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JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

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Man, this thread tricked me into reading KotakuInAction again, and like every other time I've done that, it was a mistake. It just makes me sad about the world in a way that reading threads like this doesn't. I think it's seeing that people so genuinely believe things that are crazy, but with so much passion that I can see my 14-year-old self buying into it a little bit? Why do people have to be so shitty?

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Oh, sorry! I should have explained myself clearly: I didn't mean framing or highlighting GG as bullies, I meant targeting vulnerable gamers with support in completely separate contexts. Pretty much like I've seen with hackspaces, board gaming, and other quite nerdy hobbies I'm into, they attract a higher proportion of young men who've been bullied. The resulting vulnerability, loneliness, desocialisation and potential victim complexes make it easy for groups like GG to hoover them up and galvanise their negative emotions into support for a cause, while fulfilling their need for belonging. Getting to bullied kids first with pragmatic and compassionate support would go a long way to deny things like GG legs in future, before they can really build inertia. It'd only be long term if it produced results at all, but the socially challenged aspects of video game audiences have been a long time in the making too, and by peddling the fantasies it largely did from the mid 80's until very recently, I see the industry as partly responsible for those problems. Does that make sense?

 

(and, for clarity: we're in total agreement on the importance of representation and diversity).

 

 

 

Yes, though the weirdest thing about digging around in GG stuff over the past week has been seeing gaters refer to various extremists, including the Westboro baptist church, by name and as their enemies (Perhaps one of the things they have in common is that they don't see themselves as extremists). When people say GG exhibits cult like behaviours, they're right, but as a movement it currently allows too much multiplicity of thought to really be or become one.

 

(Also a little weird: seeing some adopt 'gater with a ', especially following conversations I've had with people who chose to avoid the term for fear of alienating moderates).

 

In that case, you are 100% CORRECT!

 

I might not agree with all of Cracked's recent...practices, but one of the most INTERESTING articles recently was comparing the MRA movement (this was a pre-GG world) with the skinheads. With a contributing writer who is an ex-skinhead who now works to educate people and fight racism. At one point in the article, AN EX-SKINHEAD WAS RENDERED SPEECHLESS BY MRA FORUMS. He also confirms that it's almost 1:1 on recruiting tactics. And sadly, as someone who was VERY close to falling into this trap (I am SO GLAD things like twitter, reddit and 4chan either weren't around or I didn't know about them when I was in jr high/high school/early college. LORDY I was a crappier person then) I can echo the fact that education is what's truly needed before crap like this gets calcified.

 

Let's all take a moment and appreciate Terry Crews...

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I actually engaged with a gator in good faith on the AV Club comments last week, but he stopped responding after only a few replies. He claimed to be 21. Get active in something that matters you fucking idiots. Baaaaaaarf.

 

What's your name on there? I'll keep an eye out for you (even though I don't read the comments as thoroughly as I used to now they've put in that "load more comments" button).

 

 

Over at the Double Fine forums, someone started a thread called "general disappointment in Double Fine", but surprise surprise it turned out mostly to be about Tim "throwing his lot with a guy who gloats about generating moral panic" (ie Jonathan McIntosh). The thread is now mostly someone who claims to have worked "on GTA"  trying to gaslight someone who has issues with misogyny/homophobia in the series, with back-up from someone with a (presumably sarcastic) "I bet the patriarchy did this" avatar.

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What's your name on there? I'll keep an eye out for you (even though I don't read the comments as thoroughly as I used to now they've put in that "load more comments" button).

I'm Fyodor Douchetoevsky over there, but I mostly post on The Dissolve anymore. AVC comments aren't nearly as not shitty as they used to be. Or maybe they were always trash. Gameological was really good while that lasted.:(

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I'm Fyodor Douchetoevsky over there, but I mostly post on The Dissolve anymore. AVC comments aren't nearly as not shitty as they used to be. Or maybe they were always trash. Gameological was really good while that lasted. :(

Tell me about it, it's almost all just "REFERENCE TO WHATEVER THE ARTICLE'S ABOUT!" "REPLY REFERENCE TO THAT REFERENCE!" "RANDOM SIMPSONS REFERENCE!"

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I'm Fyodor Douchetoevsky over there, but I mostly post on The Dissolve anymore. AVC comments aren't nearly as not shitty as they used to be. Or maybe they were always trash. Gameological was really good while that lasted. :(

 

*googles* Ohhh, you're the guy with the Wonder Showzen avatar! I recognise you! (Unless there are more people with that same puppet face for an avatar.)

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I was recently put on a SJW Block List apparently, not sure where this list is or why they think I should be on it.

 

GamerGate is still super gross and at this point needs to die. As far as I can tell the only people still championing the GamerGate name are people who are looking to gain from having new "fans".

