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JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

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So is websites that are on their way out propping up gamergate a thing now? The common thread here seems to be support for GG tends to come out of places who would be the farthest thing from anyone's thoughts otherwise.

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It's obviously not on the level of reliving trauma, but it is weird just how emotional GG dillweeds get while mocking other people for not being able to handle "getting their feelings hurt". They're pushing for a world in which they'll be exposed to plenty of Video game titty, but not a single uncomfortable thought or idea, yet somehow it's SJWs who just can't take any disagreement.

 

So yeah, similar to what Bjorn is saying, I think people see safe space as a bad word cause they don't realize they've had access to them all their lives.

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Then again, direct2drive will experience about the same thing AMD did...

 

What's this in reference to? What did AMD experience?

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I thought it was Intel that spoke out of ignorance real early on and later apologized for their mistake. EDIT: Oh, IIRC they took their ads off of Gamasutra due to mass emails or something from GG.

 

Maybe AMD did some shit too and I never heard of it.

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I remember the Intel thing. That led to a women in tech initiative of some kind (or at least a women in tech PR campaign, I didn't really look into it), so that's at least surface-level cool of them.

 

I'm guessing Vainamoinen meant to say Intel but please tell me if I'm wrong!

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I'm guessing Vainamoinen meant to say Intel but please tell me if I'm wrong!

 

No, I unfortunately meant to say AMD. But I'm kind of happy that no one even remembers that misstep.

 

Six months ago AMD released marketing material for the R9 300 series using the tagline "You are not dead" (which was maybe, maybe not a planned allusion to the "gamers are dead" strawman). Roy Taylor, Corporate Vice President Alliances at AMD, in June retweeted a post with that advert, the gamergate tag and the text "AMD knows what's up" from a suppy. That was basically the same kind of "wink wink we're on your side" that we're seeing today as a marketing strategy from some retailers, distributors and developers on the downslope of their success. Thankfully, the world gave a shit when that AMD thing happened, but indeed it did happen. :mellow:

 

Couldn't be more content with Intel! Heck, I guess their donations to feministfrequency have given them a full real team and has allowed Anita to plan several new entire series in addition to just TvW. Makes my heart sing when I see these old "what is gamergate" GG propaganda videos that still advertise Intel. :P

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Oh COME ON. Now Dina's tweets are protected. I liked those! What the hell did these motherfuckers do this time. I'm NOT registering with twitter, ever. :angry:

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America's Man Caves are under assault

 

This is basically the premise of every Onion editorial cartoon ever.

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Wait, is there such a thing as a white man trigger? If there is, I don't mean to downplay it but the thought of it makes me giggle.

 

Star Wars spoilers.

 

Being glib aside, it's a pretty long standing history of the trolls and goons of the internet thinking having emotions is weak and laughable, and so the idea of making fun of something that indicates that someone might be having a full PTSD meltdown is apparently top-shelf comedy.

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On top of the internet making fun of PTSD, it makes fun of simply giving a damn. The internet has a storied history of making fun of people for just caring -- memes like "u mad, bro?" are basically making fun of people for giving a shit about a certain topic.

 

White man triggers are abundant, and they're also shitty.

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memes like "u mad, bro?" are basically making fun of people for giving a shit about a certain topic.

 

Not quite, in my opinion. While I strongly dislike the "U mad bro" meme, it doesn't make fun of people who care, it makes fun of people outraged. Outrage, however, is one of the core things on the internet that needs to be carefully assessed on whatever side. There's just too damn much of it, and for so pitiful reasons. :mellow:

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It seems that everyone here is content with the explanation "GG is an organization of evil trolls who have set out to maximize the amount of trolling in the world and enjoy the misery of innocents", but no matter how shitty GG is, cartoon villains don't exist in real life. If you want to gain actual insight into their motivations, you need to approach things in less impassioned way, free of demonization. It's difficult, because Gaters act like demons, but they're all actual human beings who have motivations and beliefs. Dismissing them as unreachable lunatics won't accomplish anything.

 

A few months ago I saw a Twitter conversation in which someone sat down and tried to have a serious one-on-one discussion with a Gater, and it became apparent the Gater sincerely believed that those evil feminists are coming to take away our videogаmes. After several hours of empathetic discussion (not "here's why you're wrong" internet debate), the Gater changed their mind and admitted they had been wrong. You can't have that kind of conversation with someone you've labeled as a "for the lulz" troll, which is why I find their demonization so frustrating.

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That's the thing; when GG started, I engaged a handful of them as one-on-one as possible through Twitter, and all of them would lose their bark and esteem over the supposed issues. They were people on the defense about being made fun of or branded as bad people because they like video games.

