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JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

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Re. gamergate people being hilarious:
 
Last week's Daryush Valizadeh blog entry asking for the legalisation of rape (safe link) has, in the meantime, lightly raised an eyebrow or two in the gater trenches. Last discussion I've seen, they're trying to reach a consensus that Roosh was trying to "basically call out the rape culture hysteria", but isn't doing a very good job at it. Whooo, look, it's "satire" again!
 
Do these people ever read the stuff they support? Roosh has been riding the gamergate cult for months now, and I have trouble finding a less game-y and more rape-y face in that crowd. Yet, hey, it'll blow over. He's not really gamergate, y'know.

 


 

I don't believe his personal views are as abhorrent as the people currently being hired by the Escapist, but his behavior online and extreme aggressiveness with people calling him out is gross and has been going on for years. He is very tangential to the themes of this thread though so I don't want to distract from other topics.

 

It's still good that you bring it up, particularly here. We can't just support any voice that somehow seems to be opposed to gamergate. Gaters are running into that trap by the thousands, and I really don't want to step into it.

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Well, honestly we're bound to be supporting voices that are kind of not great just because the bar of 'you can't harass and terrify people online because they're female or have opinions' is so low. We're also not that desperate to find supportive voices because we already have Stephen Colbert and I can't imagine we're going to do better, unless we rope the cast of Game of Thrones in somehow.

 

Roosh isn't trying to call out the rape culture hysteria, though, in the same way that bears don't advocate for people to not be scared of bears... listen this metaphor isn't working but I'm saying Roosh is a rapist and he justifies it by saying he deserves to do it.

 

 

The idea that good satire is close to the real thing is just the worst. If you're being accurate in your satirical depiction you're leaving no room for your commentary, and the fucking commentary is the fucking point of fucking satire so you've made a hollow shitty copy of something you already know is shitty you are the worst

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I really can't square the "Zak S is an asshole" narrative. It seems like whenever people call him an abusive name searching asshole, the evidence they point to is him showing up somewhere to defend himself when people are calling him a abusive name searching asshole. And, from what I've seen, the responses he gets back smack of the same gas-lighting style gators throw at people like Brianna Wu or Randi Harper:"this is rich from a known abuser", stuff like that.

Beyond conflating people who disagree with his, and his social circle's, views on sexualized depictions of women in media with Pat Robertson, I've never seen him be anything but cool.

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have a look at RPGNet, you'll find some quality bad faith arguing there. And not just from Zak S!

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I don't want to make like I'm his PR agent or anything, but I see people like Jay "A Man in Black" Allen and gamer ghazi literally calling him a one man gamergate and I'm seriously confused.

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I can't say I'm terribly versed in that side of nerd culture, so the name Zak S didn't ring any bells. Although, after that recent post I've seen several people I follow on Twitter share bad experiences, and a short search leads me to these three sites, which I have no intention of getting into myself. I can understand not wanting to condemn somebody based on what you heard on the grapevine, since that could be abused by groups such as GG for social engineering, but I think it's also important to remember that asking for official proof can play into really shitty power dynamics. Often the people who are in a position to look into such allegations happen to be men who happen to have known the alleged harasser for a long time and happen to end up giving the matter no more attention than a curt "I couldn't imagine him doing that kind of thing, he's a good guy."

 

Adding to that confusion, I'd like your opinions on the third person the Escapist hired: Liana Kerzner.

 

She's one of those "factual feminists," who throws other women under the bus in order to win approval, and whose cushy opinions GG gladly accepts as truth because they don't contradict their hateful worldview and don't challenge their silly little heads too much. If you want reasons to be wary, here are plenty.

 

Choice quote about the axe she has to grind with Anita Sarkeesian (because of course she does).

 

Women still often don’t get justice in the legal system when they’re harassed, stalked or assaulted, but at least we have support systems we know how to access when something terrible happens to us. Men, on the other hand, are expected, because they’re the so-called “stronger sex”, to pack down their feelings, hide bad experiences, and they end up totally breaking down in their thirties or forties. So Anita’s choice of word, “listen and believe women”, pissed me off, because it’s drawing on the idea that we women are natural victims. Pardon the vulgarity, but fuck that. That’s rape culture. That’s perpetuating the idea that women have something unique and more terrible to be afraid of than men.

 

So for some reason criticizing the legal system is irrelevant because "at least it exists," and pointing out the actual fact that women face rape much more frequently then men is stereotyping, while suggesting that all men are emotionally insecure timebombs is a fact. Logic!

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1.) Women have very little in the way of support systems to access when something terrible happens to us, especially marginalized women like trans or WoC. 

2.) Men being hurt is usually the product of patriarchy and it would follow naturally that they would ALSO want to deconstruct patriarchy and yet many don't, so when "feminists" bring this up, I know where their actual loyalties sit.

3.) It's not the idea that women are natural victims, it's that we are factually victims, with actual statistics to prove it, and this obscures the fact that most often, men are the aggressors. It's a smoke shroud. 

