"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

[Twig]

UHHHH

 

Funimation dubbed Prison School

 

it's a very sexy anime let's just say

 

there's a certain forum member who might talk about it more in the anime thread if you ask nicely

 

anyway

 

https://vine.co/v/ePY7XLqrrZZ

[Fingus]

That's the one with the hilarious justification that ass is superior to breasts because they are just imitations of a butt?

[Twig]

I dunno I haven't seen it and have no intention of doing so. I am mostly just flabbergasted at this dub.

[Vainamoinen]

So Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian spoke on "cyber violence" at the United Nations yesterday. Ooof, ignore the 80s sci-fi movie title.

http://webtv.un.org/watch/launch-of-the-broadband-working-group-on-gender-report/4506718502001#full-text

(A and Z are speaking in a short segment beginning at around 1:22:30 and ending around the 1:30 mark)

 

It obviously was a rather stressful situation, and I'm impressed with both speakers. Of course, gamergate would love to frame this as a call for more surveillance and censorship. Not much backs this up, really. While Quinn goes out of her way to praise and defend online anonymity, Sarkeesian voices hopes for an internet that punishes wrongdoers by more strongly condemning their actions. Yet if we're to set up guidelines for moral online discourse however, we will have to draw much clearer lines in the sand as to what constitutes abuse and what does not.

 

Personally, I have zero problems calling The Sarkeesian Effect and the Amazing Atheist youtube skit absolutely clear cut harassment. How hate mobs are directed against people (and I've attacked the practice on several sides before) must also be more carefully described and defined; e.g. Eron Gjoni's actions are as obvious as it gets, yet as you well know, I also found John Bain's August 2014 writings to be precisely constructed to achieve the same mobmongering effect.

 

Special kudos and heartfelt thanks go out to both speakers for leaving video games out of the matter, entirely. There's not a single mention of gamers, games or gamergate if I'm not mistaken (Anita briefly speaks of analyzing "media"). It might be their reflex to protect and defend game culture here, a culture they themselves are part of – handled by less skilled (or more vengeful) speakers, games could easily have come into the focus of the debate as a source of 'cyber violence'.

[Apple Cider]

Yeah, I watched most of the proceedings and it was very broadly about media and the internet (several speakers were talking about media images from TV and general technology use) and not about games at all. There was even a few moments of Zoe talking about anonymity as still being really crucial to protecting marginalized people as well. It makes sense because games are really not the only place where women get abuse online. Sure, it might have some of the best organization right now, but it's like how people pretend Gamergate started misogyny online when it's not even close to being the truth. The internet has merely made misogyny that already existed in our society more accessible, weaponized and convenient to enact. 

[Mangela Lansbury]

I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything did an episode addressing hostility to women in online spaces and one of the segments addressed how a law that was passed in the early days of the internet, before anyone really knew how this thing was going to turn out, enables sites to ignore abuse since they're not legally culpable for speech that occurs on their site. I really enjoyed that episode and think it provides a good context for harassment pre-GamerGate, and how things like GamerGate are given spaces to exist. https://toe.prx.org/2014/12/wishful-thinking-the-dislike-club-part-iv/

[Henroid]

Milo Whats-his-ass, the Breitbart guy that's roped GG in for page reads, continues to be goddamn terrible. Observe spin:

 

[Twig]

wow what

[Vainamoinen]

That Yiannopoulos self-harm article (from back in June) is quite dadaistic. It's basically: people should cut themselves again like that girl I dated before I "went gay" because then they would stop stop writing for gawker and stop asking to be addressed in strange pronouns and their interest no longer "metastasise into the self-righteousness of social justice". No, I'm not kidding.

 

Meanwhile, Quinn has almost abandonned her twitter for the shit she gets. Not surprisingly, as entirely oblivious gamergaters universally characterise the UN proceedings as a path to censorship.

[Problem Machine]

Good job, Twitter.

[Henroid]

Meanwhile, Quinn has almost abandonned her twitter for the shit she gets. Not surprisingly, as entirely oblivious gamergaters universally characterise the UN proceedings as a path to censorship.

Actually she's leaning off it for a couple days or so because her (and others) going to the UN Summit on internet harassment triggered a huge wave of - you guessed it - harassment. It's not the harassment, it's the amount of mentions that's making her account damn near unusable for the time being.

