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JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

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Without going into her interpretation of the comic itself, the term sealioning itself doesn't seem that problematic to me? The way it's taken on seems to be completely in the original spirit of the comic, to the point where (as far as I know) GGers haven't attempted to co-opt it in the way she suggests but instead champion the term because they find its interpretation of harassment frivolous (as well as every other interpretation of harassment). This has been the header image of kotakuinaction for the past several weeks:

 

5m950sX.jpg

 

In other words, they're owning it because they don't see the problem with hounding people incessantly with their "logical arguments."

 

Two quick things about the comic, though:

 

I get her concern with the substitution of another group of broadly defined people, since "sealion" is a completely arbitrary group, and the original comment in the comic could be taken as baseless bigotry against that group. Lacking context, this could be an unfortunate connotation if one were to take it literally enough, but I think it deserves to be said that the use of "sealions" as the offenders in question is clearly farcical. The fact that it's an entire species of a random animal for which no real political biases exist (at least not in a typical, social sense) is clearly meant to suggest that the group has no existing disadvantages. In other words: GGers, or self-identifying "gamers" who think their culture is under attack by social justice.

 

Second thing: even taking her example of marginalized people behaving this way against someone making bigoted remarks in public, it can still be demonstrative of shitty behaviour (albeit by a less outwardly shitty group with much less shitty grievances). The comic depicts someone making dismissive remarks in "public," but the actual setting is a conversation over a meal between two people. With a minimal amount of context we can assume this is meant to imply a twitter conversation between two friends, which, although public, is not meant to be considered by anyone and everyone that comes across it. So, apply this to a random person saying some bigoted crap on twitter - would that justify hounding them day and night, across any platform you can find them on (I might be wrong but my interpretation of the sealion finding her in her house is meant to imply digging up other accounts or forums to harass people in), when they are clearly unwilling to engage with you? The only context I can imagine this being somewhat excusable is if the person in question was a public figure with a large following, and even then I don't think that would excuse you from basic etiquette, and in any case that's clearly not the scenario the comic is painting.

 

(Okay, I guess I did go into her interpretation of the comic... but I think she's totally entitled to her own and I don't mean to erase a marginalised voice at all by disagreeing.)

 

The only real objection I have is that "sealioning" sounds fucking stupid, but I'm not gonna complain too much. This is the same community that substitutes GG for "garble grunts" or whatever silly thing they think up at the time. Having a bit of levity about these things is important sometimes.

 

Speaking of, here's me stabbing this thing in the face, because... no reason.  >_>

 

duF42Bh.jpg

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I think that my problem with that comic is that it is easy to misunderstand (as I did so initially).

 

I actually thought that this was a dig at Social Justice Warriors in that some one could say they couldn't stand SJWs and then one shows up and asks them to justify that and as a result proves what a pain in the arse they are. At first I was a little offended by it as I felt that this exemplified some discussions I had on facebook.

 

In a way that was useful because it did then make me examine my habits in certain discussions and look at when I might need to back off.

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It's the sealion who is privileged. That's why he can harass people in their homes. Her comic with her face doesn't work at all because her critique is unfounded. She doesn't have the kind of privilege that stops people from being able to make her leave, unlike the sealion.

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It's the sealion who is privileged. That's why he can harass people in their homes. Her comic with her face doesn't work at all because her critique is unfounded. She doesn't have the kind of privilege that stops people from being able to make her leave, unlike the sealion.

 

Yeah, there's that, too. Like ProblemMachine said, it's a comic where the woman is in the wrong if it were to stop at the third panel, but it's a six-panel comic with the last three panels being the sealion invading the woman's home, interrupting her meals, and watching her sleep. If that accurately represents an oppressed person being "polite in its insistence" while "finally standing up for itself," then I am extremely confused and a little uncomfortable, particularly but not just about how oppressed they actually are.

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In the real world, people with disabilities and people of color and women and LGBTQ* are hated because of a racist, sexist, ableist, transphobic, and homophobic society that co-opts its members into perpetrating systemic oppression without accountability or responsibility. In the comic, sealions are hated because they harass people for speaking poorly of them, full stop.

 

That is still a pretty specific read of it though (the comic offers no more introduction to the dislike than a general "Ugh, those people" statement), plus it's not like discrimination only shows up in the shape of that kind of open hatred of people who are different to you in some way, although that sadly also still exists. Generally though, people are conditioned to mask their prejudice by rationalizing it in exactly the same way the person in the comic supports their world view: "Women are too sensitive, you can't even say [sexist remark] without getting in an argument. Getting upset? I guess that proves me right then."