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The list is auto-generated from an initial pool. Basically, you follow a bunch of people on the list, so you were added to the list.

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Interesting, well I am happy to be on that list. Seeing first hand what the damage GG has done to some people I really care about drives me up the fucking wall. 

 

I can safely say without remorse : Fuck GG and all those that still take part.

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*googles* Ohhh, you're the guy with the Wonder Showzen avatar! I recognise you! (Unless there are more people with that same puppet face for an avatar.)

That's me! I've been posting there for years. I even made the gameological steam groups and john Teti mailed me a cool button and thank you card!

And yeah, I think disqus was when things drastically shifted. You used to have jokey reference threads but also insightful comments. Now its mostly white noise and the occasional idiot with a dash of OK comments. Games articles tend to fare better, oddly enough.

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Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything this week is about how terrible the internet is for women. It doesn't specifically mention "ethics in gaming journalism," but something that Kathy Sierra said about her experience being targeted for harassment just really echoes something I've seen women targeted by GamerGate try to say. It's about a third of the way through the episode, but the whole thing is worth listening to -- at the very least the first part, which is just Kathy Sierra talking about how she was harassed off the internet in 2007, seems really pertinent to this whole GG thing.

 

Once you become a target, you really have no way to win because you have three choices. You can do what I did and you can just leave -- so they win. They got you out. You can try to ignore them, right? The ridiculously useless advice, in this case, when you're being targeted, to, "Oh, don't feed the trolls," because if you don't respond, if you just go on about your business and pretend like they're not there, they will have to escalate until you respond in some way, until they've at the very least destroyed some aspect of your life. So if you ignore them, they win. And if you try to fight back, things will get so much worse. Worse even than if you just merely ignored them because now, they're determined not just to get a response from you but to win, and you have upped the game. So they win. So you really have no option where they don't win.

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KiA is upset that a WaPo writer compared gg to the blogger who doxxed the woman at the center of the Rolling Stone rape article. So far, the blogger has posted her name, called her father, posted pictures from her Facebook page, posted screenshots of her Pinterest, and erroneously published a photo he thought was her, that now looks to be wrong.

Go ahead and look through the KiA thread, and see if you can find a single person mentioning how terrible doxxing is.  Or condemning the blogger. Nope, it's all about distancing gg from someone they don't want to be associated with. Image control first, ethics...eh, sometime.

 

As a friend of mine is want to say, consistency is hard.

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I like that the top thread mistakenly declares something a grammatical error because some gaters were confused about the subject noun. Reading comprehension still isn't a strong suit for them, evidently.

(To be fair, that could happen pretty much anywhere, but it is fun.)

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KiA is upset that a WaPo writer compared gg to the blogger who doxxed the woman at the center of the Rolling Stone rape article. So far, the blogger has posted her name, called her father, posted pictures from her Facebook page, posted screenshots of her Pinterest, and erroneously published a photo he thought was her, that now looks to be wrong.

Go ahead and look through the KiA thread, and see if you can find a single person mentioning how terrible doxxing is.  Or condemning the blogger. Nope, it's all about distancing gg from someone they don't want to be associated with. Image control first, ethics...eh, sometime.

 

As a friend of mine is want to say, consistency is hard.

Whole lot harder without a leader.

 

Why anyone could say ANYthing in the name of "the cause" and NO ONE would be able to object to it!

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Ahahahaha

 

I particularly like 'authorian' as a dimwitted conflation between the people who make and criticize art and the people who oppress and censor. If that's not just GG in a nutshell

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… what?

 

I suppose they could only go so long mimicking Inspiring Speeches About War Stuff from films before they started drawing maps too. I bet someone, at this very moment, is pushing around little models of Adam Baldwin and Juicebro Lawyer on one.

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SJW occupies all comics and no books. I guess these people have:

 

1) Never read books.

 

2) Never read any "SJW" criticism of comic book superhero costumes and so on.

 

What does "FTC" stand for?

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FTC is Federal Trade Commission, I'm assuming.

 

more importantly wtf is metalgate edit: thanks ben

 

edit edit: oh so it's just tortorlborskort on the rampage again edit edit edit: i read the whole thing and... yeah that sounds about right

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SJW occupies all comics and no books. I guess these people have:

1) Never read books.

2) Never read any "SJW" criticism of comic book superhero costumes and so on.

What does "FTC" stand for?

I guess they also missed the hubbub around the NYT reviewing NYT reviewers' friends' books multiple times and not reviewing other big releases. There were some minor cries of corruption back a year or so ago I think, but then the NYT basically published a thing that said "Deal with it, nerds," and so the nerds learned to deal with it.

I guess most book reviewers I can think of off the top of my head are male though, so who would they even target?

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