"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

[Problem Machine]

Glad to see someone collected all the bullshit GG posted and proof of how bullshit it is. It's a quick way to shut down that line of crap.

Excellent, I was just ranting yesterday in IRC about how we needed something like this

[Denial]

The only time I've come across Oliver Campbell before was the nontroversy over The Stanley Parable, when he called Davey Wreden out for a visual gag involving setting an African child on fire. Which is odd, of course, because it's exactly the kind of thing that Gamergate is supposed to oppose - changes being made to avoid offending members of ethnic or cultural minorities constituting censorship.

 

(I mean, I don't think this is censorship, but Gamergate precisely does, inasmuch as it can be said to think anything; this kind of interaction is one of its core complaints. Derek Yu is fairly regularly told by Gaters (and before that proto-Gaters) that he must stand with them against Anita Sarkeesian, because she forced him to change his artistic vision for Spelunky by introducing rescuable men and dogs as well as women. His patience in explaining every time that he wasn't forced to do anything, he appreciated the criticism and he thinks Spelunky is a better game thanks to a change he wouldn't have thought of himself is frankly mind-blowing. See also Neil Druckmann and The Last of Us. It tickles me hugely that the creative leads on arguably the best AAA action-adventure and the best indie platformer of recent years both explicitly credit Anita Sarkeesian with helping them to improve their work.)

 

However, as we've seen with Yiannopoulos and Cernovich, GG is very forgiving of past transgressions as long as you are visibly and volubly supportive. Conversely, as we've seen with Liana Kershner and Devi Ever, stepping out of line is a pretty high-risk strategy, especially if you have previously been #notitsshield...

[Problem Machine]

Conversely, as we've seen with Liana Kershner and Devi Ever, stepping out of line is a pretty high-risk strategy, especially if you have previously been #notitsshield...

Teehee... eerily appropriate

[Twig]

hahaha oh god i wouldn't have noticed

[cowuponacow]

#GamerGate has shown very little tolerance for heterodoxy unless it's the superficial kind that can be used to score points.

I really don't know if the opposition has been any better, though. Has it? Pro-GG discussion has been banned on many sites since the beginning of all this, including unprecedented amounts of moderation on 4chan. I've seen numerous comments by anti-GG (and none by pro-GG) to the effect that fence-sitting, silence, or attempts at neutrality are bullshit. The top pro-GG subreddit allows anti-GG comments, while the top anti-GG subreddit does not allow pro-GG comments.

[Twig]

That's just a side effect of GG's desire to rope in as many suckers to their side as they can so that they can continue to make excuses for the shittiest people in their group, or pretending they don't exist because they have these other people who don't do that sort of thing.

 

It MAKES SENSE for a so-called "anti-GG" group of people to ban GG because GG is about harassment.

 

They are incomparable.

[Bjorn]

I really don't know if the opposition has been any better, though. Has it? Pro-GG discussion has been banned on many sites since the beginning of all this, including unprecedented amounts of moderation on 4chan. I've seen numerous comments by anti-GG (and none by pro-GG) to the effect that fence-sitting, silence, or attempts at neutrality are bullshit. The top pro-GG subreddit allows anti-GG comments, while the top anti-GG subreddit does not allow pro-GG comments.

 

At least in a few instances of gg being totally banned, there was plenty of proof of organized harassment and/or sharing doxxing information.  It's not even a question whether or not you ban that shit, and if it dominates the conversation, then just ban the whole topic.  I'm not sure what else you would expect a mod to do. 

[JonCole]

Not to mention that in response to a conservative movement like GG, it's only natural for the liberal opposition to say that neutrality supports the status quo because it's literally true.

[Nachimir]

Chris Kluwe is good at bile: https://medium.com/the-cauldron/why-gamergaters-piss-me-the-f-off-a7e4c7f6d8a6

[MadJackalope]

Holy shit. I grew up with a lot of this anti-disco sentiment (many of the boys I played with in my neighborhood were into metal, and had older brothers/fathers whom I guess this came from). I even used to draw some anti-disco comics with my best friend in the first grade. And I think some residue of all of that is still with me influencing my music taste today, more than 20 years later. I hadn't realized the roots of all of this before now.