4.) Rape culture is actually the idea that our societal values and promotes a lack of consent towards EVERYONE, not just women, but everyone, hence why male rape victims aren't believed and things like compulsory sexuality (which is a part of patriarchy that hurts men) exist.

 

Basically factual feminist sounds like "Women who support MRA values" and not actually feminism at all.

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I can't say I'm terribly versed in that side of nerd culture, so the name Zak S didn't ring any bells. Although, after that recent post I've seen several people I follow on Twitter share bad experiences, and a short search leads me to these three sites, which I have no intention of getting into myself. I can understand not wanting to condemn somebody based on what you heard on the grapevine, since that could be abused by groups such as GG for social engineering, but I think it's also important to remember that asking for official proof can play into really shitty power dynamics. Often the people who are in a position to look into such allegations happen to be men who happen to have known the alleged harasser for a long time and happen to end up giving the matter no more attention than a curt "I couldn't imagine him doing that kind of thing, he's a good guy."

 

I've read Playing D&D with Porn Stars on and off for years (it is, no joke, some of the best TTRPG writing I've ever come across and his Vornheim book has survived a couple of rpg book culls) and I've dug into these dust ups whenever I notice them happen. I have done the tinniest bit of my own Googling, and came across and looked into 2 of those 3 links. That's what led to me to think that a majority of the charges against him are either based on his reactions to other people's attacks on him or his girl friend, people simply repeating "I heard he was an asshole", or bath faith interpretations of things he's said. The evidence in that Problematic Table Top blog is less than conclusive. A common trend is someone going "he's a *-ist piece of shit", he appearing like Beetljuice saying "literally when ever?", the someone goin "Everyone knows it and now you're harassing me", Zak goes "fuck you" and then that someone submits a bunch of screen shots to a blog. 

 

He's not a perfect victim: he doesn't deal with legit criticism well at all, and has a habit of lumping the trolls and the well meaning into the same cannon and firing them all into the sun.

 

I don't want to be the white man questioning the policy of listening to and believing people who report abuse, but watching this stuff repeatedly come up in real time makes me think the GG tactic of co-opting SJ language to beat someone they don't like over the head is as much on display in this case as his own bad behaviour.

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Basically factual feminist sounds like "Women who support MRA values" and not actually feminism at all.

 

Oh yeah, massive air quotes around both factual and feminist there. I'm all for talking about toxic masculinity, but people who think it shows that men are the real victims here and somehow manage to ignore the part they have in creating and maintaining that shit, or how they throw their toxicity at women, definitely shouldn't be the ones doing it.

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Yeah, that's what frustrates me so much about MRA garbage is that it flat out ignores feminists work on defining and supporting men hurt by toxic masculinity, rape culture, and squarely blames women for...things that they've benefited from and supported for a very long time. Oh, okay.

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For sure. MRA is something of a misnomer there, since those garbage golems so clearly don't give a damn about the rights or well-being of a lot of men - men of color, trans men, etc - and will gladly throw them under the bus to keep pummeling feminists... for pointing out how good they have it in life if feminists are their biggest problem.

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Last time I tried to read something by Liana K she was still referring to the 8chan fiasco as "anime child porn" so I just closed it out of frustration. If she's that misinformed about it when the original article was so fucking specific, then her opinion is worth dick squat to me.

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That's what led to me to think that a majority of the charges against him are either based on his reactions to other people's attacks on him or his girl friend, people simply repeating "I heard he was an asshole", or bath faith interpretations of things he's said. The evidence in that Problematic Table Top blog is less than conclusive. A common trend is someone going "he's a *-ist piece of shit", he appearing like Beetljuice saying "literally when ever?", the someone goin "Everyone knows it and now you're harassing me", Zak goes "fuck you" and then that someone submits a bunch of screen shots to a blog.

 

No, I gather that is genuinely the problem. He makes out as if he's an ally, but when he makes a mistake (as we are inevitably bound to do) or even if someone disagrees (as social justice is a big tent and there are no right answers for a lot of the questions raised) he gets incredibly defensive whether or not the original criticism was valid. This kind of behaviour is typical for someone who wants brownie points for supporting Women but aren't equipped for women to have opinions that don't show appropriate deference. Vivek Wadhwa is the same kind of person in the tech world.

 

It's basically impossible to tell whether or not these people are genuine shitheels but their inability to take criticism doesn't speak well to their ability to listen and be inclusive, and given people's attention is not unlimited maybe that support can go to someone who can acknowledge when they're unintentionally spreading regressive ideas.

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It's basically impossible to tell whether or not these people are genuine shitheels but their inability to take criticism doesn't speak well to their ability to listen and be inclusive, and given people's attention is not unlimited maybe that support can go to someone who can acknowledge when they're unintentionally spreading regressive ideas.

 

Any one instance of any given sort, or even just a handful of repeated mistakes, is something that you can just raise an eyebrow at and move on. If he's like Wadhwa, then he just makes the same mistake over and over and over and over and over again. At that point, he's a genuine shitheel.