 

Which is the irony of all this because the point of things like Leigh Alexander's " 'Gamers' is dead" stuff was that the label is toxic, but love and enjoyment for video games can still exist without it.

 

Some of those people are still trapped thinking that GG is something else that it isn't. I feel bad for them. All they need is affirmation that nobody is saying enjoying video games is bad.

 

However, the remaining bulk of people associating with GG, especially the prominent names, are delusional MRA fuckwads that need therapy because their is more going on in their head.

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I don't think GG people are lunatics. I'm mentally ill - I know the difference between irrationality and people who are slowly indoctrinated with bigoted beliefs over time. A lot of gators are swept up by way more persuasive people that women are coming for their video games or are people who generally don't think about what their actions are doing to others because it's people on the internet and thus not real. But educating people gets really tiring and takes hours out of my day. Even just playing around with guys who are coming straight from KiA because someone linked my tweets there took an hour out of my day just to run circles around them asking them honest questions about how they feel (therapist engagement-type language) and frankly, that's not my job. 

 

It sucks but I actually don't want to spend hours of my life trying to get these people to realize that they are probably into this because there's something more upsetting and uncomfortable in their lives making them act like this on the internet because they feel a lack of control in their day to day.

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It seems that everyone here is content with the explanation "GG is an organization of evil trolls who have set out to maximize the amount of trolling in the world and enjoy the misery of innocents", but no matter how shitty GG is, cartoon villains don't exist in real life.

 

First of all, yes, cartoon villains occasionally do exist in real life. Especially on the racist spectrum of villainy. :mellow:

 

Second, obviously, gamergate supporters come with different sets of ideas, and trolling is just one of the employed methods by certain activists. Unfortunately, the ludicrous belief in what is a literal cartoon villain, "the SJW", characterizes a vast percentage of supporters.

 

I've had no chance to have a serious one-on-one discussion with a gamergate supporter (though I guess I managed to clarify some points of debate re. feminism for a forumite who had already become disgusted with gamergate by that point). I've entered my fair share of debates in gamergate leaning forums, but for every person willing to engage in an honest debate, half a dozen or more slinged insults and accusations. All that with a breathtaking double standard, as the brutal parallel abuse from the trolls was not acknowledged or challenged by the person willing to engage in debate.

 

I'm still willing to engage in debate. I'm taking humanizing efforts by favoring the term "gamergate supporter" over "gamergater", as that seems to be the term favored by the people. But a real one on one situation, that is hard to come by on the internet, and I do think that a point of entry must exist first. The facade of the movement must have fairly huge cracks already for the person to become interested in debate.

 

Because otherwise, essentially, you're the enemy. The Social Justice Warrior. An enemy concept created entirely in the fascist fashion, molded to mean exactly the opposite of the gamergate supporter. If someone is into that doctrine, how could he ever approach a discussion? And listen long enough to grasp, let's face it, fairly complex concepts of sociology or narratology? :mellow:

 

If you engage an actual troll, of course, argumentation becomes incredibly easy, but impact absolutely impossible. Zoe Quinn has discussed this futility with "Why are you so angry" guy Ian Danskin over twitter when that series came out, but I'm unable to find any links because I'm a total dunce at twitter. ;)

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If you engage an actual troll, of course, argumentation becomes incredibly easy, but impact absolutely impossible. Zoe Quinn has discussed this futility with "Why are you so angry" guy Ian Danskin over twitter when that series came out, but I'm unable to find any links because I'm a total dunce at twitter. ;)

 

This might seem like a small thing, but from what I've seen of anti gamer gaters (assuming that is a thing that exists) and others is that the language they use often poisons their message.  It might not seem like it, but there is a huge difference between asking  "Why are you so angry" and "Where is this anger coming from".  In the former, the person's ego is inexorably linked to the anger, and in the latter ego is removed and can be examined outside of the ego.  Disagreement is certainly exacerbated by the nature of online communication, and the expectation of online conversations with strangers, but this is the most important part.  The person's ego must be removed from the idea, otherwise they will cling to it long past the extent of it's validity because questioning the idea feels like a questioning of their character.  If there is one thing I've noticed about people and the internet, it's that on all sides there is this extreme desire to characterize people who believe in certain ideas as good and others as evil or stupid.  I think it's part of the reason right wing politics are so prevalent, in the US at least, is because even progressive parts of the internet seem to operate on the basis that quality of character either determines, or signifies belief in a particular idea.  Even left wing politics use as their basis a decidedly right wing notion, which is both demonstrably false and actively undermines any attempt at conciliation.  In every contentious argument I've had online, regarding gamergate or anything else, the dividing line between success and failure on my part is almost always whether or not I was able to separate the person from the idea.