To be fair, disco had a back lash because it was also seen as inspiring classist elitism and glorifying material excess. 

But that's why people should listen to discopunk. 

[JonCole]

Chris Klewe, former NFL player who is also a celebrated gamer that goes by @ChrisWarcraft on Twitter wrote a post about Gamergate and BOY is it cathartic - https://medium.com/the-cauldron/why-gamergaters-piss-me-the-f-off-a7e4c7f6d8a6

 

LOL I should read literally two posts before my post.

[SecretAsianMan]

I actually feel better after reading that.  Like physically feel better and less angry, like punching or yelling into a pillow.

[tegan]

I'm going to try to work "paint-huffing shitgoblins" into my daily vocabulary now.

[Gormongous]

I'm going to try to work "paint-huffing shitgoblins" into my daily vocabulary now.

 

I am truly impressed how Kluwe can use so many different insults, never repeat himself, and still avoid ableist language in every one. The man is an artist.

[cowuponacow]

That's just a side effect of GG's desire to rope in as many suckers to their side as they can so that they can continue to make excuses for the shittiest people in their group, or pretending they don't exist because they have these other people who don't do that sort of thing.

I have a hard time condemning any group for permitting dissenting opinions, regardless of their motivation in doing so.

 

At least in a few instances of gg being totally banned, there was plenty of proof of organized harassment and/or sharing doxxing information.  It's not even a question whether or not you ban that shit, and if it dominates the conversation, then just ban the whole topic.  I'm not sure what else you would expect a mod to do. 

I'm sure that's true in some places, but I'm guessing only the minority. I'm going on what I've personally seen, so I definitely could be wrong. But my suspicion is that most places banned GG talk for other reasons.

 

Not to mention that in response to a conservative movement like GG, it's only natural for the liberal opposition to say that neutrality supports the status quo because it's literally true.

Isn't GG a reactionary movement? Doesn't that mean they're inherently anti-status quo?

 

Does anyone disagree with my supposition that anti-GG is at least as intolerant (if not more so) of dissenting opinions than GG is?

[Dewar]

Like they’re all little Anne Franks, hiding in their basements from the PC Nazis and Social Justice Warrior brigades, desperately protecting the last shreds of “core gaming” in their unironically horrible Liveblog journals filled with patently obvious white privilege and poorly disguised misogyny. “First they came for our Halo 2’s, and I said nothing.”

 

Proof that he is a gamer. He knows which Halo is the best.

[JonCole]

Isn't GG a reactionary movement? Doesn't that mean they're inherently anti-status quo?

 

Does anyone disagree with my supposition that anti-GG is at least as intolerant (if not more so) of dissenting opinions than GG is?

 

The status quo is AAA game development. Progressive game development is indie dev. GG opposes indie developers almost exclusively.

 

Do you disagree with literally everyone else's supposition that you're drawing a false equivalence between GG and "anti-GG"?

[Gormongous]

Does anyone disagree with my supposition that anti-GG is at least as intolerant (if not more so) of dissenting opinions than GG is?

 

Quite frankly, no. So long as someone isn't an active member of #GamerGate, they're generally left alone by those who oppose #GamerGate. There are several examples of people and websites directly involved in the games industry being called out for their silence, but that sort of thing happens as part of a dialogue, not harassment like #GamerGate's interaction with Anil Dash. If they refuse to engage, that's the end of it. No one's lives get ruined by me or people like me for refusing to take a stance. Meanwhile, I oppose #GamerGate alongside people whose beliefs on feminism and journalism I sometimes disagree with. For instance, Twig's a great guy, but the Feminism thread on the forum is full of us disagreeing about stuff. If this were #GamerGate, one of us might hound the other out of the movement, but since we are both just people opposing misogyny and harassment, it's not even an issue. There's no reason for us to enforce orthodoxy because the only thing we all have in common is our belief in diversity without fear.

 

I also take issue with the idea that banning #GamerGate discussions on certain forums reveals intolerance. What you've discovered is simply the paradox of tolerance. Tolerant people must be intolerant of intolerance, because intolerance threatens the existence of tolerance and the good it brings. It's not hypocrisy, it's a fact of life that reactionary movements have taught us time and again, since the Second World War at least.

