"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

[Christopher]

This means it's time to write them again. I just did.

 

Anyone with time to read and post in this thread also has time to send another letter to Intel. Do that first!

 

They claim that they don't want to take sides, but their official publicity arms @IntelUSA and @IntelGaming are still both actively courting gaters. This is corporate doublespeak at its worst. If they wanted to stay out of it, they should have continued their previous course of action and continued the ad campaign. They've already made an active choice to support a side with their ad removal and their PR interactions on twitter, and this apology doesn't change that.

[BusbyBerkeley]

Wow that is a load of bullshit. Did they ever themselves explain why they pulled the ads? Fuck, that's actually worse than if they had pulled them silently and not issued a statement at all. Ugh. 

[Henroid]

Speaking with their dollars and speaking with words have different weight. So far, Intel is sided with a hate campaign.

[thefncrow]

Not to mention they just pulled the Friday evening news dump. This is a clear sign that they desperately just want this thing to go away. Issue a really weasel-y statement, drop it Friday night so that it won't show up but in weekend news cycles when few are paying attention, and hope that things have just moved on by Monday.

[syntheticgerbil]

The classic "we apologize if anyone was offended"

 

I hate that shit

Haha, but you know... it says "sorry" in there someone. Don't worry about the context!

[Bjorn]

Ugh,so many things to talk about, but I'm on my phone and hate writing on it. So I'll just point out that github probably only banned gamergate stuff after getting embarrassed by a Mirror article using them as an example is a place that hosts gaters.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/technology/one-simple-test-tell-you-4372864

[Synnah]

I... I don't see how the apparent goal of Gamergate can remain significant when this shit is happening in the top tiers.

There's a kind of general air of 'this is a problem, but we'll tackle it after GamerGate has achieved its goals'. I think I actually saw someone say that in response to Leigh Alexander's list of actual ethical concerns in the games industry. Like they honestly believe that if they get Gamasutra shut down and hound Leigh out of the industry that they'll then all sit down around a table and discuss the problem of weapons manufacturers funding games or cloning on the App Store.

 

Also fuck Intel and their soft-pedalling bollocks. If you genuinely believe that men and women should be treated the same why would you serve the purposes of a movement that absolutely does not believe that? Why is this so hard for people?

[Nachimir]

Yes, someone said that in response to me posting it. I also saw it weeks ago in response to a (male) indie developer saying "Hey gamergate, I made this game, this friend reviewed it for [popular blog], and not only do we know each other, he also worked on the game before becoming a games journalist. Why aren't you giving us a kicking?". A few said "Thanks, we'll get to this later", but of course it sank without trace.

[Synnah]

Oh yes, it was you that I saw on Twitter!

 

They say things like that as if they're some kind of organisation, but the fact is that GamerGate has always been a decentralised movement, and the only things they seem to be able to organise are harassment campaigns and psy-ops. When they try to organise something that would actually make a difference, everyone involved quickly loses interest.

[Architecture]

Did anyone post the Jacobin article by Peter Frase yet? It's essentially the #lamergate equivalent of:

 

[Synnah]

A good article, though when reading it I couldn't help but pick out things that Gaters would dismiss it for; It's pretty critical of them ('ad hominem, therefore it's irrelevant'); It's posted on a socialist blog (And it's clear at this point that they have a pretty strong conservative lean); It's got some pretty academic language and ideas. But I guess the point of an article like that isn't to try to show them the error of their ways, but to clarify what's been happening to those on the outside of this whole shitstorm.

 

On a similar note, then, this post by Jon Stone has been doing the rounds today. It's a pretty comprehensive catalogue of their argument tactics and their shittiness.

[Merus]

Yeah, I think it's well worth remembering that you can't reason Gaters out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. It's a reactionary movement, and so it has to be countered like a reactionary movement.

 

Unfortunately the last time we dealt with a reactionary movement, our most effective response was rolling tanks into Berlin, which isn't exactly an option here.

[Architecture]

Can we just roll tanks into 4-Chan instead?

[BusbyBerkeley]

Oof, that's a pretty poor analogy Merus...

I'm just increasingly annoyed at all this shit. Like, exhaustingly annoyed, to the point where it feels like these people are just so aggressive and then most other people who might have noticed them straight up don't give a shit and its very disappointing. Blah.

[Nachimir]

As a few people have stated, it seems to be a named part of the background radiation of the internet now. It won't let up for women or any other people they target, but mostly, they'll be ready to exploit any PR opportunities that fly their way. The majority of gamers don't seem to care, and what I doubt gaters can sustain at bulk is the "You might have been misinformed" narrative they perpetuate on Twitter whenever someone points to their abuses and the roots of their campaign.