[Henroid]

I'm almost hesitant to say this, but Derek Smart is getting involved with the "omg block lists = censorship" thing. What a way to come out of obscurity. Hmm... like Mark Kern.

 

Man. What happens to people when they drop out of the video game making limelight?

[Merus]

Let's be honest here, we've known Derek Smart is a fuckwit for decades. This isn't a new thing.

[pkirkner]

Smart never really had the limelight as a developer. He made his name via usenet flame wars and has been trading on that reputation ever since.

[Vainamoinen]

Smart already posed as a developer "neutral to gamergate" at the Airplay tribunal in August, just two weeks after video game journalists exposed his utter Early Access desaster... another thing that shows professional similarities to Mr. Kern...

[tberton]

Man, that self-harm comment is especially insulting given that Zoe (and many friends of mine involved in social justice causes) have a history of self-harm.

[Henroid]

Man, that self-harm comment is especially insulting given that Zoe (and many friends of mine involved in social justice causes) have a history of self-harm.

That aside it's a roundabout way of saying "kill yourself" without saying the words. Milo is a sick fuck.

[Vainamoinen]

The term "self harm" as used in the failed satire Yiannopoulos links to only denotes cutters, I think.

 

I can't say whether the tweet rather means "go kill yourself" or "lookitmysuperfunnyarticle", because I can't really assess whether the author's stupidity exceeds his malice.

[namman siggins]

Jesus christ, from my coming across of Yiannopoulos, he seemed like a sack a shit. Now with these "self-harm does one good, it builds character," comment, he's moved from a sack of shit to being just a waste of fucking space in this world.

 

I've been in that self-harm headspace, it didn't build character, it didn't do anything good but temporary allow myself respite from the shitty condition I was in. This goes with anyone I've talked to about self-harm. It's not an ends to a mean or a character builder, but a only option allow yourself some control and relief from how fucking shitty your life is. It's also something that can lead to irreversible damage to one's self, outwardly and inward.  

[BadHat]

Derek Smart once again demonstrating he has skin as thin as the design doc for Battlecruiser 3000AD.

 

https://storify.com/QHStone/derek-smart-invents-feud-with-randi-harper

 

Like, jesus christ, it just keeps on going.

[Vainamoinen]

Derek Smart once again demonstrating he has skin as thin as the design doc for Battlecruiser 3000AD.

 

"Hey, Airplay bro journalist with false info from terrorists and sick MRA guy who thinks he can remote control women with his sperm, come on and help me out here!"

Wow. Just wow. And I thought that Kern was the most pathetic sycophant of the lot.

In honor of Drek [sic] Smart's monomolecular skin thickness, I will repost the review link to his game Universal Combat (2004).

http://www.somethingawful.com/game-reviews/completely-libelous-review/1/

 

I do hope that particularly page 2 of that review shows that Smart is all bark, but hardly any bite. Not that he'd hesitate pumping the cents he has left from Early Access into legal fees instead of game development. Line of Defense is fucked anyway. That game is to be put down like a rabid puppy.

[Vasari]

So is this now another Jack Thompson thing where a longtime Video game community punchline is now Gamergate's best friend?

[Vainamoinen]

Fukken... what? When did gamergate adopt Thompson?! I mean, that guy probably cries video game censorship even in his sleep?!
 
 
(okay, I read up on it. "#gamergate doesn't like Jack Thompson but they hate game devs more" probably hits the mark right in the face)

[Vasari]

I mean he showed up in that Anita Sarkeesian documentary, I recall alot of people thinking that his opinions on the whole thing would somehow carry more weight.

[Deadpan]

At some point quite a while ago gators got it in their heads that Sarkeesian is somehow a bigger threat to free speech and free artistic expression than a guy who tried to instate actual laws to ban games. And of course Thompson, being the disbarred has-been that he is will do anything for a little attention. That's the delicious irony of a movement that likes to claim the people they hate are doing things for attention, when their big figureheads are all washed-up nobodies whose only claim to fame is getting in fights with people more successful and more talented than them. Smart, Kern, Milo, Bain, Thompson, take your pick.