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JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

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Several things have happened during the last ten days. Of course, Canada's new prime minister speaking out against gamergate, and for feminism, was noted by the movement. I hear they have already dug deep into his past and drawn a lot of conspiracy charts with red arrows in Windows Paint.

 

The other thing that's happened was the cancellation of one panel at SXSW in Austin, five months before the actual panel. Though not gamergate related in principle, it did aim to discuss harassment in games culture. "Too many threats", festival organizers note. It seems we can't talk about harassment because it accumulates too much harassment.

 

Of course, what gamergate supporters do at the time is to count the articles tying gamergate to these threats... in order to prove collusion, of course. I'm a bit sick of this reaction. Gamergate is still the name people have given themselves as a pride bow of ongoing harassing activism, now they're trying to disavow that the direct and visible outgrowth of their hate culture is part and parcel of it. We have a very similar problem in Germany right now, only that it's not ethics in journalism but citizens concerned about fugitives.

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Randi Harper pointed out how long she's been taking shit for being anti-harassment, and the SXSW people were harassed for a week before caving in.

 

Another thing that's happening recently with GG by the way is that some of them are rallying to boycott the new Assassin's Creed, which I guess has Karl Marx in it? And they're all "RAWR COMMUNISM" and some are flipping out about Feminism being Communism or something. I dunno. It's strange to see McCarthyism alive and in action (though thankfully not at a government level).

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Oh right, because feminism is "cultural Marxism" in the lingo of right-wing cranks that read too many conspiracy theories hahaha.

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The new assassin's creed has Karl Marx, and a halfway glowing femfreq review, yup.
 
No idea what and why political extremists are going bonkers over the ideals of communism, really. At my former university, you could buy "Karl Marx University" hoodies for funsies. Then again, the guy was born in that town.
 
I wonder if I can still get one of these.
 
edit: Nope. Still, the tidbit remains.
 

The General Students Committee (German: Allgemeiner Studierendenausschuss, or AStA for short) put forward a proposal to change the university's official name to the Karl Marx University of Trier (German: Karl-Marx-Universität Trier), in honour of perhaps the city's most famous son. Although the proposal was rejected by university authorities, the General Students Committee still typically refers to the university as "Karl-Marx-Universität Trier".

 

And they're still pushing it after all those years. Gotta love those guys.

http://asta-trier.de/

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Yeah, 'cultural Marxism' is a conspiracy theory that Marxists, having largely lost the cultural war, have infiltrated universities and teach kids the tenets of Marxism, which in this conspiracy theory mostly means 'boogeymen'. The point that Marxism largely lost because better theories supplanted it doesn't really feature, but then this is a conspiracy theory that paints anyone who disagrees with them as anti-humanity, and that, I think, is a much, much larger point against it.

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Usually the cultural marxism rants have their roots in white supremacist groups.  Their is a stormfront cultural marxism copy pasta that floats around the internet and shows up on places like reddit a lot.  It almost always is presented in response to either feminism or critical race discussions. 

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Yeah, 'cultural Marxism' is a conspiracy theory that Marxists, having largely lost the cultural war, have infiltrated universities and teach kids the tenets of Marxism, which in this conspiracy theory mostly means 'boogeymen'. The point that Marxism largely lost because better theories supplanted it doesn't really feature, but then this is a conspiracy theory that paints anyone who disagrees with them as anti-humanity, and that, I think, is a much, much larger point against it.

Well put. I often see this accusation thrown around as though to say that any position aside from the status quo is somehow sinister, and I just can't get myself into the head space you need to be in for that to make sense. I remember watching a documentary a while back that made the point that at the core of any conspiracy theory exists an imbalance of power between the victim and perpetrator. The example they used was the holocaust-- on the one hand you have 6 million Jews killed and on the other the perpetrator was the most powerful nation in Europe. In a way that balances the scales and makes it believable. People on the gamergate side of things recognize that the world is changing (or alternative views are becoming more popular), but there isn't some massively powerful force creating that change so it must be a conspiracy. I used to work with a guy who was convinced of these kinds of things, and every piece of evidence that didn't support or contradicted his claims was either evidence of a cover up, or the cover up having been so good that it didn't leave a trail. Every time I see a story about Gamergate I'm reminded of him.

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It's a rumor still at this point, but there's an article that suggests a shockingly positive outcome from all this SXSW stuff.  Basically, the rumor is SXSW will reinstate the panel about online harassment as part of a full-day event regarding the problems of online harassment.  It also somewhat suggests that the Gamergate panel may stay dead.

 

We'll see if that pans out, but it's actually a way better reaction than I thought they would come up with.

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The situation is fairly obscure right now, but as I understand it, there were more than just one panel by gamergate proponents, of which only one was cancelled.

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Buzzfeed and Vox both pulled out unless the Harper panel was reinstated which is cool, though Harper I believe urged them to stay in and speak out. I generally feel pretty positive about this shitty situation. The reaction has seemed unambiguously strong. 

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Yesterday, Breitbart lauched Breitbart Tech, the better to continue profiting off the hatred and rage of #GamerGate, and put Milo Yiannopoulos in charge, of course. When he went to /r/KotakuInAction to announce this event, someone jokingly gave him a pop quiz on basic tech/gamer literacy. Yiannopoulos couldn't answer a single question (he didn't even try) so naturally the entire subreddit hounded him off the internet and doxxed his entire family because he is a fraud among gamers.

