://moviebob.blogspot.nl/2014/09/a-long-post-about-gamergate.html

 

[Atmos Duality]

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...

I dunno about that.
Comparing gamers unfavorably to an organization that publicly beheads innocents seems just as out of touch with reality.

Though if we're talking about the frequency of anti-gamer nonsense and scale of actual threat, Thompson beats all comers hands down. Sarkeesian would have to resort to petitioning Congress to enact some heavy media censorship on games to promote feminism before she even came close to Thompson's antics.

Thompson wasn't just a jerk, but a threat, on his way to hold back gaming culture for decades with a regulation like the Hayes Code or the Comic Book Authority, or even worse by appealing to legal enforcement. And he almost did it! Brown v. EMA was only rejected based on minor technicalities, a slightly better worded attempt would have settled a legal precedent for video game censorship.

What everyone has to understand, is that the current climate is totally different from that. Gamers feel free to criticize gaming culture's aspects, criticize certain games, or even explicitly mock the mainstream "gamer" identity, because it's all just discussion. There is no pressure to circle the wagons and fight for survival.

I almost entirely agree, save for one detail:
The idea of self-censorship is still there, ala some feminist Hayes Code, and that's the threat the "social justice" crowd poses to gaming...but only in theory. In reality, entities like Sarkeesian have nowhere near the clout Thompson did and are unlikely to ever attain it.

And that is a GOOD thing; discussion is fine, however pretentious it might become.

But making sweeping changes based on pretense leads to bullshit like the Hayes Code or cultural stigma.

...Or schools enacting student profiling programs to "prevent the next Columbine"; programs that only came into being because assholes like Thompson directly blamed video games for school massacres.

No joke, my high school did this, and I was not only profiled but given "special attention" and punishment.
I could rant at great length, but lets just say I had a slightly more intense hatred of Thompson's message than most and personal threats aside, he deserved all the shit he received.

(Despite my hatred of his little crusade, I still didn't wish death on the guy; I save that for those who actually threaten my life and not just my hobby.)

 

[Fox12]

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.

There's actually a huge differance. Feminists want to change the industry from within. heck, most of them ARE gamers. So far they've done this through activism, debate, and social critique. They won't ban Dragons crown, but they may criticize it, and may argue that aspects of it should be changed. At worst they may suggest that you shouldn't buy/play a game. And that's completely fine, even if you and I don't always agree with them on every issue. This is how people should behave in a republic.

Mr. Thompson believes that he knows how you should live your life better than you do. He actively pressed for censorship, bans, and faulty propaganda and warning labels. He effectively wanted to use the force of the state and federal government to push his views on others, instead of using reason and argument to change how people felt. It doesn't help that his reasoning was faulty. I consider that ethically wrong for the same reason I found Bloombergs attempted ban on soda ethically wrong. I don't think the government should be telling people how to live their lives, as long as they aren't hurting anyone.

It's not just what they say, it's how they say it that makes all the difference.

 

[renegade7]

I don't disagree that gamers could maybe have stood to be a bit more mature in the face of his criticism. In fact, the criticisms themselves weren't fundamentally unreasonable, just his behavior. As games continue to become more mainstream, we WILL need to look seriously at the possibility that games might have an effect on the people who play them. Perhaps not to the extreme that you will become a deranged gunman if you are exposed to Halo too early, but we do need to bear in mind that media has a powerful ability to impart values, often in very subtle ways.

Obviously this does not mean that a significant number of gamers at risk of becoming people who think that murder and violence are fun. No one thinks that. But people will take moral lessons from the media they consume, and if one such lesson is that aggression is the only way to deal with adversity and that problems typically break down to "good guy, bad guy", then I think it's not unreasonable to worry that that person may develop to be less agreeable and disinclined towards compromise. On the other hand, we also have games that emphasize things like teamwork, planning, and perseverance, and players may also take away those values. There is important discussion to be had about topics like violence and sexism in games, because while those things perhaps do have some importance, we need to be careful with what messages games give to players, intentionally or not.

Anyway, Jack Thompson. Well, maybe he didn't deserve the treatment the community of gamers gave to him, and the fact that gamers don't always respond well to criticism remains a problem to this day. I don't believe there is any justification for harassment and hostility. That said, I have little sympathy for him. Thompson did not make reasonable criticisms of games. He was not giving an academic and critical analysis of the media for content creators and players to think about.

Instead, he was at the scene of the Virginia Tech massacre, one of the deadliest acts of school violence in US history that left 3 dozen innocent people dead, to lie through his teeth that it was because the killer played video games, which was almost completely untrue. He showed up on major news programs to slander developers and players based on outright lies about video games, such as to claim that Manhunt 2 was a "murder simulator" that a bunch of children would play (it turned out that the game sucked anyway and that very few people actually played it), that GTA is about killing policemen and prostitutes, and that Mass Effect was a pornographic sex and rape simulation. He harassed and threatened several game developers. He was more interested in pushing his moral agenda through bans and censorship than improving the medium of gaming or looking out for the people who play them.