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If he gives up writing amusing and insightful articles about THAC0 in favor of accepting speaking fees for offering condescending advice to women in tech, I'll agree.

Though, when Mandy Morbid (his girl friend) writes stuff like this (nsfw as she's a porn actress, but there wasn't anything nsfw in that link, in the mobile site at least), it gives me pause in writing him off as a one man gamergate.

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If he gives up writing amusing and insightful articles about THAC0 in favor of accepting speaking fees for offering condescending advice to women in tech, I'll agree.

Though, when Mandy Morbid (his girl friend) writes stuff like this (nsfw as she's a porn actress, but there wasn't anything nsfw in that link, in the mobile site at least), it gives me pause in writing him off as a one man gamergate.

 

I've definitely seen the whole "everything a woman says who is associated with Zak is really just her being a puppet for him" thing pop up multiple times, which is always a gross accusation.  And it's one of the things that's made me take the shit thrown his direction with a grain of salt.

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No, I gather that is genuinely the problem. He makes out as if he's an ally, but when he makes a mistake (as we are inevitably bound to do) or even if someone disagrees (as social justice is a big tent and there are no right answers for a lot of the questions raised) he gets incredibly defensive whether or not the original criticism was valid. This kind of behaviour is typical for someone who wants brownie points for supporting Women but aren't equipped for women to have opinions that don't show appropriate deference. Vivek Wadhwa is the same kind of person in the tech world.

 

It's basically impossible to tell whether or not these people are genuine shitheels but their inability to take criticism doesn't speak well to their ability to listen and be inclusive, and given people's attention is not unlimited maybe that support can go to someone who can acknowledge when they're unintentionally spreading regressive ideas.

 

That lines up with what I know. The accusation that I've heard from people I trust, again and again, is that Zak relentlessly attacks people who disagree with him, usually by bragging about his contributions to the "cause" and painting anyone who gets in the way of that as anti-feminist, and that he won't stop until the person who's disagreed with him disappears from the internet or publicly abases themselves in front of him. The only proof I have, besides the statements of people who claim to be victims of his harassment and to whom I try to be supportive because they're victims, is the post for Zak's permanent ban from RPG.net, which has been disputed by his fans for being one mod's grudge or the work of a secret sexist cabal, but still, it's enough for me to try and steer clear of the guy.

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Feminists arguing with porn in the mix: A heady mix of interpersonal beef, complex issues, and personal histories that makes me want to choke on my own puke.

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Calling Zak a "one man gamergate" I think is using unnecessarily loaded language. He's not part of a misogynist pushback ideology like gamergate is. He also doesn't really have that much power over any subculture, even in sex work. I think it was meant to reflect his history of gatekeeping in the DnD community, and generally being a petulant manchild about it. He is just a classic case of Clueless White Male Ally who does defend a number of social justice issues, but considers himself immune to failure and continually refuses to listen to marginal groups when called out for being a rubbish ally. Instead he regularly frames all dissidents as anti-sex conservatives, even when being called out by other sex workers.

 

Whatever. Like I said he is relatively benign small fry compared to the problems related to this thread. I didn't mean to go on a tangent and I don't consider it important enough to list each of his transgressions, so people are free to reserve judgment.

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usually by bragging about his contributions to the "cause" and painting anyone who gets in the way of that as anti-feminist

 

From my relatively nonchalant bystander's viewpoint, that's how EVERYONE in these topics look like ;)

 

But I suppose that's inevitable when these people's livelihood are built on words.

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So just as a heads up, Total Crybaby lashed out on Twitter today at Leigh Alexander about how she "started this" (referring to the criticism of video game 'culture' and such). He said something about burning bridges but that he has a helicopter so he doesn't care, which lead to what you can expect. Stuff like this:


 

Total Biscuit's helicopter:

B-4xydkUEAMh4PY.jpg


 

Oh, wait. That's too high brow for Total Biscuit, so: Total Biscuit's Helicopter:

B-4yUOcUIAAEjfQ.png

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I made a dumb joke tweet about TB and apparently the mod of kotakuinaction is searching for tb's name on twitter and rting people. Now I've got a bunch of concern troll gamergaters in my mentions. Rad.

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I know nobody is going to be surprised by TB saying shitty things, but it's honestly kind of amazing how many different flavors of crap he managed to stuff in that little rant.

 

There's the completely disingenuous assertion that Leigh is somehow to blame for this, of course, this time including wildly inappropriate speculation about alcoholism.

 

And there's the mind-boggling "Look at me sitting on my golden throne ruling over this fervently loyal audience, sure is nice eh?" levels of arrogance we've come to expect.

 

But beyond that he also reveals that he holds the incredibly problematic opinion of considering developers his moral and intellectual superiors in every way (like really, your ethical champion here is somebody with that kind of deferential attitude to the thing he's supposed to be critiquing?)

 

And just for a kicker he even manages to suggest that if you're unhappy with the state of something, you should keep your mouth shut, because speaking out makes you a bad person. Does this man even know what the word critic means?

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