You don't have to be afraid of taking a public stance against #GamerGate.

[Thorn14]

While you are correct that neither "side" [personally I find this whole Anti-GG/Pro-GG, Blue Team/Red Team nonsense to be rather annoying] is a hivemind that thinks and acts with one voice, the journos against GamerGate, who already have a bigger platform to speak from than anyone pro-GG (outside of TotalBiscuit), do have this tendency to keep focusing on the spark (Zoe Quinn) and barely giving GG's complaints lipservice before spending the rest of the article attacking the entire movement as 'sexist misogynist men determined to drive women out of "their hobby"'.

I've not truly seen that kind of stuff, I must say. I've seen people saying that misogyny exists within the movement, and that it's not properly addressed, but not people dismissing the entire movement as such people.

I'm willing to be shown otherwise, note, I'm not dismissing the possibility. I dislike generalisations in general.

When people say "its not properly addressed" I have to ask exactly what that means. We do not endorse harassment of any kind and support women in gaming. How many times do we have to repeat it?

#GG isn't a secret club where we carefully monitor our members. Its a hashtag to organize our movement. Literally you or I or a random person or even a person with a bone to pick against #GamerGate could literally spend 2 minutes making a new twitter account and start typing horrible hateful things, and because they then add #GamerGate to the end of it, its suddenly our fault and we aren't doing anything about it.

What do people want us to do? Invent mind control devices?

 

[SentimentalGeek]

While you are correct that neither "side" [personally I find this whole Anti-GG/Pro-GG, Blue Team/Red Team nonsense to be rather annoying] is a hivemind that thinks and acts with one voice, the journos against GamerGate, who already have a bigger platform to speak from than anyone pro-GG (outside of TotalBiscuit), do have this tendency to keep focusing on the spark (Zoe Quinn) and barely giving GG's complaints lipservice before spending the rest of the article attacking the entire movement as 'sexist misogynist men determined to drive women out of "their hobby"'.

I've not truly seen that kind of stuff, I must say. I've seen people saying that misogyny exists within the movement, and that it's not properly addressed, but not people dismissing the entire movement as such people.

I'm willing to be shown otherwise, note, I'm not dismissing the possibility. I dislike generalisations in general.

http://theweek.com/article/index/269377/intels-awful-capitulation-to-gamergates-sexist-thugs

To name one, from a possible plethora (I'm not in the habit of collecting articles that demonise us, so I'll leave the rest to yourself/others).

 

[blackmanon4chan]

For a group that has anti-censorship as one of its primary talking points, it sure seems like asking for trouble to say anything against it. Obviously, first off, you're going to get ten million comments telling you you obviously did no research, don't understand the movement, etc. Right? Well, yes, *but* it isn't that bad. I wasn't sure......

the idea is that both groups can be really freaking toxic. one side screaming journalism and the other side screaming we need to protect teh womens. i haven't come out publicly for fear of the "feminists"(they arent) feeling themselves justified for attacking me because i don't really buy the whole "them gamergate boys are just mysoginists or being controlled by the hollowed out volcano dwellers of 4chan". to me most conversations with the pro have always been quite peaceful. i mean you have a consenting opinion to gamergate guys, they give you pamphlets and articles trying to describe their cause. even the ones that go "obviously you didnt do enought research" will quickly post papers and papers describing their cause. but then if you support the principle of gamergate(better media) you get called a misogynist and told about all the bad things guys who say they are for better media have done.... because you know since members of the kkk call themselves Christian obviously all Christians secretly hate black people.

To me im neutral but more so on the gamergate side, mostly because ive been feeling that the gaming community has been forgetting about their powers as a consumer(DLC, always on, broken games and being called entitled for being mad at said games, media boiling consumer complaints to "its just his hair") so any movement that encourage gamers to realize that they are customers and that its perfectly ok to demand better, will always get my support. boycott(yes boycotts include emailing publishers, you cant harass a company. Intel is not crying to its investors saying someone was mean to them on the internet), write letters, don't buy the damn games, stop clicking on these sites and give praise to the sites that dont condone what their doing. remember that your consumers!!!

i digressed but the idea is of the gamergate guys and the anti-gamergate guys the ones in support have all around been more accepting and wanting to get everyones opinion on the matter. like was it the anti crowd that wanted female developer opinion on the matter? example:the discussion that went down between eric kain(neutral), tb(positive), and the rest; do you believe that no one from anti-gg side of the argument weren't there because they weren't invited? why are only the neutrals and positives having a convo, while the anti refuse to even acknowledge the neutral. maybe im sligted as i don't use twitter (and never will, twitter is were convo's go to die)

Something I noticed.