[tegan]

Does anyone disagree with my supposition that anti-GG is at least as intolerant (if not more so) of dissenting opinions than GG is?

 

Isn't this kind of a loaded question, since we'd be "proving it right" by disagreeing with it?

[sclpls]

I have a hard time condemning any group for permitting dissenting opinions, regardless of their motivation in doing so.

 

I'm sure that's true in some places, but I'm guessing only the minority. I'm going on what I've personally seen, so I definitely could be wrong. But my suspicion is that most places banned GG talk for other reasons.

 

Isn't GG a reactionary movement? Doesn't that mean they're inherently anti-status quo?

 

Does anyone disagree with my supposition that anti-GG is at least as intolerant (if not more so) of dissenting opinions than GG is?

 

I disagree with that supposition. Gamergate is the one targeting women and launching campaigns to punish outlets by pressuring advertisers to pull advertising from these sites because they wrote something they disagree with. Banning that sort of activity on message boards and comment sections is hardly illiberal.

[Twig]

I have a hard time condemning any group for permitting dissenting opinions, regardless of their motivation in doing so.

I don't! They're a bunch of ass toads.

 

I have no sympathy for anyone who still huddles 'neath that 'brella.

[cowuponacow]

Do you disagree with literally everyone else's supposition that you're drawing a false equivalence between GG and "anti-GG"?

It's not my intention to paint them as equivalent. I know people don't like the label "anti-GG", but I don't know what else to use. I simply mean, people who are engaged in this conversation and believe GG to be wrong.

 

Isn't this kind of a loaded question, since we'd be "proving it right" by disagreeing with it?

No. You could very effectively disagree with it by showing my examples to be false, or by providing comparable examples of the opposite behaviour (GGers disallowing dissent, and the opposition allowing dissent).

 

I disagree with that supposition. Gamergate is the one targeting women and launching campaigns to punish outlets by pressuring advertisers to pull advertising from these sites because they wrote something they disagree with. Banning that sort of activity on message boards and comment sections is hardly illiberal.

I'll have to refer you to my response to Bjorn in my previous post.

 

Quite frankly, no. So long as someone isn't an active member of #GamerGate, they're generally left alone by those who oppose #GamerGate. There are several examples of people and websites directly involved in the games industry being called out for their silence, but that sort of thing happens as part of a dialogue, not harassment as in the #GamerGate's interaction with Anil Dash. If they refuse to engage, that's the end of it. No one's lives get ruined by me or people like me for refusing to take a side. Meanwhile, I oppose #GamerGate alongside people whose beliefs on feminism and journalism I sometimes disagree with. For instance, Twig's a great guy, but the Feminism thread on the forum is full of us disagreeing about stuff. If this were #GamerGate, one of us might hound the other out of the movement, but since we are both just people opposing misogyny and harassment, it's not even an issue. There's no reason for us to enforce orthodoxy because the only thing we all have in common is our support of diversity without fear.

 

I also take issue with the idea that banning #GamerGate discussions on certain forums reveals intolerance. What you've discovered is simply the paradox of tolerance. Tolerant people must be intolerant of intolerance, because intolerance threatens the existence of tolerance and the good it brings. It's not hypocrisy, it's a fact of life that reactionary movements have taught us time and again, since the Second World War at least.

Well, there's intolerance, and then there's intolerance. Right? I mean, banning anything is inherently intolerant of that thing, using the strict definition of the word. But that's not necessarily bad. There are things that should not be tolerated, such as harassment.

 

My supposition is that it's not only stuff like harassment and doxxing that's not being tolerated, it's also people trying to (more or less calmly) explain and discuss why they think GG is right, and that this happens at least as much as what you describe ("#GamerGate has shown very little tolerance for heterodoxy..."). My further supposition is that, although this is not necessarily wrong (both because of the paradox of tolerance that you mention, and because privately-owned websites are perfectly free to moderate as they see fit), if it's done, we ought to keep in mind the negative effects that can come with it.

 

EDIT: Minor edit for wording.

[Erkki]

What would it mean for GG to be right? It doesn't even have a coherent stand on ethics in game journalism. Journalists who have tried to find out what it is have been led in circles. (see links in the last few pages).

 

How can it be right when it doesn't have a viewpoint beyond "lets harass woman while pretenting to be anti-harassment".

