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JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

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It's going to be interesting when the next not-game made to focus on a perspective from a traditionally disempowered minority gets attention from media-outlets.

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can we forcibly change the name of this from #gamergate to #gamerbenghazi?

 

:tup:

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#gameghazi

I am really tempted ot try to talk to some of these people and get them to see why they are going about things wrong but I know it won't do me any good...

 

I think this screenshot says a lot about the maturity of the people involved in this whole thing:

3ni0ghr.png

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I tried, and quickly switched to blocking. Not only are they impenetrable, but in their public-but-not-public-facing areas, they've freely been referencing the fact that they're astroturfing.

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So thanks to the passionate folks behind #gamergate, we know that it's unethical to ever mix sex and work, and that doing so should automatically destroy people's careers.  Yeah, well, you know who else mixed work and some fun?  Obama.  Proof this is all Obama's fault.

 

#GamerGhazi #THANKSOBAMA

 

 

 

 

Reading comments of someone screaming about how unethical and destructive it was to ever fool around with someone you have a professional relationship with, I was reminded of some studies about how common workplace romantic relationships are.  Seems to tie back into the gamergate people being completely clueless about the real world and how humans interact with each other. 

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There's a group of people taking up the mantle of gamergate who seem to have been tuned out for most of the last two weeks but eventually run into it and, and go, "Woah woah what's this about gamers being jerks, are they calling me a jerk, now they're calling me a nerd, what's going on I didn't send harassing emails, why are they attacking me, it's like Jack Thompson all over again I'm just playing games." and I don't even know where to start.

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Ive realized that the Gamergate hashtag is like a fedora. You’re not a tool for using it, but if you use the same thing as a bunch of tools, you do invite comparisons and drawn conclusions about yourself and them.

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You know, I had a fantastic time at PAX over the weekend, and agree with many who wrote about it that little of the extremism, harassment, etc. we see on Twitter was happening at all at PAX. That in the real world, things aren't nearly as bad as they could seem to be on Twitter. Articles like this:

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/08/29/why-pax-is-better-than-the-internet2/

 

But the thing is, in retrospect, I don't think that's very true. I think there were hundreds if not thousands of people who were at PAX who wholly empathize or tacitly acknowledge this gamergate crap as being legitimate, but they're just too chickenshit to do anything outside of their internet anonymity. I saw way too many fedoras and way too much gross gawking at cosplayers for me to believe otherwise. (Yes, you're allowed to look at and think cosplayers are attractive. No, stop getting all over them when taking pictures, or staring at them, or hitting on them. yuck)

 

The claims that these are a "vocal minority" do more harm than good. It's a simple way to make people feel better about themselves, to distract the conversation or try to be reductive about it in a way that basically implies "stop claiming this is an issue because in my own privileged bubble it's not".

 

 

Seeing Jenn Frank bow out is just so sad. I don't blame her at all for doing so, but it's yet more fuel for MRAs to think they've "won" here. Ugh.

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Jenn Frank leaving is heartbreaking. She already has enough terrible memories associated with video games, she didn't need more.

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I just don't know what to do anymore. Its just heartbreaking. I'm convinced that this is all the work of a no doubt small, but very adept faction that just wants to watch the world burn. And the problem is, they're winning. No matter how few of them there may be, it's enough. It takes far less work to destroy than create, and here I am on the very fringes of the community wondering if there's even any point in continuing to pay attention. On the one hand, I feel like maybe it's my fault and the fault of people like me for not spending more time speaking up. On the other hand it seems like all social media is doing is bringing people pain. No matter how many times I gather the courage to tell someone, "I love your work," or throw them a few dollars on Patreon, it'll never balance the efforts of the people out there who only want to destroy.

 

I want to believe that there's something I can do to help the world be a better place, but I honestly don't see how right now.

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http://ellaguro.blogspot.com/2014/09/on-gamers-and-identity.html

http://ellaguro.blogspot.com/2014_08_01_archive.html

 

These are cool articles. I feel like removing yourself from the disgustingness and vitriol and focusing on the origin of the hate is important (though I don't mean to justify any of it). These articles focus on cultural miscommunication and the apparently insular nature of the perceived indie scene and how that image propagates.

