"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

[Gormongous]

Jesse Singal wrote a pretty standard takedown of gamergate for The Boston Globe, and got called out on it, with many people saying "POORLY RESEARCHED, GO TO KOTAKU IN ACTION TO SEE THE TRUE GAMER GATE"

So he did. And then he wrote a comment there about it. And it's great.

That thread begins excellent, with Singal's comment putting up a high bar, and then devolves rapidly into angry talking points from people who only read the first couple paragraphs of the thread. Why is it that every time someone gives the straight dope about the experience of being a journalist -- with its poor pay, tight deadlines, and many moral gray areas -- brigades of commenters come out to clutch pearls and cry yellow journalism, as if everything they know about the profession comes from All the President's Men? It isn't just #GamerGate, but it's bad there in particular.

Also, I made the mistake of going too far down the page and had to stomach people protesting about being called "anti-feminist" when they're really "anti-SJW." As they say:

You're assuming people call them SJWs because they "fight for social justice" when the actual problem with SJWs is their dishonest, manipulative behavior and willingness to throw women and minorities under the bus whenever they stand to gain. They're dangerous people, pure and simple.

I have been all over the spectrum of feminist belief in my life, from somewhat anti-feminist as a freshman in high school to a staunch third-wave feminist now in my late twenties. Even when I hated the movement because I was jealous of women and the attention they got, I never met a single person who fits this person's description of a "social justice warrior." Quite frankly, and I know this is anecdotal, but I do not believe they exist. I believe they are a boogeyman invented by and traded between insecure misogynists who do not want to accept that their misogyny makes them anti-feminist or even anti-women. I believe this because those whom I did meet were many people whose chosen identities and personas I ignored because I had more pejorative words that I thought fit their behavior better, but in hindsight what invariably was happening was me not understanding why someone wouldn't be happy with or complicit in the way I saw the world in general and them in particular.

I can't help but feel that people who talk like the person I quoted are the same as I was. I mean, he's obviously implying that feminists should never disagree with each other or any other woman, else they're a traitor to their movement, right? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the true feminists are ones that don't challenge his own beliefs. Just "people," he calls them in his post. He makes a distinction between SJWs and people.

[Flynn]

So in a bizarre twist, the lawyer trying to get the boxing match with the Gawker blogger who tweeted 'nerds should be bullied' went from hero fighting against bullies to threatening to doxx Anita Sarkesian the next day.  

 

https://storify.com/x_glitch/when-the-gamergate-mob-targeted-anil-dash-for-no-r

[Bjorn]

Jesse Singal wrote a pretty standard takedown of gamergate for The Boston Globe, and got called out on it, with many people saying "POORLY RESEARCHED, GO TO KOTAKU IN ACTION TO SEE THE TRUE GAMER GATE" 

 

So he did. And then he wrote a comment there about it. And it's great. 

 

That reply to KiA is incredible. 

 

 

He makes a distinction between SJWs and people.

 

I've been thinking about the process of dehumanizing someone, and the role that plays in all this.  They use SJW essentially as a slur, much in the same way we use gater.   I haven't read much on the process of dehumanizing, so I went looking tonight and came across this essay (plus some other stuff, but that particular piece really sums it up well).  It's pretty easy to see the dehumanizing process going on (emphasis mine):

 

However, for individuals viewed as outside the scope of morality and justice, "the concepts of deserving basic needs and fair treatment do not apply and can seem irrelevant."[2] Any harm that befalls such individuals seems warranted, and perhaps even morally justified. Those excluded from the scope of morality are typically perceived as psychologically distant, expendable, and deserving of treatment that would not be acceptable for those included in one's moral community. Common criteria for exclusion include ideology, skin color, and cognitive capacity. We typically dehumanize those whom we perceive as a threat to our well-being or values.[3]

 

I'm sure there's a fascinating breakdown that could be done in regards to #gamergate and how it uses dehumanization throughout the course of the campaign.  But the things that got me really thinking about it is the rise of LW (which is noted in that reddit reply Rubix linked).  This first time I saw this, it really through me for a loop, as my only association with LW is Letter Writer (often used in comments sections of romance advice columns...one of my secret shameful loves).  If you haven't encountered it, many in #gamergate have taken to using the term Literally Who to refer to Quinn, Sarkeesian and Wu.  I'm not entirely sure how that started, and don't particularly want to go down the rabbit hole to figure it out.  But it intentionally conflates all three women, making it easy to confuse which you're talking about and delivering the message that they're all really the same.  Opportunistic, dangerous, lying women.  You don't even need to know their names.  Like it matters, they're practically interchangeable.  They're not individuals, they are a symbol.  A symbol of everything you hate and fear.