 

Just kidding! They patiently explained all the answers to the questions of the quiz, as well as the significance of each to tech and gamer subculture as a whole, and thanked him for agreeing to be their advocate even though he's not very familiar with games or gamers. The hypocrisy is to be expected, but it's losing some of its charm for me.

 

http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2015/10/28/gamergaters-applaud-hiring-of-fake-gamer-as-breitbart-tech-editor/

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Also, someone in the comments of the We Hunted the Mammoth post pointed out that Breitbart is making the same mistake that Roosh Valizadeh made in trying to monetize #GamerGate through a dedicated website: #GamerGate is small at ten thousand members, highly informed about its interests, entitled to the point of hostility, and very easily upset about any perceived slight. That makes them almost impossible to exploit them over the long term for pageviews on clickbait content, the very business model that Breitbart trades in. They're basically setting themselves up to fail in the most obvious way possible.

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Also, someone in the comments of the We Hunted the Mammoth post pointed out that Breitbart is making the same mistake that Roosh Valizadeh made in trying to monetize #GamerGate through a dedicated website: #GamerGate is small at ten thousand members, highly informed about its interests, entitled to the point of hostility, and very easily upset about any perceived slight. That makes them almost impossible to exploit them over the long term for pageviews on clickbait content, the very business model that Breitbart trades in. They're basically setting themselves up to fail in the most obvious way possible.

 

Unfortunately, reaxxion didn't 'fail', and Douche didn't make a financial mistake, I think. He created the site when the mob centered on this particular hashtag, and when the mob turned their attention away, Douche closed the site down. I don't think there are losses involved here. Of course, if reaxxion really was a success for some time, the concept can not be copied today, yet I don't think that's what Breitbart is doing.

 

Today, gamergate is a fairly unpopular label. It justly stands for the harassment that was its key founding principle. So Breitbart doesn't focus on gamergate or game culture. They focus on tech culture.

 

Content wise, there's no difference of course. It's the same far far far US political right "the SJW is taking [insert crap of your choice here] away from us" whining that reaxxion did for months. Only now it's directed at a larger audience than just gamergate.

 

And that, as much as it pains me to say, could work out financially.

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Remember that piece of excrement who used leaked patreon data to threaten Randi Harper's supporters?

He is right now trying to establish contact to SXSW PR in order to spam that lady with Yiannopoulos "research" as well.

 

Or rather with accusations that even Yiannopoulos described as being without evidence.

You guys? You need harassment laws. Proper harassment laws. 'Cause that is exactly it, and lawyers who do that need to be disbarred.

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Leigh Alexander, writing for Wired, has misgivings about the expanded SXSW programming.

 

Is it serving the people who need it, or is it serving the SXSW brand?

 

I've been having complicated thoughts about this since yesterday, and can't coherently get together what I'd like to say.  But I do want to say that this did put a new spin on and kinda damper my initial enthusiasm to the SXSW announcenent.  I actually just erased a big post where I was writing something that disagreed to an extent and, in writing the thing out, talked myself a little more into what Leigh Alexander wrote.  That's a good piece.

 

I also want to post that Slate has a piece from Caroline Sinders, one of the panelists on the cancelled Level Up panel, talking about her experience with talking to SXSW staff as the panel selection process was ongoing. She makes a particularly good point I hadn't thought about regarding the importance of having SXSW-provided moderators for the panel.

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SXSW has announced that the full-day anti-harassment thing is happening. However, they also announced that the Gamergate panel is back on and part of the all-day event. Which seems like a real bad idea, like holding an event on cancer prevention and awareness and then giving the tobacco companies a spot to hawk their products during it.

They're not part of the solution, they're part of the problem.

EDIT: Also, Randi Harper is on Twitter saying that the anti-harassment panel isn't confirmed for this thing because of safety concerns over the inclusion of the GG panel.

I'm being more and more convinced by that Leigh Alexander article.

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SXSW is just... I don't even know what to say. This isn't a debate class thing, this is abused people wanting to speak about the abuse, but the abuser is being given time for... god knows what reason. This isn't in the realm of "alleged" abuse either. It's right fucking there and many Goobergate members proudly wear that badge.

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Wait, I was only slightly paying attention to this.  The "gamergate" panel is not a panel discussing gg, but is actually a panel composed of people representing gg?  I assumed it had to be the former not the latter.

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Wait, I was only slightly paying attention to this. The "gamergate" panel is not a panel discussing gg, but is actually a panel composed of people representing gg? I assumed it had to be the former not the latter.

It's a panel comprised of Gamergaters. And SXSW decided that it should be hosted inside of an anti-harassment summit. For what reason, who fucking knows.

Actually, sadly, the reason why is because they still haven't gotten it through their thick skulls that this isn't two sides having a debate but one party abusing another group who wants nothing to do with the first set.

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Comprised of Gamergaters and was planned out on Kotaku in Action, and somehow fasttracked into SXSW. I think the festival is excited at the prospect of profiting off the "debate" and controversy in some sort of way that makes sense if you think about how tech people adhere to the idea of real meritocracy even though it's far from reality. 

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There is also the fact that the gamergate panel is also made up of someone from this "Open Gaming Society" thing which no one had ever heard of before this. But I'm sure they aren't trying to get publicity out of this or anything...

 

Speaking of things no one had ever heard of, I just checked and the gamergate board on 8chan is down to the 15th most popular board there. I think it says a lot about how many people are still going on about this when it isn't very active even at a site basically no one had ever heard of before gamergate,

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