 

 

Yeah, there's that, too. Like ProblemMachine said, it's a comic where the woman is in the wrong if it were to stop at the third panel, but it's a six-panel comic with the last three panels being the sealion invading the woman's home, interrupting her meals, and watching her sleep. If that accurately represents an oppressed person being "polite in its insistence" while "finally standing up for itself," then I am extremely confused and a little uncomfortable, particularly but not just about how oppressed they actually are.

 

Depends. It's already been suggested this is just an analogy of a Twitter conversation happening at the same time, which continues longer than the first two would wish. You can take a literal read of this being a comic about breaking and entering, but I'm personally not inclined to do so. I mean, there's also a talking sealion in this without wanting us to think too closely about that. The way the comic has been taken up anyway, is to describe what it feels like to be constantly but mildly bothered by folk and not what it's like to have your home invaded.

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That is still a pretty specific read of it though (the comic offers no more introduction to the dislike than a general "Ugh, those people" statement), plus it's not like discrimination only shows up in the shape of that kind of open hatred of people who are different to you in some way, although that sadly also still exists. Generally though, people are conditioned to mask their prejudice by rationalizing it in exactly the same way the person in the comic supports their world view: "Women are too sensitive, you can't even say [sexist remark] without getting in an argument. Getting upset? I guess that proves me right then."

 

I agree that it's a specific reading insofar as it confines itself to the specific details contained within the comic itself. If you ignore those details and replace the sealion with a real-life category of person, it seems inevitable that it could be made to represent oppression of that category of person. Like I said before, I agree that that does make it a less-than-perfect metaphor, because there exists the possibility of misinterpretation, but I do not find it a damning criticism of the comic, because it requires ignoring some details, writing off others as farcical, and taking the rest as played dead straight.

 

Again, in the last panel, the male character says, "Told you, dude. Sea lions." That refers directly back to the first panel and the female character's statement of dislike, as well as the second panel and the male character's statement of "Now you've done it." To my eyes, that makes it abundantly clear that the two non-sealion characters dislike sealions specifically for their reputation of relentless and invasive harassment in response to being discussed in a negative light, a reputation that is borne out through the comic. This does not resemble Nina White's characterization of the comic as confronting bigots with fearful politeness at all. Maybe it's the way she wishes she could confront them, which I guess is fine, but it's not the lived experience of me or of anyone I've ever known. Harassment is overwhelmingly a tool of the oppressor, not the oppressed, because the opportunity and ability to harass are mostly products of privilege. If we can't criticize actual harassment of the oppressed because it could also be made to apply to hypothetical harassment of the oppressors... I don't know, I can't finish that sentence. As a personal reaction to the comic, White's reaction is unassailably valid, but I find it really perplexing that she sees herself in the passive-aggressive harassment of the comic, rather than the frustration and exhaustion of its targets.

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I don't think the comic deserved damning, but more examination. On my first read it was pretty ambiguous in its meaning and I was linked to it as being about GamerGate, I just couldn't tell whether the Sealion was a GG person or the humans were GG people ignoring the sealion that represented... ???.

Ultimately I did realise what it was but I think it's unfair to claim the comic is clear and that someone couldn't honestly making the mistake of identifying with the sealion and finding it problematic. It's really not clear and direct, and without ambiguity comes unintended readings that you have to accept and deal with.

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I agree that it's a specific reading insofar as it confines itself to the specific details contained within the comic itself.

 

Well alright then, I'm not asking for anyone to condemn the comic, but I will say that I don't feel like this interpretation is taken as equally valid when you suggest it's based on misreading or ignoring what is actually contained in there. Like, we're weighing things differently for sure, but I don't think it's that outrageous to see certain elements of its staging as exaggerated when you're dealing with the setting of a Victorian city beset by marine mammals, or that I'm ignoring things when I tell you that the statements you see as entirely self-referential are also quite similar to what people get to hear for taking up certain causes. I'm not going to speak for her, but the reason I can see myself in that comic isn't because "Hey, I'm annoying like that!" but because I recognize the attitude of the other two as something I've had to deal with when raising certain issues. "You just can't talk to these people" is both something you might end up sighing after particularly exhausting arguments, but also something that will frequently be said about you for engaging people about shitty behaviour. I imagine you've seen that kind of "Can you believe those SJWs?" talk around.