He has no one to blame but himself for losing his license to practice law.

 

[Entitled]

I honestly find it worrying that some people in this topic are okay with the fact that Thompson was threatened. Hell, some of the content creators on this site feel the same way. To quote Moviebob:

I think that was necessary at the time, in the same way that I think sometimes ''civil disobedience'' protests about far more important things DO have to break a window or vandalize a wall sometimes to get the point across: It was a "war," at least as much of one as the situation could allow, we did what we had to do at the time.

Source: http://moviebob.blogspot.nl/2014/09/a-long-post-about-gamergate.html

You are quote mining. The previous sentence says:

Since any criticism of games from a socio-political standpoint from "outsiders" was inevitably going to be seized on by Thompson etc as "evidence," we trained ourselves to respond to such criticism in only one way: "No it doesn't. You're wrong. Games effect nothing. It's just games. Go away."

THEN it goes on to how this (circling the wagons, and rejecting the premises of criticism) was justifiable behavior at the time. There is no discussion of harrasment, he repeats some of the same words he already said years ago when discussing the treatment of violence in video games specifically, and harrasment was not the subject of that either.

I almost entirely agree, save for one detail:
The idea of self-censorship is still there, ala some feminist Hayes Code, and that's the threat the "social justice" crowd poses to gaming...but only in theory.

But making sweeping changes based on pretense leads to bullshit like the Hayes Code or cultural stigma.

The Hayes code wasn't cultural self-censorship, it was a written list of things that moviemakers can't show on film. Even if above them, the studio owners have willingly subjected themselves to the code, it was only after the industry has already LOST it's own Brown v. EMA equivalent on the Supreme Court, which stated that Free Speech doesn't extend to movies. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Film_Corporation_v._Industrial_Commission_of_Ohio] The studios were coerced into tolerating the Hayes code, at the threat of more through legal censorship.

Right now, even if certain big studios would group together to accept a Hayes code, it would TRULY only be self-censorship, with any of them able to break away from it at will, and independent artists constantly ignoring it.

And no subject matter is so heinous to be throughly silenced just by cultural stigmas, that's why self-censorship isn't real cennsorship, it's just specific individuals choosing not to say something. We are talking about a world that produces pornographic content based around rape, incest, pedophilia, torture, cannibalism, and My Little Pony. In the mainstream public, we have Game of Thrones and GTA and Fifty Shades of Grey. The media is more libertine than ever.

 

[Atmos Duality]

The Hayes code wasn't cultural self-censorship, it was a written list of things that moviemakers can't show on film.

It totally was, because the list was established by private entities within the film industry and not any governmental body.
That's self-censorship by definition.

The studios were coerced into tolerating the Hayes code, at the threat of more through legal censorship.

Threat, yes. But it never actually made it into law.

And no subject matter is so heinous to be throughly silenced just by cultural stigmas, that's why self-censorship isn't real cennsorship, it's just specific individuals choosing not to say something.

To a point.
When stigma and duress over a given subject reaches a near-universal standard of intolerance in any medium, it's self-censorship in practice if not in name or legality.

We are talking about a world that produces pornographic content based around rape, incest, pedophilia, torture, cannibalism, and My Little Pony. In the mainstream public, we have Game of Thrones and GTA and Fifty Shades of Grey. The media is more libertine than ever.

Indeed. And such productions haven't caused the collapse of society or whatever the alarmist nutters believe.
Which is why I don't want to see any internal standards based on whatever brand of feminism the social justice crowd follows. I think it's better to lead by example rather than demanding everything you don't like be torn down just because it offends you.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

I didn't disagree with Thompson's attempts to prevent minors from accessing violent (or "mature", to be more precise) videogames. Here in Australia, it's illegal to sell M and higher rated games to minors.

I get that US free speech law made things muddy, but I'm of the view rating boards' ratings should be legally binding.

Thompson was kinda crazy, but that didn't make him completely wrong.

 

[Entitled]

It totally was, because the list was established by private entities within the film industry and not any governmental body.
That's self-censorship by definition.

I have observed that almost every time someone declares that something is true "by definition", that is only because it isn't actually true by any other standard.

The Hayes code might have not been legally enforced in te letter of the law, but for all practical purposes, it represented an institutionalized ban on getting certain content published.

Which is why I don't want to see any internal standards based on whatever brand of feminism the social justice crowd follows. I think it's better to lead by example rather than demanding everything you don't like be torn down just because it offends you.

If you are worried that social justice arguments pose a "threat" to gaming, even a theoretical one, by implying that certain games shouldn't have been made, then I have just as much reason to be worried about YOU propagating self-censorship upon people like Sarkeesian, by calling them "a threat", and implying that they shouldn't have said what they said.