[Gormongous]

Well, there's intolerance, and then there's intolerance. Right? I mean, banning anything is inherently intolerant of that thing, using the strict definition of the word. But that's not necessarily bad. There are things that should not be tolerated, such as harassment.

 

My supposition is that it's not only stuff like harassment and doxxing that's not being tolerated, it's also people trying to (more or less calmly) explain and discuss why they think GG is right. My further supposition is that, although this is not necessarily wrong (both because of the paradox of tolerance that you mention, and because privately-owned websites are perfectly free to moderate as they see fit), if it's done, we ought to be aware of the negative effects that can come with that.

 

The issue, which maybe makes opponents of #GamerGate seem intolerant of the entire movement rather than just its violent extremities, is that #GamerGate functionally doesn't exist beyond its violent extremities. To date, the only substantive things that #GamerGate has accomplished are the intimidation of a single advertiser on an industry website, the co-opting of an enthusiast website as a platform for harassment, the destruction of several independent journalists' careers, and the hounding of two developers and one academic from their homes. I'm not even going to bring up the unbelievable volume of lies and half-truths spread by the movement, because part of my point is that the rest is all talk. There are many people in #GamerGate saying that they don't support harassment, but the only thing their movement has accomplished is harassment. They are a figleaf for fascists and misogynists, so while there is still a point to engaging them in good faith, I shouldn't have to buy into their narrative as legitimate in order to do so.

 

Elaborating to better account for your edit, when I say that #GamerGate has little tolerance for heterodoxy, I mean that if you don't agree with #GamerGate in every way, you are against them. There is a very specific set of beliefs and actions that are felt by them to characterize a member of that movement, going far beyond simply "ethics in journalism," and people who don't fit are treated almost as bad as the most vocal opponent. Campbell found acceptance, but I strongly suspect that if he made an issue of #GamerGate's racial politics and use of the N-word, that acceptance would disappear. I have seen multiple people on Twitter, suggesting that ethics in journalism are a problem but that the hashtag should be abandoned, being attacked relentlessly by people who otherwise agree with them, because any deviation from the party line is a threat. Reddit and 8chan threads are heavily policed against moderates in the same way. Conversely, the only thing that characterizes most of the people in this thread is an opposition to #GamerGate as a movement. Beyond (and within) that, there are many different opinions about the state of women and minorities in the games industry, and those conversations have always happened on this forum with maximum cordiality. In short, I don't think it's fair to call people intolerant for being intolerant of an intolerant movement, especially not when, as I've said above, there is no evidence that the movement has a physical reality beyond the harassment it has committed and continues to commit.

[Bjorn]

Isn't GG a reactionary movement? Doesn't that mean they're inherently anti-status quo?

 

Not at all, a reactionary movement is the opposite of that. A reactionary movement is about the retention of a changing status quo, or reverting back to a previous status quo that has been lost. That's specifically what the phrase means. Some people have misunderstood it, as they think any movement that is a reaction to something is automatically a reactionary movement. The phrase actually has a very specific meaning. And yes, gg is a reactionary movement by that definition.  In the case of gg, the status quo has been that politics, feminism, and other social issues weren't a topic for discussion in games or gaming media. That status quo has been challenged and is slowly changing. The reaction is against that change and a desire to return to the way things were before.

 

My supposition is that it's not only stuff like harassment and doxxing that's not being tolerated, it's also people trying to (more or less calmly) explain and discuss why they think GG is right, and that this happens at least as much as what you describe ("#GamerGate has shown very little tolerance for heterodoxy..."). My further supposition is that, although this is not necessarily wrong (both because of the paradox of tolerance that you mention, and because privately-owned websites are perfectly free to moderate as they see fit), if it's done, we ought to keep in mind the negative effects that can come with it.

 

EDIT: Minor edit for wording.

 

Okay, so I started to write a different response to some of your earlier posts, but lets back up for a minute. What do you believe the concerns of GamerGate are, and how do you think that pro-gg people have pursued corrective action for those concerns? One of the problems with having a discussion about any of this is understanding each person's frame of reference, and I'm not sure what yours is. Mine is pretty clear from even going back over the last few pages and seeing my thoughts about gg.

 

Edited a couple of sentences for clarity.