 

i'm worried, as always, venturing into writing about this subject again. the problem is that those private gardens of video games are no longer merely private gardens, but real, tangible territory with real causalities - where real harassment, doxxing, hacking, and violence happens. fantasizing about committing acts of violence on the people who you perceive to be the architects of your misery is one of our grotesque cultural pastimes, one that the culture of aggressively-masculine marketing around video games has certainly only just added fuel of the fire of - one that's constantly enacted on the beings and bodies of the weak and marginalized. and yes, i remember how ridiculous the rhetoric about violence in video games around an event like Columbine was to me as a sixth grader, how they don't understand how abstracted and silly the violence in a game like Doom was, how it was all simulated, how little of a basic understanding they had of how games work. but as those debates have largely dissipated over the years, video games have only become more violent, have only ventured much further into simulated realism meant to more convincingly substitute for a disappointing and disempowering reality, have only catered much more deeply and pervasively to the entitlements of their users, and have only become more ingrained and ever-present in culture. where we stand now, video games have deeply entrenched themselves as the primary venue for disempowered people to elect themselves as servants and act out the sociopathic fantasies of the ruling class. video games literally train soldiers. if you feel disillusioned, if you feel not particularly smart or skilled, video games are there. no surprise, then, that this learned rhetoric is further blurring the lines between fantasy and reality and creating a battleground in such a seemingly arbitrary part of popular media. no surprise that this battleground is very real.

 

This seems to mirror the sentiment that Sean talked about in last week's episode, of being an outsider looking in, and the inevitable split between joining and becoming what you see as "something else" and rejecting it.

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I don't know much (anything at all, really) about Anthony Burch, but after his Twitter rant last night, I'm rapidly becoming a fan.  He used to write for Destructoid, before leaving to enter development, and eventually wrote two of the DLCs for Borderlands 2, which Destructoid reviewed, and about which no one has said a word. 

 

Also, going through some of his previous stuff, ran across a discussion about what if you treated sex like speedrunner's treat games. 

 

Also, also he's apparently in an open relationship, which critics are trying to use to mock him, which is going hilariously badly for them. 

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...Anthony Burch, but after his Twitter rant last night...

There has to be a better way for one to digest (and save for posterity) his twitter rant.

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There has to be a better way for one to digest (and save for posterity) his twitter rant.

 

I don't actually use Twitter much, just pay attention to it during particular times, so I'm not very familiar with how best to present or link to clusters of stuff.

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He tweets a lot, if you could give me an idea of when the rant started I can make a storify later. I don't know where to start and I'm just viewing from my phone which isn't ideal.

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Oh my god that is just too precious. Now who's shouting about conflict of interest, transparency and "backdoor dealings"?

 

That was my revelation after I went to bed last night. For people obsessed with hypocrisy, there's an awful lack of self-awareness here. Writing an op-ed piece in which you mention a friend is corruption, but anonymous threats, false-flag operations, and mob violence in order to force members of the independent press to resign are not, apparently. Whatever happened to being the change you want to see in the world? Oh wait, wrong movement. The motto here is "Save the vidya from... something? Save the vidya from anything that makes me uncomfortable."

 

I don't know much (anything at all, really) about Anthony Burch, but after his Twitter rant last night, I'm rapidly becoming a fan.  He used to write for Destructoid, before leaving to enter development, and eventually wrote two of the DLCs for Borderlands 2, which Destructoid reviewed, and about which no one has said a word. 

 

Also, going through some of his previous stuff, ran across a discussion about what if you treated sex like speedrunner's treat games. 

 

Also, also he's apparently in an open relationship, which critics are trying to use to mock him, which is going hilariously badly for them.

 

I got worn down reading some of the replies to Burch, because when he points out that he's committed much more egregious acts of "corruption" than any of the women and supporters of women harassed thus far, there were basically three kinds of responses: 1) "You're not a real journalist or developer, so we don't care about you," 2) "You're a not a very good journalist or developer, so we don't care about you," and 3) "Well, we didn't know about that, so good job hiding it until now and we'll get on it right after we finish over here." I especially love how these insecure babies try to defend that vetting the lead writer on a AAA game and a former Destructoid employee is not nearly as important as vetting an indie games designer who releases her games for free.