The problem with the theory of dangerous self-censorship, is that without the risk of actual legal censorship backing it, it's really just discussion, on all fronts. Even if stronger cultural ideas have the power to tear down weaker ideas, you can't stop that process itself either, without either engaging in the same behavior and tearing down those stronger ideas with your own, or by controlling culture with actual censorship.

There are some social taboos and stigmas that I don't like, but on the other hand, it's good to realize that a society where the majority is allowed to freely propagate those stigmas and the minority is legally allowed to challenge them, is still closer to the ideal of free speech and equal rights, than one where the minority can override public culture and silence people, to protect their pet ideas from their looming "self-censorship".

 

[fix-the-spade]

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?

Well, I remember the gaming community at large's reaction to Thompson being a hell of a lot more classy than during the whole recent cataclysm (people sent him flowers, flowers!).

By contrast Thompson really was involved in a campaign of harassment and shysterism, before games he was into harassing hip hop and before that it was anybody he didn't like. Eventually it got him disbarred.

I find it bizarre that behaviour directed at a real, genuine nutjob like him was more restrained than what has happened in the last three months.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

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.

Short answer: No. The man may have been s short-sighted lunatic, but answering douchebag behavior with more douchebag behavior is not going to solve anything. Besides that, issuing the man death threats and harassing him only served to prove his point.

 

[Uriel_Hayabusa]

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?

Well, I remember the gaming community at large's reaction to Thompson being a hell of a lot more classy than during the whole recent cataclysm (people sent him flowers, flowers!).

I can't help but think that's some mighty selective remembering you're doing there. Thompson also (claims to have) received death threats and the gaming media was all too happy to stand by and let it happen.

 

[Corran006]

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.

You make good point there Thompson wanted forced censorship, while feminists seem to want suggested changed which could be seen as censorship by some. Then again most of the choice would be a positive thing anyway though, however I am not convinced everything suggested would be for the better. Better representation of woman is welcome though.

 

[Corran006]

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.

I noticed Anita Sarkeesian used the word terrorism to describe a threat that was made to her online. that also seems to be carefully chosen for effect. Honestly though people should only be disagreeing with her words not making threats or sexiest harassment.

 

[Saltyk]

I'd just like to say that earlier, when I said that Thompson deserved all the hate he got, that didn't include death threats and the like. I meant that he was a complete jerk that earned the ire of the gaming community. Just wanted that to be clear.

I didn't disagree with Thompson's attempts to prevent minors from accessing violent (or "mature", to be more precise) videogames. Here in Australia, it's illegal to sell M and higher rated games to minors.

I get that US free speech law made things muddy, but I'm of the view rating boards' ratings should be legally binding.

Thompson was kinda crazy, but that didn't make him completely wrong.

Not in America. There is no government sanctioned ratings board. And there never should be one. All the ratings boards were founded to prevent the government from getting involved. And using Australia as an example is a terrible one. They censor plenty of games there.

Besides, the FCC did a review of the various ratings boards and found that the ESRB was excellent and that their ratings were frequently enforced. The music ratings board was garbage, though.

I've witnessed a mother buying a M rated game for her young child. It was Dante's Inferno (this was a while back) and I vividly recall her raising her eyebrows at the word "Hell" on the back of the box. Then, she bought it anyway. You can't prevent idiots from doing stupid things. And no law would prevent her from buying her son a game regardless of its rating whether she understands the rating system or not.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

I'd just like to say that earlier, when I said that Thompson deserved all the hate he got, that didn't include death threats and the like. I meant that he was a complete jerk that earned the ire of the gaming community. Just wanted that to be clear.

I didn't disagree with Thompson's attempts to prevent minors from accessing violent (or "mature", to be more precise) videogames. Here in Australia, it's illegal to sell M and higher rated games to minors.

I get that US free speech law made things muddy, but I'm of the view rating boards' ratings should be legally binding.

Thompson was kinda crazy, but that didn't make him completely wrong.

Not in America. There is no government sanctioned ratings board. And there never should be one. All the ratings boards were founded to prevent the government from getting involved. And using Australia as an example is a terrible one. They censor plenty of games there.

Besides, the FCC did a review of the various ratings boards and found that the ESRB was excellent and that their ratings were frequently enforced. The music ratings board was garbage, though.

I've witnessed a mother buying a M rated game for her young child. It was Dante's Inferno (this was a while back) and I vividly recall her raising her eyebrows at the word "Hell" on the back of the box. Then, she bought it anyway. You can't prevent idiots from doing stupid things. And no law would prevent her from buying her son a game regardless of its rating whether she understands the rating system or not.

As I said, free speech. Australia doesn't have US-style free speech laws. I'm of the opinion that Australia's rating systems are much better than America's, and I don't disagree with ratings being legally binding.

Games being censored in Australia is extremely rare. Moreso after R18 was introduced.