The Anti-GG group constantly wants to talk about ZQ while Pro-GG wants to move away from it and discuss journalism.

Not once did I give a shit about ZQ or the ZoePost and to this day I don't. I doubt TB and others who now support GG do either.

this is something ive noticed myself. in all reality you pro-gg make the mistake of being dragged back to her. in all reality you need to just ignore anyone who brings her up, pretend she doesnt exist. same with anita sarkesian(seriously this event has nothing to do with her, why is it that every article i read on gamergate from the gawker media circle will make a mention of her?).
at this point in the game you just need to not engage with anyone who brings her up.

 

[Silvanus]

When people say "its not properly addressed" I have to ask exactly what that means. We do not endorse harassment of any kind and support women in gaming. How many times do we have to repeat it?

#GG isn't a secret club where we carefully monitor our members. Its a hashtag to organize our movement. Literally you or I or a random person or even a person with a bone to pick against #GamerGate could literally spend 2 minutes making a new twitter account and start typing horrible hateful things, and because they then add #GamerGate to the end of it, its suddenly our fault and we aren't doing anything about it.

What do people want us to do? Invent mind control devices?

Note, I do not expect each and every person to rebuke instances of sexism. I respect that many individuals do so.

There is a significant number who either partake in it, though, or dismiss that it happens. A popular movement is judged in aggregate.

http://theweek.com/article/index/269377/intels-awful-capitulation-to-gamergates-sexist-thugs

To name one, from a possible plethora (I'm not in the habit of collecting articles that demonise us, so I'll leave the rest to yourself/others).

That's a rather silly article, I agree.

The mainstream trend within gaming journalism, though, has been rather better. It has not dismissed every gamer, or every gamer-gater, as all of a type.

 

[Jux]

I love how people think they can say anything as long as it's preceded by 'no offense' or 'all due respect' as if that makes anything that comes after not insulting.

Actually, it was a reference to a strip by Scott Adams, but y'know.

Yea, that was apropos of nothing. This isn't a thread about a Dilbert strip. If you're going to come out of left field with something, don't be surprised when no one 'gets it'.

something something claims about not fact checking.... I've seen you elsewhere post that you put anyone who is new to the forums and loosely pro-GG on your ignore list... I'm fine with letting you "win" and going off to take a nap instead.

You must have missed the part about 'low content' too. I'm not going to waste my time being bombarded by the same tired talking points from posters that can't bother to craft an argument that at least appears like they put some thought into it, I already deal with being bombarded by the same tired talking points from posters that write up freaking pages on it. I'll at least entertain that, even if it's still mostly bull anyway, because they're actually putting in the effort.

Though one point: You should change your avatar from Hobbes to Calvin. He suits you more.

I'll do ya a favor this one time and compromise. (See? I'm reasonable)

-snip-

Aye, and for a movement that's supposedly moved past it's misogynistic roots, they can kindly tell that to Brianna Wu. What's your channel? And tippy, most people have abandoned the gg thread, it's an echochamber. Any sort of criticism of it just gets lost, ignored, or met with the same talking points.

Brianna wu who got the same copy pasted death threat as gamergate feminist did? From the same person?

Oh yeah that's totally not suspicious, and totally doesn't make you look bad, Jux. /s

And vague allusions that this is fake, or some false flag don't make you look any better Twinkie.

Where did you read it was fake? I said that guy was threatening everyone on twitter. Nice to know reading a 2 sentence post is now considered "too much work" too.

How many times are you going to try to pull this?

Yawn. Try to spin it however you like, but when you make vague posts about how it's 'suspicious' without any sort of qualifying statements, you have only yourself to blame when people read between the lines.

 

[Nirallus]

#GG isn't a secret club where we carefully monitor our members. Its a hashtag to organize our movement. Literally you or I or a random person or even a person with a bone to pick against #GamerGate could literally spend 2 minutes making a new twitter account and start typing horrible hateful things, and because they then add #GamerGate to the end of it, its suddenly our fault and we aren't doing anything about it.

What do people want us to do? Invent mind control devices?

Their modus operandi is not just to condemn but censor, so they expect to see that on our side. Which won't happen.

 

[Thorn14]

Quite frankly, afraid might not be the right word for it, but you sure as hell can't feel comfortable coming out against it if you're in a thread that is full of GG. I'm of the mind that I like to hear both sides of a story, perhaps it's because I worked in journalism so long as a side hobby through university, or perhaps it's because I'm a Libra if you buy into astrology. Who knows. But I kept track of the first monster thread, and I kept track of the second (minus 2 weeks when I didn't have internet), and if I said something that the hive mind (and I do mean hive mind) did not agree with, I was bombarded with comments.

