Not The Bees said:
Hi Mikey,
By the way, when I spoke of people I find genuinely pleasant to talk to, you are counted amongst those people. At any rate, you'd be surprised how incredibly easy it is to find bleeding into other topics, even when said topic isn't about gamergate. Sure, you'd think Feminism it'd pop up, but I saw one the other day (and I swear I wish I could remember what it was about) where it erupted between two people. And then the entire thread eventually devolved into it.
That's really nice to hear.
The first bit I mean.
All the rest is disheartening.
Anyway, first off I'm going to apologize for slicing up your post to respond to.
I'm not overly fond of it as a method of response.
It always looks a little confrontational.
Only doing it here to help keep my migraine addled brain on track.
I'm disappointed to learn it's spreading to places it shouldn't
If I spot it, I try to nudge it back to the coral, but I can't be here all the time.
I know for some it's the topic that fires everything they want to talk about, but there needs to be some consideration in that regard.
It regularly gets pushed into the R&P section, but because they don't really want to talk about it there, it usually gets ignored (thankfully). But even things that are just supposed to be about stupid topics can eventually set into a fight amongst people about gamergate, because someone has brought up feminism, or journalism, or harassment, or something. One of those filthy buzzwords that get thrown around.
That's even more disappointing.
What I said above stands.
We have a place for that to be discussed and other specific threads for it too.
I know tempers can fray and spill overs can happen, but that needs to be dealt with as in a place like R&P, it's blatant derailing.
The GameDev articles, both female and male articles, were really interesting, but the female one just exploded into a toxic thread almost immediately. Granted, that one was actually about gamergate, but it wasn't supposed to be about journalism, it was supposed to be about developers and how they've been dealing with it. About how they saw it. But somehow it became whether or not Escapist had written a bad article, if these women were fake, if they made everything up to get attention... And that's just not very welcoming.
Instead of seeing it as a way to see how developers were handling the gamergate situation it turned back into just a fight about Zoe and Anita (a bunch of it was), and Jim and SJWs, so even the Gamergate threads that aren't about the same old gamergate issues end up getting hijacked so you can't feel welcomed to talk about new things.
To you and me both.
I only stepped into those threads to say 'thankyou for posting them' and give an immediate feedback.
Didn't stay around long enough to witness any of that, but sadly it's not hard to imagine it happening.
Hijacking needs to be curtailed.
I think that's what I mean by not feeling welcomed. I have no issue about bleeding into other threads, but when it turns so angry so quickly, then what's the point of going into a thread in the first place? Why not just turn on Rush Limbaugh or Bill Mahr and have them tell me I'm wrong for whatever I'm believing in for the next hour?
You know, it's odd.
This was something I posted about last night.
I don't know if it was read or not.
...but anyway.
I'm starting to think that this is happening because of a general lack of engagement from the people that these individual posters are angry toward.
As a result, when they do find a contrary opinion on the matter, the words (and the emotions wrapped up with them) that they wish they could be heard by some, are instead heard by someone who doesn't deserve that kind of impassioned response.
Now, I know and you know this is not an excuse for doing it, just my take on the 'why' it's happening.
I expressed in the GG thread that the more it happens, the more we treat the people who
will listen like they're manifestations of the people who we're angry at for refusing to listen, the more we're going to drive them away.
In the end, there'll be no one left who wants to listen at all.
Suffice to say, I hope some people read it and internalized it.
As for the people that sent me the messages, I just delete them. I'm not one to send anything to mods, I've explained why before, back on the Zoe thread, which you probably missed, but it comes down to a long history of stuff that is entirely too complicated to explain here and derails the conversation a bit. If it were anything more than sarcastic or mean, then I would do so, but they're mostly just not happy people, and for that I just close my eyes and take a breath and delete. Much easier that way to me.
I did miss the original, and I won't ask you to derail or drag up something unpleasant.
Also, I'll ask for forbearance on this exchange as I think we are derailing a little bit here, but anyway...
That's a decision I'm going to respect, even if I don't agree.
You have to deal with that kind of harassment in the way that makes you most comfortable and no one has a right to ask you to deal with it in any other way.
I will ask that if anyone else who reads this has received nasty private messages though, please report that behavior to a moderator.
The people who are doing that to you are likely doing it to other people as well.
it shouldn't be allowed to go on.
Anyway.
I hope that there's something that can be done to tone down that feeling the thread and other overspills have been giving lately.
You are a liked poster and would be missed by a lot of people here.
I'm at a loss to think what that could be right now, but suffice to say, It's something I'm going to be ruminating on.
