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JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

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If memory serves, the total impact of JournoList was that Dave Wiegel left the Washington Post, carried on working as a journalist, and is now at Slate. Ezra Klein, the creator of the list, is now editor-in-chief at Vox.

 

So... yeah. Not sure what the expected impact of this is meant to be, but I guess we'll find out. Meanwhile, Scott Nichols, who is in the Google group, is doing an ask.fm thing for anyone with questions, and I have to say is doing very well at maintaining his composure, although not well enough to avoid being accused of condescending to gamers, I imagine.

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At 55 minutes in, Polansky succinctly describes the reason why "leaving video games" seems like a good option for freelancers (especially minorities). She explains that they have all watched the games-press feel the need to compromise with the consumerist fans enough that it ends up throwing those freelancers under the bus. The reason the games-press does this is that outside the sphere of those consumerist fans, the authority of the games-press has no legitimacy. 

http://www.mixcloud.com/SufficientlyHuman/episode-4-leaving-disneyland-and-other-metaphors/

*

 

This is why it is important to create value in the actual content of games-writing. When the reason that the readership values game-writing for its access to the industry, that writing will be do nothing but pander to two masters: the game-industry and the consumer. The solution is to create writing that is valuable because of its capability in communicating new methods of appreciation. If games-writing is capable of guiding us into new forms of appreciation that are not dependent on access to the industry or access to the consumer (a fiction necessitated by the desire to sell the ability to sell), then its legitimacy will be inherent.

 

 

*Here is the blog page for the podcast, it has reference material. I didn't use it because you can't fast forward from the blog page.

http://sufficientlyhuman.com/archives/435#more-435

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That's also angsty. I guess I'm past this being a debate. I'm past anything but blind rage. I can't contribute helpfully to anything like this anymore because of that fact and it only makes me all the more enraged. Does anyone know of a useful path for this? Is there a legal or rhetorical way I can metaphorically grab my club and do something useful? I have the inclination but no personal experience in anything other than 'might makes right', and I don't want to fall into that trap. (regardless how tempting it is.) 

In other news, I'm self-concerned and mad. More at 11.

 

I have gone through waves of similar feelings. For me personally, I've realized that what is happening is that my perspective on the world (and my role in it) is clashing with a reality it had thus far been able to avoid. Before all this I had assumed that no one wanted to be a misogynist, they just didn't realize that they were being one. I'm sure you can see how that expectation has broken me. 

I think what has helped me deal with it is just allowing myself some space to breath. Play some games and make some goofy-shit for no good reason. You aren't giving up. You are just taking a vacation to allow this new reality to digest. It's like jumping, you only fly freely for a moment and then you have to come back. Now that we've seen it we can't unsee it, but we can take naps and do something irrelevant for a day or two. It helps.

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I have gone through waves of similar feelings. For me personally, I've realized that what is happening is that my perspective on the world (and my role in it) is clashing with a reality it had thus far been able to avoid. Before all this I had assumed that no one wanted to be a misogynist, they just didn't realize that they were being one. I'm sure you can see how that expectation has broken me. 

I think what has helped me deal with it is just allowing myself some space to breath. Play some games and make some goofy-shit for no good reason. You aren't giving up. You are just taking a vacation to allow this new reality to digest. It's like jumping, you only fly freely for a moment and then you have to come back. Now that we've seen it we can't unsee it, but we can take naps and do something irrelevant for a day or two. It helps.

 

I've considered more than once making a thread for happy news stories, not just about games but about life and humanity in general.  Not so that we can ignore all the problems, but to occasionally remind us that there is still good out there, beyond the confines of these forums.  The main reason I haven't yet is because I haven't found what I think is an appropriate first story.

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I've considered more than once making a thread for happy news stories, not just about games but about life and humanity in general.  Not so that we can ignore all the problems, but to occasionally remind us that there is still good out there, beyond the confines of these forums.  The main reason I haven't yet is because I haven't found what I think is an appropriate first story.

 

I'm going to take advantage of your goodwill and pretend like I might get away with posting this as a response.

 

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Every time I think the paranoia has reached a critical mass I'm proven wrong.

 

So apparently there's this idea that 4chan has been taken over by SJW plants among the mods. Because even 4chan is sick of this stupid shit and is closing down threads / deleting posts about it. Whatever fun there was to be had with it, I guess, is done. So the GamerGate response against one of the lead mods?

 

Attacking his girlfriend. I wish I was joking. SHE is the target of HIS perceived attacks.

Bx7qMYSIIAAj5IX.png

 

Also, some of the paranoid chatter about taking 4chan back as if it were a country subjugated by Russia or some shit:

Bx73wdQIcAAyW-l.png

 

I know that generally speaking people are moving on and ignoring this, as we probably all should, but I'm worried that some nut is going to flip out.