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What do you deem as a success though? I've had a lot of perfectly civil discussions with gamergate supporters in the early days on twitter. But I'd say few of them were successful about actually addressing their misplaced anger and beliefs. It takes a long time to actually follow through a full conversation with someone about this stuff. Especially when you're removing the ego and just trying to discuss something openly instead of pushing hard on convincing them they're wrong. In the end it felt like I would pour so much time in to mostly learn more about them without offering them any new insights. So they learn nothing, and I learn nothing new.

 

Maybe I was just bad at it, but I would imagine most people are to be honest. I just feel like it's a big ask to expect people to pour in that much time and respect to an individual in the hope that they learn something about what they're doing.

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Well success for me means I got them to acknowledge the parts of their argument that didn't make sense, or that their anger was misplaced.  Just keep the questions relevant, and discuss them without posing questions that suggest they are the owners of the idea and instead treat them as the vehicle for it.  Then check back with that person in a few days/hours/whatever, and if they're thinking has gone the way you were hoping, or they have at least come to terms with their anger, success!  There won't be a payoff for you personally, and you'll never be thanked or get credit for what you did, which I think is often the determiner of success.  I'm certainly no expert, but from my experience it is far easier and yields better results to attempt to create a situation where the person can come to the idea on their own as opposed to it being given to them.  Don't treat them as though their ideas are ignorant, treat them like you would someone who hasn't been exposed to alternatives.  I can't tell you how many arguments I've had with people, both in person and online, where I challenged one of their ideas, and the next time we had a similar conversation they advanced the very idea I had exposed them to in the first place.

 

There is one example in particular that sticks out in my mind, where my old room mate and I were watching TV.  A commercial came on where a woman was parked on the side of the street, opened her door and another car came by and ripped the door off it's hinge.  He then made some remark about this being because she was a woman, and I just pushed him on the topic.  So female drivers are bad because another driver wasn't paying attention?  In a commercial for an auto repair company?  What if it had been a man? And so on.  Then he would put forward some piece of evidence, for example saying that women are involved in more accidents than men every year, and I pointed out the stat he was referencing didn't say who was responsible, that an "accident" by it's very nature doesn't mean someone was at fault,  if that number was significantly different than the number of accidents involving men, etc.  This went back and forth for a bit, and he ended the conversation confident in his assertion.  Then a few days later a friend of ours got into an actual traffic accident, where a woman happened to be the other driver, and suddenly the guy who had determined women are shit drivers because he watched a commercial was pointing out all the logical inconsistencies I had pointed out a few days previous.  Again, I got no credit for this, but in the end who cares?  Particularly when it comes to games, and the community being so insular, it makes sense why people would desperately hold on to things they see as central to their personality or lifestyle.  I would imagine if you went over all the conversations you've had about this in the past, you've been successful more often than not, but that success just didn't happen in a particular time window.

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We are on the same metric of success. I don't expect thanks or recognition, just hoping that it will have a positive effect on the other person. I did the questioning and offering alternatives approach, but I didn't commit to returning back to the same person to see if it made any difference down the line. The actual conversations didn't give me faith that progress had been made, that's where my assessment came from.

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Star Wars spoilers.

 

You got to be careful with comments like that, I was drinking when I read it and almost spat all over the monitor.

 

I know it has been said a lot but I find it annoying that the gaming community seems to be obsessed in preserving spoilers but spends so much time mocking trigger warnings.

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Because trigger warnings are just for women and cucks who have 'feelings'. Spoiler warnings preserve the pure artistic intent in masterpieces like Star Wars VII by the Disney corporation.

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Really liked this long exploration of being a Youtube personality:

 

fusion.net/story/244545/famous-and-broke-on-youtube-instagram-social-media/

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Since there is a conversation about persuasion and teaching, my 2 most memorable 'turning point' or 'light bulb' moments were following.

 

In law school my criminal law professor Francione (who also taught me about veganism (he was both one of the most passionate AND most patient person I have met in person in regards to all things 'social justice')) said this really simple thing... it was like "ok so yeah, men also have issues with rape in prison and violence but even when men fear such things, it's fear that other men will commit them, right?"  It was the simplest framing that just blew my mind.

 

Much more recent is in regard to trigger warning where couple months ago read that analogy that compares trigger warning to spoilers to highlight how stupid it is to be adverse to having trigger warnings.  Heck, it might have been Apple Cider who posted that here?  Or was it on twitter?

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