 

Deindividuation facilitates dehumanization as well. This is the psychological process whereby a person is seen as a member of a category or group rather than as an individual. Because people who are deindividuated seem less than fully human, they are viewed as less protected by social norms against aggression than those who are individuated.[8] It then becomes easier to rationalize contentious moves or severe actions taken against one's opponents.

 

My final thought on this is I'm going to try and stop using gater as a noun.  While less severe than the language that gamergate supporters have used, I still feel like it's a step on the path to dehumanizing them.  And as wrong as I believe they are, and as dangerous as I think some of them are, they're still human. 

[Merus]

Yeah, that's a great point; dehumanisation leads a lot of places and none of them are good. Those opposed to Gamergate don't have dehumanising nicknames for specific people in the movement, but we object to Gamergate, not to the people separate from the horrid things they believe.

[Nachimir]

Naming something doesn't inherently dehumanise. There's a distinction between that and hurling neologisms based around "nerd", as far as I've seen "gater" isn't a part of what GG has picked up to define bullying, which is significant given their hypersensitivity about bullying*; and discussion involving the term doesn't tend to be hysterical, paranoid or savage.

 

Early on the discussion went through a few insulting terms, mainly misogynerd, and a lot of people used them in anger and felt uncomfortable with it. I think people settled on gater because it managed to escape bullying language and a lot of unflattering connotations.

 

 

* Edit: It struck me during my commute that this is a really poor choice of words that could be seen to condone bullying. I meant their tendency to construe almost anything negative as bullying, and that doing this is a significant part of their social identity.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Just for context, I believe that "Literally Who" was how they started referring to Quinn when people said that GamerGate was more about her personal life than ethics. They gave her that nickname to highlight how unimportant and unknown she was... while still continuing to discuss her since she is so key to GG.

[Cleinhun]

It does seem like if you were committed to not talking about a person you wouldn't need a nickname to obfuscate the fact that you are still talking about them.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I think it was mostly effective for people in GamerGate who just didn't realise it was about harassment.

[Merus]

I feel like avoiding 'gater' isn't much of a problem, as we're still able to refer to Gamergate as a movement without much loss in meaning. It's a minor inconvenience to ensure that we don't run the risk of dehumanising, and I think that's fair enough.

[your name here]

You are dehumanizing the proponents of gamergate whatever you call them. It's a natural consequence of being in opposition with them. You can't just change what terms you use and have it be premptively solved. It's something that you have to actively try not to do. If you see a guy on twitter posting about gamergate, you think "oh look, a gamergater troll. This poster is an ideology made manifest" and not immediately "oh look, a person with their own set of complex emotional experiences who has decided, for reasons yet unknown, to post with a hashtag." Otherizing is just a thing that happens. It makes thinking easier. If you don't want to do it, it takes a lot of effort.

[JonCole]

You are dehumanizing the proponents of gamergate whatever you call them. It's a natural consequence of being in opposition with them. You can't just change what terms you use and have it be premptively solved. It's something that you have to actively try not to do. If you see a guy on twitter posting about gamergate, you think "oh look, a gamergater troll. This poster is an ideology made manifest" and not immediately "oh look, a person with their own set of complex emotional experiences who has decided, for reasons yet unknown, to post with a hashtag." Otherizing is just a thing that happens. It makes thinking easier. If you don't want to do it, it takes a lot of effort.

 

I think what you're saying makes sense in broad strokes, but there are important nuances like -

1. GGers largely and proudly self-identify as GamerGate supporters, so saying that someone is a "GamerGater" seems about as inherently inflammatory as saying someone is a "Republican"
2. More than ever before, words have a greater currency than their meaning because their value is quantified by systems like hashtags. Lots of the reticence to directly reference the term "GamerGate" is because it's so easy to search for it or follow the hashtag. We already know that #GG is used by a relatively small number of people (~10,000) yet the use of the tag has been used so much more that the number of uses of it has become the metric by which the general public considers it to be a BFD.

Of course, neither of these things makes what you're saying any less true but the context matters.