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I saw something about how Chris Poole had a conflict of interest in his disallowing GamerGate discussion on 4chan because he has some connection to a PR firm. moot has a conflict of interest in the way he runs a personal web site. It's like these people just say some concatenation of words that sounds vaguely incriminating without bothering to look up what exactly they're accusing people of.

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Moot's not just one of the lead mods, Moot is the founder of 4chan.

 

These fucking gaters.

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Hahahahahaha

But why does the first Anonymous guy have blue jeans on? Did the artist suddenly realize that any further detail would be way too much effort?

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They must've become too sad to draw. Internet Architect tweeted a screengrab of moot's post on the matter last night. Basically, they've been deleting GG threads because they violate a rule against raids, doxxing, etc.; they annoy people on /v, new threads keep covering that same ground, and /v has a long history of going off topic. IA captioned the screengrab "Welcome to insanity" and accompanied it with the one about (edit) Moot's girlfriend working for a PR firm.

 

Then there's this PR-driven inanity.

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I think a real nice silver lining of this whole thing has been the way that all of the most awful people are gathering together to form a solid block of conveniently-ignorable dipshit.

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Bx8DkDPIcAAwpnt.png

 

 

Oh my god, this is the worst gamer political cartoon I've seen since this:

 

kzplRaa.jpg

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Seeing the gamer outrage threads on a forum I used to frequent was what drove me to finally join this one after the many, many recommendations. Let me just say that reading through this all has been really soothing.

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I've been finding the last few pages more fun by imagining that this Milo fella is actually the Milo from that Peter Molyneux Kinect thing, all grown up and an asshole. An emotional AI indeed. He doesn't seem to get empathy.

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I saw something about how Chris Poole had a conflict of interest in his disallowing GamerGate discussion on 4chan because he has some connection to a PR firm. moot has a conflict of interest in the way he runs a personal web site. It's like these people just say some concatenation of words that sounds vaguely incriminating without bothering to look up what exactly they're accusing people of.

 

Probably the strangest thing for me is just how far "conflict of interest" has drifted from its original meaning in a handful of weeks, into realms of specificity and hostility that no human being could possibly handle. It's basically become the new "biased," in terms of being a more sophisticated word for "doesn't agree with me," yet somehow even more bizarre because it's usually correct if misguided to accuse someone of bias, but to accuse the owner of a private website  one that is not in any way, shape, or form associated with journalistic, legal, or medical enterprise  of a "conflict of interest" for dating the employee of another private website is... I don't know. There's no connection with reality. The internet's just been smeared with a new buzzword.

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Sure are a lot of Mr. Meeseeks in that one

 

That unruly mob towering over the multibillion dollar company is supposed to be, I shit you not, tumblr users who were disappointed by Nintendo's utterly tone-deaf first response to people being bummed about Tomodachi Life not having same-sex relationships a few months back.

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The moral of the story:

 

Not every disagreement or error has to be the start of an activist movement.

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That unruly mob towering over the multibillion dollar company is supposed to be, I shit you not, tumblr users who were disappointed by Nintendo's utterly tone-deaf first response to people being bummed about Tomodachi Life not having same-sex relationships a few months back.

 

It's an exceptionally bad political cartoon, even beyond the subject matter, because it doesn't actually depict views of the opposing side, even in caricature, and gives the reader no reason why one position is correct and the other is incorrect, besides the art just coloring one as evil and the other as good. Why can't Nintendo help? Does he even care? He says he cares but he's not doing anything. Maybe he doesn't care, in which case the green meanies are right. It's hard to tell.

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Anyone know the origin/reasoning behind the drawing of the redhaired girl that so many of the gamergate people seem to use? I know that someone who uses a panel from the Doom comic book as his pic shouldn't really judge but any time I see someone using that red haired girl drawing or some anime character I find myself thinking "blech."

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Anyone know the origin/reasoning behind the drawing of the redhaired girl that so many of the gamergate people seem to use? I know that someone who uses a panel from the Doom comic book as his pic shouldn't really judge but any time I see someone using that red haired girl drawing or some anime character I find myself thinking "blech."

 

4Chan made it as a character to use in TFYC's contest for women so its kinda become a symbol for the people who think that so called SJWs aren't actually feminist. Also, the color choice of her outfit is apparently based on a rape meme.

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Anyone know the origin/reasoning behind the drawing of the redhaired girl that so many of the gamergate people seem to use? I know that someone who uses a panel from the Doom comic book as his pic shouldn't really judge but any time I see someone using that red haired girl drawing or some anime character I find myself thinking "blech."

 

She was created as a mascot character for 4chan's image board /v/ at the start of the gater movement. Her names is Vivian James, which they think sounds kind of like "vidya games." She was made explicitly so /v/ could have a female mascot in order to deflect criticism, and they suggested that the TFYC project use her. Her color scheme comes from an image meme of Piccolo raping Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z. Yes, really.

 

She's basically the image meme equivalent of #notyourshield, in that she is literally a shield for gaters, but she's also so disingenuous that she contains a rape joke in her basic design.

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