 

Also, I never get sick of these people saying, "This is not about Zoe Quinn!" because they realize their fixation on her is damaging their credibility, but continuing to populate their arguments with liberal amounts of hearsay and conjecture about Quinn as "proof" of the state of games journalism because it's the only thing they've investigated with any thoroughness.

 

Also also, when I last posted that someone would just accuse mainstream media of being corrupt too if people pointed out that the Guardian didn't find anything suspect in Jenn Frank's piece, I didn't realize that my prediction had already be fulfilled three and a half hours ago already. Like Hermie said, if the Guardian of all papers doesn't measure up to these little monsters' standards of ethical journalism, there's no hope for them ever to establish a reasonable discourse with reality. Fortunately, it probably also means that their demands are impossible to satisfy and that their movement will keep discrediting itself until it disintegrates, but that's cold comfort to those currently under attack.

 

He tweets a lot, if you could give me an idea of when the rant started I can make a storify later. I don't know where to start and I'm just viewing from my phone which isn't ideal.

Here is the first tweet that he made after he retweeted Jenn Frank quitting. It ends thirteen hours later with him retweeting Darren Nakamura about Destructoid reviewing BL2.

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It starts around this tweet last night and runs through the next 20+ tweets and retweets, some of which branch into conversations.  I kinda hate trying to reference anything more than a single Tweet, as I've never used Storify (I'm sure it's simple, but it's not something I can justify dipping into when I should be working) and it's so cumbersome to present Tweets in any other way, especially since you have to screencap them here and can't embed Tweets.

 

This is the conversation imagining speedrunning sex, which I'm including only because it gave me the giggles, and that's something this thread needs occasionally. 

 

And here's one of the examples of someone going after him for being in an open relationship, which of course involves trying to emasculate him because of the choices they've made about their relationship.  Which to me ties back into the kind of misogyny aimed at people like Quinn and Sarkeesian, because it also tries to enforce the cultural norms of being a man's manly man, which must involve controlling women's sex lives.  

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There's actually a precursor of this kind of brouhaha when a guy called Burch out on the grounds that Tiny Tina's dialog was racially offensive* To which he responded, "I don't think that's the case", but then asked Twitter, got some responses and said that he'd think more about it and might tweak her presentation in future.

 

That still turned into kind of a shitstorm, but.

 

 

*Didn't see it myself, but I could follow the argument.

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As a pal of mine pointed out, there was a disney rep on stage for the PAX Bombcast throwing out free infinity swag. Have people been talking about that? What's different about the Bombcast?

 

I'd like to think I'm an optimist, and this is a weird way to look at things, but I really believe "we're winning." The harassment is vile, and best stomped out, but in this instance it is a negative side effect of success, and increased visibility. Anita has more viewers/supporters than shitty tweeters, not to mitigate the scary quality of those assholes.

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And here's one of the examples of someone going after him for being in an open relationship, which of course involves trying to emasculate him because of the choices they've made about their relationship.  Which to me ties back into the kind of misogyny aimed at people like Quinn and Sarkeesian, because it also tries to enforce the cultural norms of being a man's manly man, which must involve controlling women's sex lives.  

 

Really hate that I am tagged in that guy's stupid tweet. I keep seeing notifications of it being faved by like-minded jerks.

 

 

Leigh Alexander was a guest on a Grantland podcast on Gamer Gate.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvWeOCjrpus#t=1100

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I got tagged on a lot of scumbag posts after Jim Sterling retweeted me and his lovely band of critics saw fit to respond. It was not good times.

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Newest article hitting number 1 on /r/games:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/09/gamergate_explodes_gaming_journalists_declare_the_gamers_are_over_but_they.html
 

The antagonism of the gaming press toward its audience stems partly from justified outrage at the horrible behavior of a small subset of it, but also from helpless resentment toward the entirety of the press’s shrinking audience—hence the self-defeating attempt to generalize the former into the latter. Rather than stressing that the vast majority of gamers are reasonable people who don’t harass women, hold reactionary, protectionist views, or start vitriolic online campaigns against the press, the websites trashed the entire term “gamer” and, to no one’s surprise, earned 10 times the enmity overnight.



So this whole #gamergate thing is just because journalists are lashing out at their audience because the youtubers are taking over.

 

Not enough sighs in the world.

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This is the same dude that wrote the Letter to a Young Male Gamer thing, so I'm not surprised that he has a reductive view of the situation.

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