[Jedi425]

I think what you're saying makes sense in broad strokes, but there are important nuances like -

1. GGers largely and proudly self-identify as GamerGate supporters, so saying that someone is a "GamerGater" seems about as inherently inflammatory as saying someone is a "Republican"
2. More than ever before, words have a greater currency than their meaning because their value is quantified by systems like hashtags. Lots of the reticence to directly reference the term "GamerGate" is because it's so easy to search for it or follow the hashtag. We already know that #GG is used by a relatively small number of people (~10,000) yet the use of the tag has been used so much more that the number of uses of it has become the metric by which the general public considers it to be a BFD.

Of course, neither of these things makes what you're saying any less true but the context matters.

 

I feel like this whole thing has really solidified my lack of understanding of the value of Twitter, though that probably has a lot to do with the fact that I've made something like 8 tweets in 6 years. A small group of people can just say #TerribleThing over and over and suddenly we have to pay attention to them?

 

How do you solve the problem of this sort of thing driving good people insane without telling the targets to just never use Twitter? Make every Twitter account a verified account? Enforce stricter controls on account creation? The same ease of anonymity and communication that make it useful for legitimate protests in places like Hong Kong make it equally useful to groups like #GoobleGrape, and I don't think we can fix this without removing a lot of Twitter's usefulness for good.

 

(And ugh, every time I see a hashtag I assume it's an IRC channel. Why couldn't they use ampersands or something?)

[Bjorn]

Ludwig at Joystiq finally wrote something about this fiasco.

[Bjorn]

Naming something doesn't inherently dehumanise. There's a distinction between that and hurling neologisms based around "nerd", as far as I've seen "gater" isn't a part of what GG has picked up to define bullying, which is significant given their hypersensitivity about bullying*; and discussion involving the term doesn't tend to be hysterical, paranoid or savage.

 

Early on the discussion went through a few insulting terms, mainly misogynerd, and a lot of people used them in anger and felt uncomfortable with it. I think people settled on gater because it managed to escape bullying language and a lot of unflattering connotations.

 

 

* Edit: It struck me during my commute that this is a really poor choice of words that could be seen to condone bullying. I meant their tendency to construe almost anything negative as bullying, and that doing this is a significant part of their social identity.

 

I don't disagree with you, but also I know how close I've come to using terms like misogynerd, or allowing myself to go down some paths in thinking or talking about this that would have led me to be disappointed in myself.   And I've allowed gater to stand in for using shittier words at times.  And I often feel frustrated talking about any of this, as there I think there are some interesting elements worth talking about, like neurodiversity, mental health, and sex (both the desire for and lack of). But I recognize that exploring any of those, particularly when I'm feeling angry about some of this, could easily lead me to making blanket or othering statements that would ultimately be about making myself feel better through condemnation rather than actually chasing down an interesting line of thought.

 

And I'm not saying that the rest of you shouldn't use gater, or whatever noun you want to use.  I won't argue with anyone using the word of their choice.  I'm just trying to be cognizant of my own language use and thought processes here to see if I'm falling into the traps that are inherent to angry us vs. them conflicts. 

[Nachimir]

some interesting elements worth talking about, like neurodiversity, mental health, and sex (both the desire for and lack of). But I recognize that exploring any of those, particularly when I'm feeling angry about some of this, could easily lead me to making blanket or othering statements that would ultimately be about making myself feel better through condemnation rather than actually chasing down an interesting line of thought.

 

I very much agree with you on the above; it (and all extremist groups) intersect with some important issues relating to inclusion and alienation. I think gater is very much a personal choice for now (but can see the arguments against othering), but wouldn't be viable as a non-bullying term if they started to smart from it the way they do other words.

 

If we could get to and support excluded people before this kind of movement did, it would eliminate much of the base of support they can go to. It's a very difficult problem though: The kind of people who are followed by the same social problems regardless of which group of people they're with often don't recognise how much those problems emerge from them and their own thought patterns, rather than being the fault of everyone else. Bullying/cliquish/exclusionary antecedents are victimisation, but set up thought patterns that can keep people feeling excluded, angry and desocialised long after those groups have dissolved and moved on. It takes a lot of support over a long period to help someone work through that. I think a lot of people aren't capable of giving that, most workplaces unfortunately aren't places it's likely to happen, and I've not known many social groups who'd manage it well either.

 

Finding ways to solve it and resocialise the excluded would make a massive difference though, because GG, MRA, PUA and assorted other ideological movements basically function by hoovering up young men who feel abused and denied.

[Henroid]

I just saw a tweet that had an amazing point to make about GooberGate.