There wasn't one comment, or two comments, or five comments, there were dozens of them. And because I couldn't reply to them all in time, I would get private messages (especially at the first when Zoe led the talk), and they were certainly not pleasant to read. Being new at the time I didn't really do much except ignore them, or try to come back at them.

And it's more or less still this way. On Twitter, or Youtube, or god forbid in a thread here on Escapist dominated by the Gamergate people (with the exception of about a half dozen of some very nice, sensible, and lovely people that I would say I truly enjoy debating), anything you say that falls out of line of what they think you have:

A) Not done your research (to whit I say bullshit, I've read every article, read all the threads, and watched the videos)
B) Am trying to derail conversations (to whit I say bullshit, the conversation was already derailed, I was only making a point, the thread brought up X,Y,Z and I was only trying to add my two cents in as someone who had experience in that field)
C) Am just some SJW feminist (to whit I say stop trying to call me a feminist. I'm not. I never have been. I'm a pacifist, I'm a teacher, and I'm a woman, but those are the only labels I call myself. Stop putting me in a box)
D) Won't bring in evidence (to whit I say, I just posted 10 effing links that none of you bothered to read. I even brought in blogs that I wrote trying to help smooth things out for GG people, though I know I'm only a small time blogger, but I was only met with disdain or ignoring.
E) Ignored all out (to whit I say, I prefer this one all together)

I pointed out to one person, one of the ones that I would say that I enjoy talking to, that it might be a good idea to suggest to the group to calm down some of the rhetoric, because on one page they were talking about including feminists but two posts down from that several people were talking about how they hated feminists. It felt a bit bi-polar. I wasn't making a mean statement, it was going to him as just an observation as an outsider who might come in to the thread to read to see what was going on. I wasn't even being critical, it was literally just "Hey, heads up, you might want to watch out for this stuff in case new people come in and get confused."

And I got so many nasty private messages after that, from the anti-feminists, that I had to hit my ignore button so many times that I thought maybe I broke it.

So maybe I don't have to be afraid, but I sure don't feel comfortable. And quite frankly, I think that's a lot worse. At least I know what to do when I'm afraid. I can fight back. Right now I'm not even sure I want to continue to visit the Escapist any longer, as it's no longer a website that makes me feel welcomed. I'm more of an outsider here than I ever was in high school

I'll just say I'm sorry people sent you nasty PMs and I hope they got kicked out of this site for it. That is not something I and the large majority of #GG supporters believe in.

 

[Silvanus]

Their modus operandi is not just to condemn but censor, so they expect to see that on our side. Which won't happen.

I've seen this claim numerous times, and not once has a genuine example of censorship been brought up.

 

[Jux]

Spinning? you're the one that's spinning open attacks because research on any topic is too much work by your own words. I said don't you think its strange that one person sends copy pasted death threats to not only the enemy but his own side?

By 'research on any topic' you mean refusing to accept non sourced claims? I can live with that. You know, every time I mention threatening tweets from pro gg'ers, I'm met with a chorus of 'but that could be anyone! you can't prove they support gg!' or 'they're not representative of gg!'. Yet every tweet attributed to one of those evil 'SJWs' is taken as gospel truth. That song and dance is getting old.

If you actually took the time to research anything, I wouldn't be calling you out all the time.

If you actually bothered to source your claims and not docdump me every time we talked about this, I wouldn't dismiss you out of hand all the time.

and yet you have the audacity to say you care about harassment when its obvious you only care if it happens to specific people. I have yet to hear you complain about the death threats against Total Biscuit (right after his surgery), Boogie, Sommers, GamerGate feminist, and tons of others have gotten.

Yea, because if I don't hunt down and comdemn all the harassment, I obviously don't care. My sentiments on harassment are well documented. I don't support it, and I condemn it from anyone. That you'd dishonestly try to portray me otherwise is par for the course though I guess.

When I bring up harassment against people speaking out against gg, it's because I'm using it as an example of how gg isn't simply about journalistic ethics, as people like to widely claim. This doesn't mean I support harassment coming from people opposed to gg. To make that assumption betrays your black and white thinking on this issue.

Where was your outrage then?

Outrage quota gets filled up fast, gotta be in line early or you're gonna miss out.

 

[dragoongfa]

Their modus operandi is not just to condemn but censor, so they expect to see that on our side. Which won't happen.

I've seen this claim numerous times, and not once has a genuine example of censorship been brought up.