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I used to be sympathetic to Gamergate-r a bit early on because first, I failed to see how its origins were tied in to Zoey Quinn harassment and secondly they seem to get lot of blanket hate (if you utter that word, you are instantly the worst kind of scum of the world type of stuff, also the chain articles about how gamers are dead didn't endear me much).  I mean I still don't approve of blanket hating, but days go by, weeks go by, months go by and all I see out of GG is the accusation that they are harassing people followed by GG user replying how it wasn't them...  I mean I guess 4chan or whatever did this one charity thing?  Still seem to pale in comparison to completely directionless shitstorm the hashtag has caused.  And lot of the times I was in agreement with the very frontal side of their chain of thought (reviewer using patreon to support the dev of games they are reviewing, for example, seems to be a clear conflict of interest to me) but then those are so often followed by some crazy ass fringe logic (like following with that patreon example, then some would suggest hacking bank acc to see how clean they are...).  Like I think simple disclosure of such support is plenty enough so that audience can make up their mind, and asking (and I mean asking, not swatting or some other BS) is sufficient but man too many of those GG users were asking for blood for every little thing.

 

And ultimately, if you really want to talk about possible corruption, you could do so without the hashtag anyway (probably way more effectively too).  So those who still use it, idk what other reason they could have for it?  But perhaps I'm missing something cause I dislike hashtags outside of scope of comedic reliefs to begin with.

 

BTW I actually like what TB says most of the times (minus specifics to GG hashtags because I think the hashtag is just dumb), I assume I'm of the minority in regard to this specific opinion here?

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BTW I actually like what TB says most of the times (minus specifics to GG hashtags because I think the hashtag is just dumb), I assume I'm of the minority in regard to this specific opinion here?

 

Things Thumbs took issue with TB saying (probably not all of it, my memory isn't that good) -

  • He said that Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, and other women should not take death threat seriously because, I guess, he's been threatened too and he's learned from that experience (I’m also not going to claim [the threats] were credible, because, well, to put it bluntly, Anita is still breathing."
  • He believes that shutting down comments sections on news or opinion posts is censorship.
  • He believes that ethics amounts to investigating statements from Zoe Quinn and Nathan Grayson, because they and their editors cannot be trusted (Grayson says there was no relationship/article overlap, Totilo believes him, TB says that's not good enough)
  • He believes that a mailing list between journalists is ultimate proof of systemic corruption
  • He said that misogyny is not a problem in the gaming industry
  • He believes that he's both a journalist and not a journalist

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Don't forget when he said white privilege isn't a real thing because some white people in Ireland are looked down or whatever.

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Things Thumbs took issue with TB saying (probably not all of it, my memory isn't that good) -

  • He said that Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, and other women should not take death threat seriously because, I guess, he's been threatened too and he's learned from that experience (I’m also not going to claim [the threats] were credible, because, well, to put it bluntly, Anita is still breathing."
  • He believes that shutting down comments sections on news or opinion posts is censorship.
  • He believes that ethics amounts to investigating statements from Zoe Quinn and Nathan Grayson, because they and their editors cannot be trusted (Grayson says there was no relationship/article overlap, Totilo believes him, TB says that's not good enough)
  • He believes that a mailing list between journalists is ultimate proof of systemic corruption
  • He said that misogyny is not a problem in the gaming industry
  • He believes that he's both a journalist and not a journalist

 

1.  Yeah I remember that and that was dumb of him to say that for sure.

 

2.  I disagree with that if he said it but when did he say that?

 

3.  Yeah I recall that interview vaguely and that bit bothered me because not good enough then what does he want to follow it up with?

 

4.  Again, dumb if said, but when is there quote in context?

 

5.  I know he said exact opposite of that few times so is there a quote on this that's also in context?

 

6.  Yeah I think the distinction he's trying to make for himself is bit whacky cause while he considers himself to be a pundit I think his behavior is more journalistic than other people who are criticized as journalist (both by others and himself).

 

Apologies for asking for specifics but I've seen lot of out of context quotes being used against people too often recently.

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For all I know, TB has some interesting things to say about something. But there are certain opinions a person can have which will mostly make me ignore everything else they say. TB has proven time and time again that he has earned a spot on the ignore list.

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Yeah, I used to watch him but I feel loath to actually watch his stuff knowing that he's waded this far into blood and carried on through.

I think he has some opinions of value but I wont any more until he does a complete 180 on GamerGate and acknowledges it for what it is instead of trying to keep it going.