 

- Anita Sarkeesian is accused of not playing games, either enough or at all, and therefore she's not allowed to have opinions.

- Adam Baldwin flat out said he doesn't play (or maybe it was he plays very, very little), but is allowed to brand and be the face for a movement.

[Synnah]

All of their figureheads (Baldwin, Milo Yiannopoulous, Christina Hoff Sommers, and now Mike Cernovich) have little to no interest in games, and Milo and Cernovich have been quoted as having made fun of gamers in the past. The hypocrisy is staggering!

 

On the subject of Mike Cernovich, Matt Binder did a pretty thorough investigation and takedown of him yesterday. The guy is kind of a massive slime!

[Justin Leego]

You are dehumanizing the proponents of gamergate whatever you call them. It's a natural consequence of being in opposition with them. You can't just change what terms you use and have it be premptively solved. It's something that you have to actively try not to do. If you see a guy on twitter posting about gamergate, you think "oh look, a gamergater troll. This poster is an ideology made manifest" and not immediately "oh look, a person with their own set of complex emotional experiences who has decided, for reasons yet unknown, to post with a hashtag." Otherizing is just a thing that happens. It makes thinking easier. If you don't want to do it, it takes a lot of effort.

That reminds me of two other pieces. First, from Holly Nielsen's The Danger of Labels:

"By labelling, we automatically create sides and in the world of Twitter, we group and judge people on 140 characters. There is no discussion, there is no debate, there’s just shouting and name calling. By giving group names, we don’t just create a clear 'us and them' divide, we also force people to choose and we give perhaps the more unpleasant people a banner that perpetuates these stereotypes. It’s a dangerous cycle."

"There is a reasonable discussion to be had here, but if everything is an attack, it will never happen. If the playing field is made less hostile, then perhaps the reasonable, silent majority will be more inclined to break their silence."

Second, from a challenging read by Oliver Campbell, When A Black Game Journalist Spoke Up On #Gamergate (Damion Schubert from Zen of Design / BioWare Austin had referred to it in a bunch of links that were "crucial reading for those who think that online harassment is a crucially important topic"):

"I can’t speak of everyone’s experience in dealing with members of Gamergate, but the majority of what I have personally seen and experienced is that they are passionate people, they’re incredibly smart and savvy consumers, they are ridiculous levels of inviting and inclusive, and almost anyone that shows up is welcomed with open arms."

"My experience has been pretty much the direct OPPOSITE of the narrative that has been pushed about these people. Of course, there are always going to be extremists and those who engage in sketchy and questionable behavior on any side of a conflict, and I don’t think anyone is going to debate that."

 

...maybe I should go back to lurking the thread

[Gormongous]

Second, from a challenging read by Oliver Campbell, When A Black Game Journalist Spoke Up On #Gamergate (Damion Schubert from Zen of Design / BioWare Austin had referred to it in a bunch of links that were "crucial reading for those who think that online harassment is a crucially important topic"):

"I can’t speak of everyone’s experience in dealing with members of Gamergate, but the majority of what I have personally seen and experienced is that they are passionate people, they’re incredibly smart and savvy consumers, they are ridiculous levels of inviting and inclusive, and almost anyone that shows up is welcomed with open arms."

"My experience has been pretty much the direct OPPOSITE of the narrative that has been pushed about these people. Of course, there are always going to be extremists and those who engage in sketchy and questionable behavior on any side of a conflict, and I don’t think anyone is going to debate that."

 

...maybe I should go back to lurking the thread

 

The issue isn't that they're exclusive. I don't doubt that the vast majority of people who constitute #GamerGate would love it if everyone who plays games declared their support. The problem is if you don't agree with them (or even if you want to remain neutral, whether out of scruples or fear). In those situations, as the storify Flynn posted on the previous page shows, you immediately and irredeemably become the enemy, and that passion that Campbell praises is made into a weapon to punish those people who don't find #GamerGate inviting despite its members' best efforts to be so.

 

None of what he says surprises me. For instance, I can say that almost all fundamentalist Christians I've met in my life are the most loving, caring, and understanding people in the world, so long as you agree with every word they say. I don't see much of a difference here. #GamerGate has shown very little tolerance for heterodoxy unless it's the superficial kind that can be used to score points.