I have to go to sleep (3:00AM here) so I will make it quick:

The biggest is that 4chan banned discussion about GamerGate almost a month ago (Think about it: 4chan banned a topic).
Every pro-GG member of NeoGAF was banned early in the controversy.
At the GameJournoPro leak Ben Kuchera of Polygon tried to convince Greg Tito of the Escapist to ban all discussion from the Escapist. After the emails were leaked there was the DDOS attack against the Escapist as well.
When Cracked went Anti-GG all of the pro-gg comments were deleted or defaced by the mods.

Those are from the top of my head, I am sure that more examples are around and if you need proof some Pro-GG people here will be happy to offer it.

I am going to sleep, have a goon day/afternoon/night everyone.

 

[Nirallus]

Their modus operandi is not just to condemn but censor, so they expect to see that on our side. Which won't happen.

I've seen this claim numerous times, and not once has a genuine example of censorship been brought up.

Co-opting the moderators on Reddit and 4chan to ban all discussion of the topic. Taking down MundaneMatt's video with a bogus DMCA complaint. Getting Thunderfoot banned from Twitter for criticizing Anita Sarkeesian's videos. Trying to browbeat Greg Tito into locking GamerGate threads right here on the escapist.

Edit: Plus the other examples in the post above mine.

 

[Dragonmouth]

Their modus operandi is not just to condemn but censor, so they expect to see that on our side. Which won't happen.

I've seen this claim numerous times, and not once has a genuine example of censorship been brought up.

Co-opting the moderators on Reddit and 4chan to ban all discussion of the topic. Taking down MundaneMatt's video with a bogus DMCA complaint. Getting Thunderfoot banned from Twitter for criticizing Anita Sarkeesian's videos. Trying to browbeat Greg Tito into locking GamerGate threads right here on the escapist.

Edit: Plus the other examples in the post above mine.

Those are all private sites who have the right to block whoever they wish for any reason. Ironically, these instances of "censorship" are no different than what Gamergate professes to be about, which is pressuring private publications and forums into changing the way they do business.

 

[Mikeybb]

I pointed out to one person, one of the ones that I would say that I enjoy talking to, that it might be a good idea to suggest to the group to calm down some of the rhetoric, because on one page they were talking about including feminists but two posts down from that several people were talking about how they hated feminists. It felt a bit bi-polar. I wasn't making a mean statement, it was going to him as just an observation as an outsider who might come in to the thread to read to see what was going on. I wasn't even being critical, it was literally just "Hey, heads up, you might want to watch out for this stuff in case new people come in and get confused."

And I got so many nasty private messages after that, from the anti-feminists, that I had to hit my ignore button so many times that I thought maybe I broke it.

So maybe I don't have to be afraid, but I sure don't feel comfortable. And quite frankly, I think that's a lot worse. At least I know what to do when I'm afraid. I can fight back. Right now I'm not even sure I want to continue to visit the Escapist any longer, as it's no longer a website that makes me feel welcomed. I'm more of an outsider here than I ever was in high school

I remember that situation and I'm still annoyed about it.
Mainly for the private messages sent your way later.

I hope you did report it as I asked at the time.

I'm sad to hear that you don't feel welcome though.
I can understand that feeling in a thread where the majority are following one side of an argument, after all it's got to be intimidating to be the one holding the contrary position and knowing you'll draw the attention of so many replies when you make any statement.

The five responses you received aren't fair reactions, though the fifth doesn't always imply dismissal.
I'm ignored in there too, on occasion.
The four other potted response are unfair dismissals and, frankly, should not be a response to a contrary voice that speaks out.
Granted, the people who do respond that way may genuinely believe what they are saying, but it doesn't make them right.
Aside from contributing the the feeling of being outnumbered in a thread, those responses in themselves are evidence of poor behavior on the parts of the individuals who do respond that way and I can understand that leading to a feeling of unwelcome in that thread, but I don't see how that can stretch to the rest of the site.

Now, if the feeling of unwelcome is due to overspill into other threads, then I can understand that.
It does happen though it shouldn't.
In fairness to this, there are some threads that are ancillary to topics that involve GamerGate, such as this one.
However, in looking at a glance at the off topic section, the threads that qualify under that criteria are a greatly in the minority.
I've seen a little bleed over into the Games forum, but they sink quickly and rightly so.

I'm not questioning the fact that you do feel unwelcome on this site.
What I am doing is trying to understand why.
The issues you raised are, save for the PM responses, exclusive to that thread and the few others that relate to periphery issues.
If there is someone using the PM system to behave poorly, a moderator needs to know about it.
Not just for yourself, but for all the other people they could be doing the same to out of public sight.