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TB has some interesting things to say about consumer protection, coming from the UK where consumer protection actually exists. I enjoyed listening to his podcasts, but then as he started to slide more and more in GG I finally had to delete him from my feed. It's not even about taking a stand for me, I just don't want to listen to that sort of discussion in my off-time. I still think he makes a lot of funny videos.

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2.  I disagree with that if he said it but when did he say that?

 

4.  Again, dumb if said, but when is there quote in context?

 

5.  I know he said exact opposite of that few times so is there a quote on this that's also in context?

 

Apologies for asking for specifics but I've seen lot of out of context quotes being used against people too often recently.

 

2. Due to how Twitter only really lets you see Tweets from the last couple months, some of this conversations aren't possible for me to retrieve. That being said, TB attributed a lot of the "controversy" and "misinformation" re: Zoe Quinn to how news sites shut down comments on related posts. I honestly can't recall if he used the exact word censorship, but I do think that it was harmful for him to have essentially prioritized the ravings of the comments sections over the voices of Quinn/Grayson/Totilo/whoever else wrote about this stuff.

 

4. This is my inference based on his YouTube conversation with Stephen Totilo. I'd listen to it again to find proof for you, except that listening to him incessantly paw at Totilo for 1.5 hours is barely preferable to pulling out my own fingernails. Essentially, he questioned Totilo on every single major complaint that GGers had with regards to GameJournoPros as though they were all worthwhile. My only conclusion is that he honestly believes that reviewers asking each other how best to cover a news topic or whatever is actually contributing to some greater corruption.

 

5. AOThYAK.png

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He believes that he's both a journalist and not a journalist

 

That point probably isn't the worst of his crimes, but it definitely captures how inept GG and its de-facto figureheads are when it comes to actually handling ethical journalism. Their stance is essentially "How can we ever trust you to not be corrupt when there aren't explicit, formalized rules for every little thing you do" but then that incessant demand for rules apparently leaves them dependent on explicit guidelines for any moral or ethical decision they make.

 

So when TB ended up putting a game he had previously done a paid promotion for on his Steam curation list and later removed it when people complained, his defense was basically how was he to know that was not a good idea, the platform is so new and there's no established rules there yet. Meanwhile any reasonable person could have determined within themselves that this is a potentially misleading use of their platform and that they shouldn't do that.

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Also to chime in as someone who watched his old videos, I could believe that TB thought that was harmless and didn't believe that he's biased in recommending the game.

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TB was also instrumental in making GamerGate a Thing, using his platform to spread a lot of the rumors about Zoe Quinn and Nathan Grayson early on in a way that was irresponsible. In general, he seems to take a lot of pride in the reach he has without being willing to take any responsibility for using it.

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Also to chime in as someone who watched his old videos, I could believe that TB thought that was harmless and didn't believe that he's biased in recommending the game.

 

Possibly, and I don't even think it was that bad, if made slightly worse by there being no room to disclose such things in those short blurbs then (now?). Doesn't look particularly well if you're currently giving everybody else hell for not disclosing various made up things though.

 

 

TB was also instrumental in making GamerGate a Thing, using his platform to spread a lot of the rumors about Zoe Quinn and Nathan Grayson early on in a way that was irresponsible. In general, he seems to take a lot of pride in the reach he has without being willing to take any responsibility for using it.

 

Definitely that in regard to him getting mad at a charity stream for not being grateful for his help while denying that he brought shitty people to them.

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5. AOThYAK.png

 

I'm having trouble equating that as "misogyny is not a problem in gaming"

 

Certainly non majority can suffer from real problems or cause them.

 

As for other two stuff, although that isn't my own interpretation, I can see how one could see those as such.

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I'm having trouble equating that as "misogyny is not a problem in gaming"

 

Certainly non majority can suffer from real problems or cause them.

 

As for other two stuff, although that isn't my own interpretation, I can see how one could see those as such.

 

Even if the majority doesn't say or do something specifically misogynistic, if they ignore or enable misogynistic behavior from others, then the majority has a misogyny problem.  His tweet was the kind of logic that people try and use to excuse the majority for having any responsibility for the culture that they dominate. 

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I used to like TB, but lately he seems to be infatuated with his persona.  For a guy who claims to be all about facts to basically use the "I haven't seen it, therefore I can't imagine it" argument just sucks.  I can't remember if it was here but a while ago I saw a tweet from Steven Colbert that said something to the effect of "it's cold out, so global warming isn't real.  Also, I just ate so world hunger is over!".

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