[JonCole]

I feel like I tried to type up a response to Oliver Campbell's article three or four times over but have deleted it that many times. At this particular moment, I don't think I could speak particularly well about race and gender as it pertains to Gamergate. I will say that I'm not particularly surprised that a black male was treated better than any number of females by a patriarchal, conservative movement with prominent figures like Milo who unabashedly shits on sex workers and such. I also don't really know a lot about Campbell, so I wouldn't know if he's the kind of person who might also raise concerns about ethics as it pertains to cultural diversity in gaming outlets. The topic of representation of PoC in gaming press/industry doesn't seem to be of interest to GG, but I don't know if he would challenge them on that and say "well if you care so much about gamers having a voice, why don't PoC have a voice or proportional representation?"

[James]

https://storify.com/x_glitch/when-the-gamergate-mob-targeted-anil-dash-for-no-r

Reading that I got a weird kind of thrill at how nakedly stupid and manipulative it all was, how clearly hypocritical and dishonest; surely this would finally make the true ugly nature of GG clear to all. Then at the end I see that the people of GG all jumped (seemingly) unquestioningly aboard, and that thrill was sadistically crushed. How do you get through to people for whom even that whole farce was not obvious enough?

[tegan]

I don't use twitter, so it was extremely jarring to see that GG somehow even got on the nerves of Kate Leth, who as far as I know mentions maybe one game a year.

 

[namman siggins]

Been on and off with GG since last week. I finally caught up and what weird twists and turns Gamergate has taken. 

It seems to have taken this amorphous, shape--for the most part it was, but it was more focused within the gaming community and its people--that will swallow anything that might resemble an ally or an enemy. It's fascinating to see where it is and where it's going to go.

With that said, I hope where it goes is away because there have been too many casualties brought from GG.  GG has also shown that the men in the gaming industry are silent about things that don't bother them until it gets in their face or a shit ton of people are pushing them to move.

[Pepyri]

Glad to see someone collected all the bullshit GG posted and proof of how bullshit it is. It's a quick way to shut down that line of crap.

[Bjorn]

...maybe I should go back to lurking the thread

 

Nah, those are all interesting points to make.

 

That reminds me of two other pieces. First, from Holly Nielsen's The Danger of Labels:

"By labelling, we automatically create sides and in the world of Twitter, we group and judge people on 140 characters. There is no discussion, there is no debate, there’s just shouting and name calling. By giving group names, we don’t just create a clear 'us and them' divide, we also force people to choose and we give perhaps the more unpleasant people a banner that perpetuates these stereotypes. It’s a dangerous cycle."

"There is a reasonable discussion to be had here, but if everything is an attack, it will never happen. If the playing field is made less hostile, then perhaps the reasonable, silent majority will be more inclined to break their silence."

Second, from a challenging read by Oliver Campbell, When A Black Game Journalist Spoke Up On #Gamergate (Damion Schubert from Zen of Design / BioWare Austin had referred to it in a bunch of links that were "crucial reading for those who think that online harassment is a crucially important topic"):

"I can’t speak of everyone’s experience in dealing with members of Gamergate, but the majority of what I have personally seen and experienced is that they are passionate people, they’re incredibly smart and savvy consumers, they are ridiculous levels of inviting and inclusive, and almost anyone that shows up is welcomed with open arms."

"My experience has been pretty much the direct OPPOSITE of the narrative that has been pushed about these people. Of course, there are always going to be extremists and those who engage in sketchy and questionable behavior on any side of a conflict, and I don’t think anyone is going to debate that."

 

Echoing some of the thoughts above, I'm also not surprised that he found an embracing, encouraging audience, for a variety of reasons.  Shortly after writing that piece, he also wrote a guide on how to write a review with "minimal subjectivity", an examination of how to come as close as possible to the mythical objective review. 

 

Over the past week I’ve seen more than a few people make the mostly false claim that a review can’t be objective in its nature. Not only do I disagree with that, I tend to make it a point in the reviews that I write to avoid unnecessarily interjecting my opinion into it as much as reasonably possible.

 

This is the kind of opinion that tends to go over quite well with certain parts of the gaming community, the part of it that I find to be unfathomable, the part that believes games be approached and discussed in the same way one might discuss a TV or a toy.   That they should not be discussed as works of art, that emotional reactions are a footnote beneath hair physics and 4K resolution, that their place in and reflection of our culture has no place in a review. 

 

I also learned from Campbell's twitter that the EiC of Destructoid resigned.  Anyone know what that's about?  I've never been a 'toid reader, so have no frame of reference about what's going on there and if it's related to all the gigglygloop stuff.