I guess, the reason I'm trying to unravel this with guesswork is simply this.
No one deserves to feel unwelcome on this website, and if there's a way to resolve that, I want to be part of the solution.
It's a big place and there's room for all.

 

[Fox12]

For a group that has anti-censorship as one of its primary talking points, it sure seems like asking for trouble to say anything against it. Obviously, first off, you're going to get ten million comments telling you you obviously did no research, don't understand the movement, etc. Right? Well, yes, *but* it isn't that bad. I wasn't sure if I should say anything against GamerGate, even though it's something I follow very closely, because of the perception I had that I would be harassed, bothered, and that it would be a pretty serious clusterfuck to even broach the issue.

It wasn't. It was well worth it.

Sure, I got comments telling me I obviously did no research. I hate that one-- as if watching this thing unfold for over two months across hundreds of websites and forums, reading GamerGate in GamerGate's own words, doesn't count as research. What surprised me was that I only got a couple dozen comments like this among two hundred comments, and even then, other users were calling folks out about it. And no one was shit-slinging, either-- the video I did, while coming down firmly against GamerGate as a movement, didn't make any wild accusations and for the most part, neither did the commentors. And my channel is pretty small (7k subscribers), so it's a risk to come out with an opinion you know is going to alienate some of your viewers. I expected to lose up to a thousand subscribers. I ended up losing 120-- and considering that I lose 20-40 subscribers *every time* I put out a new video on anything, that's barely significant.

All in all, what I'm saying is that staying silent isn't as critical for your long-term security in the gaming community as you think-- all these blacklists and bullshit and bluster you see, it isn't actually very powerful. It's only got power now because they're the loudest voices in the room. It's important for people who are part of the consumer end of the gaming economy, who don't have any kind of agenda other than "I love games" to be able to have their voices heard too. It's not necessary to speak louder than the most toxic voices of GamerGate-- doing so would be incredibly obnoxious. Speak, though! GamerGate isn't as big or as meaningful as it thinks, it's only this bipartisan "Gamers vs. The Press, CHOOSE WISELY" dichotomy they try to force that makes it appear that way. This isn't a two sided issue. It's a thousand sided issue. The fewer people standing behind their honest, heartfelt opinions, the longer and more venomous this thing becomes.

I honestly don't think the gamer gate folks were as hostile as they were perceived to be. Not here, anyway. They were civil when I spoke to them, and other then some unfair criticism directed at Jim Sterling, they weren't behaving irrationally. At the very least, I think they made some interesting points. The problem is that their more of an unorganized collective with some fringe elements. I largely agree with their criticism of journalism, though I tend to be more defensive of feminism then they are. To be fair, a lot of them had moved past the zoe scandal to shed light on more important issues.

 

[AkaDad]

There's no need to be afraid about opposing Gamergate. There's plenty of reasons why I don't.

1. How it started with 4chan and the harassment of Zoe Quinn.

2. The dishonesty of some saying it didn't start there. Even the guy who started the Gamergate resources thread admits it started with Zoe.

3. The false accusations of corruption.

4. The temper tantrum over the "gamers are dead" articles.

5. The anti-feminist rants.

6. Saying it's about journalistic ethics and then supporting a Breitbart "journalist" who's said worst things about gamers than those gamers are dead articles.

7. The war mentality of trying to ruin the livelihoods of journalists.

I've also been visiting the blacklisted sites and giving them some clicks.

 

[Orphan81]

I reiterate, this is not a debate. Gamergate is not a debate. It has not been a debate for quite some time now. Gamergate is a consumer activism movement to burn businesses to the ground and salt the earth for their ilk in the future. Gamergate is a mass-email campaign intended to change an industry to suit the liking of the majority of its consumers. That is all it is. There is no leader, there are no tenets, there is no collusion. The reason gamergate still exists after two months is because there are still things for people to be angry about. You cannot remove someone's anger by debating their right to be angry, you can only remove it by removing the source for their anger. "Debate" in the context of gamergate is a joke, and should be treated as such.

This right here. I have never been on any of the Chans, I don't use IRC, I don't support harassment. I'm a Sociologist, a Democratic Socialist, and part of the core gamer demographic (I.E. those who gaming is their primary hobby, who play more than 20 hours a week of videogames, and who purchase mainly mainstream titles over indie titles). We are in fact the majority of the video game consuming industry.

We are not all white straight males. We are diveristy, we are women, we are men, we are all colors, we are all creeds. We are people who do not support harassment of anyone. We are people who are sick of agendas and politics being put into our videogames. We are a consumer revolt, nothing more, nothing less.