[Hermie]

Yup, this happened to an aquaintance. He posted "Ok, I'm confused about #GameFelate, can someone post a link to an objective summary?". Of course he got linked a lot of JPEGs with wild conjecture, but my girlfriend linked to one of the VICE articles, and he said "Oh ok, now I understand what's REALLY happening".

 

 

 

Thing is, he campained heavily for the Swedish Feminist Initiative during the elections. I wonder if they assumed he would swallow it easily? They were civil, but I bet they wouldn't be if confronted or questioned.

[Architecture]

I guess the silver lining is none of these turds is likely to procreate, so there's that.

[Flynn]

Looks like Total Biscuit is all-in on GamerGate after he felt Dell belittled gamers with employee tweet.  

[Architecture]

I am so glad to say that I don't know who any of these people are at all.

[Denial]

With the what now?

[feelthedarkness]

if i can take a moment of banality, it's a bummer that we're in a world where somebody named "Total Biscuit" wields some kind of significant power. 

[sclpls]

So in Intel's non-apology they said " Intel does not support any organization or movement that discriminates against women." ... except for the part where they are pulling an ad because the content of an editorial by a woman was found objectionable by some.

[Gormongous]

So in Intel's non-apology they said " Intel does not support any organization or movement that discriminates against women." ... except for the part where they are pulling an ad because the content of an editorial by a woman was found objectionable by some.

 

True neutrality means not getting involved, even if one is already involved and the act of removing one's involvement gives one party exactly what said party wants. Wait, I didn't mean to say "neutrality," because I meant "cowardice." Germany annexing the Sudetenland, "peace for our time," and all that.

[Blambo]

Is it accurate to categorize nazi Fascist sentiment as reactionary if the status quo at the time was democratic? Just wanted to know if reactionism is dependent on change from the status quo or just change in general.

Relevant because I wanted to figure out if the weird fascist element of gamergate is the product of reactionism or if reactionism fuelled an existing sentiment.

[Gormongous]

Is it accurate to categorize nazi Fascist sentiment as reactionary if the status quo at the time was democratic? Just wanted to know if reactionism is dependent on change from the status quo or just change in general.

Relevant because I wanted to figure out if the weird fascist element of gamergate is the product of reactionism or if reactionism fuelled an existing sentiment.

 

That's hard to answer in a comprehensive way, but yes, I believe it's accurate to say so. Fascism came out of a manufactured narrative of dissipation and betrayal in the closing years of the First World War and then the Depression. In Germany, the narrative was that complacent politicians, bureaucrats, and businessmen allowed fringe elements like Communists, unionists, and Jews to sap economic potential and then hijack the political process, leading directly to defeat and humiliation in a war that Germans had been told they were winning. The global depression that followed right afterwards was cast in this same light as the result of greedy self-interested radicals taking their fill now that they'd achieved their ends. Fascism was about using violence and force to circumvent a political process based on debate, concession, and consensus, in order to let the will of the people, which is manifest to and in their leaders, be expressed more fully. Italy's narrative that led to fascism is almost identical, except that there was no defeat, only humiliation when the Allied powers refused to fulfill irredentist promises made to Italy.

 

All in all, it's a remarkably similar narrative to #GamerGate (a strong and healthy culture winning a war against those that would destroy it, betrayed by self-interested fringe elements that only pretend to identify with the cause, necessitating force be used to drive them out, nominally directed against corrupt power structures but really just about settling scores and beating up easy targets) but I've avoided using it because "Godwin!" is one of the favorite barks of internet dogs. I think reactionarism takes root whenever the status quo reveals itself to not be what it was hitherto understood to be, same as fascism, but the latter is more the principal means of expression for the former.

 

---

It needs to be said, because it's such a loaded topic for the Western world in the modern age, but like I said to my students when I taught it last semester, fascism is incredibly seductive if you're already angry about... well, anything. It uses rhetorically powerful phrases to tell you that your gut's been right all along and the people with whom you disagree have just been lying. It tells you that all learning, all science, and all politics are just smoke meant to confuse and weaken you. It tells you that if you just listen to your heart (and to the leader whom your heart tells you to listen to) then the best possible outcome will always happen. It tells you that strength, not knowledge or justice, is the greatest human good, and that force expressed through that strength is what makes (and keeps) a state good. All these are "truths" that have been peddled to the right-wing "gamers" of #GamerGate piecemeal, but a half-century of aversion to discussing the tenets of fascism means that we can't call a spade a spade. "Fascist" is just an empty word that dirty hippies call police and businessmen without cause, which is my biggest issue with the Jacobin article. Even if the subjects of its criticism were listening, its language is fifty years out of date.