"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

[osmosisch]

Any doubt in my mind of Brad Wardell's status as a dipshit has been dispelled by his support of this bullshit hate campaign.

It's very sad to me because Stardock has (or at least used to have, I stopped keeping track since Brad became unredeemable) its heart in the right place in a lot of ways. I used to be proud to have bought their games due to their anti-DRM stance and consumer advocacy.

[Ben X]

Re. the Verge article, what is a "reverse shot writer"? A brief google didn't help...

[Denial]

I'm not sure, but I'd guess that it's a reference to "shot reverse shot" in filming - the technique where you shoot one person speaking from the perspective of the person notionally looking at them, and then switch to the other person speaking apparently from the perspective of the first person. So, a "reverse shot writer" would be someone appearing to speak back to an initial speaker. In this case, I think the initial speaker is the initial reporting of harassment and abuse, and the reverse shot is David Auerbach counterpointing.

 

I get what he means - that Slate is known in journalistic circles for promoting a kneejerk contrarianism - but I'm not sure exactly how the metaphor maps to that. Certainly, Slate was always going to be a natural home for an article that said, in the voice of Owen Wilson, "Everybody thinks that Gamergate isn't about ethics in game journalism. What this book presupposes is... what if it is?"

 

Related, this is one of the funniest exchanges in the social media history of Gamergate.

[Ben X]

If so, wow that's a terrible metaphor.

[Merus]

Yeah, the metaphor is a shitty way of saying 'thoughtless contrarianism' which is totally something I say because I like to use 5-dollar words and 'fuck' in the same sentence.

[JonCole]

Related, this is one of the funniest exchanges in the social media history of Gamergate.

 

Just tracked back on Jeong for context, so here's a friendly reminder that while Gawker has been cool about GG in a few instances and Kotaku seems to have ramped up their content production to something slightly more respectable, the culture of Gawker is still poisonous and very capable of producing the worst of the hateful pageview headline producing internet scum.

[Nachimir]

I've had the thought more than once if some people online realize how easy it was to get contact info for the average person back in the day if they didn't explicitly have an unlisted number/address.  Obviously modern doxxing is still a bad thing, but we're only 20sih years removed from this being a standard communication tool that was literally in every single house in America, and the knowledge how to dial the operator and ask for any number in the country was relatively universal as well. 

 

What's changed is the ability to publicise that information globally.

 

I awoke to news that a friend of mine was doxxed last night. He already suffers from an anxiety disorder, and notifications from his phone now give him stabs of panic. He's doing okay. He's staying with friends; we got the police in and are doing whatever else we can for him.

[Reyturner]

Related, this is one of the funniest exchanges in the social media history of Gamergate.

What is GG's definition of ablism anyways? I see them swing that club at ZQ as well.

[Denial]

I think taking issue with Gamergate is ablist, because 8chan was founded by a disabled person. cf accusations of sexism and racism for taking issue with anything said by a Gamergator, because women and people of color support Gamergate #notyourshield.

[Twig]

What is GG's definition of ablism anyways? I see them swing that club at ZQ as well.

Trash-talking 8chan, whose founder is a disabled individual whose name I can't remember. There was that "debate" a while back with Brianna and said founder on... some program on the television networks. After it was over, there was a looooooot of "ABLEIST SCUM" thrown Brianna's way, even though she obviously never said or implied anything derogatory. And the guy was a massive fuckhead the whole time.

 

Personally, it feels like the sort of thing they'd set up that isn't necessarily true but they use it as return fire when people attack them. Not to say there's no possibility of it being true, but... I have very little faith in any facts regarding 8chan being in good faith. For obvious reasons.

[JonCole]

Brianna Wu is trying to set up a fund for civil legal defense of women who have been harassed - http://spacekatgal.tumblr.com/post/101422081503/standing-up-to-gamergate-bullies

 

Of course, the very first thing GGers are saying is stuff like WHAT ABOUT TRANS PEOPLE, ARE YOU TRANSPHOBIC?

[Denial]

(As an aside, I'm not sure I get the Sarah Jeong/Gawker connection...)

[Bjorn]

The ablist stuff seems to come from 3 main places:
 
1.  Criticizing 8chan is the same as making fun of its owner, so that's being shitty and ablist.
 
2.  A faked Brianna Wu tweet made fun a primary gg harasser, using a autistic slur, but the tweet was easily proven faked.  But of course that didn't stop the accusations.
 
3.  Reports of people making fun of boogie for his weight.  Which, quite frankly, I don't doubt.  Being overweight blows, and it seems like there is rarely a shortage of people who are willing to remind you that you're fat. 
 
Of course, one thing gg won't do is ask Big Mike about his history with fat shaming, or his endorsement of Return of Kings #fatshamingweek:

 

Big Mike is also currently highlighting the posts, tweets and criminal history of a man he claims is a leading anti-gg figure, who actually appears to be a man with serious mental illness (admits to being diagnosed as bipolar I).  Mike is saying that people who are critical of gg need to be stepping in and confronting this guy.  Mike is trying to get people critical of gg to engage with a stranger on the Internet, a bipolar person with a history of violent threats, because...ethics?

[feelthedarkness]

The GG mob has adopted the worst impression of progressives in an attempt to "use their logic against them." It's something conservatives have leveraged effectively for years, accusing somebody of the thing you're doing.

 

Also, since all the GG stuff is anonymous, without "organized demands" nobody is responsible for anybody else's behavior, so when the mob does something awful, and a person says "man, this mob did something awful!" any random person can say "I'm not in that mob, gamergate rules!" An ouroboros of bullshit!  

[Henroid]

Even Howard Stern got over the "PFFT REAL MEN KNOW HOW TO GET LAID" shtick over a decade ago. Mike Cernovich is a true cro-magnon.

[Bjorn]

Huh, Mother Jones links together a bunch of the studies on video games, aggressive behavior and gamergate.

Honestly, I'm pretty skeptical about a lot of studies about behavior. I think there's really valuable things to learn, but I never know how to judge them. Blargh.

Also, a female teen aspiring game dev admits that gg makes her afraid about entering the industry.

 

This is what GamerGate is. Every day, the title of their movement seems less an allusion to the WaterGate scandal and more a literal gate.

[Henroid]

The only extent I'm willing to give the "video games lead to increased aggression" a handshake is under specific circumstances. And those circumstances go beyond video games.

 

Basically if someone grows up participating in a competitive activity and their parents and friends are hands-off with it and the lessons it could teach, you'll end up with someone growing up not accepting losing / not getting what they want well, and they'll probably just lash out as a result, not having been taught you can rein that bullshit in. Or should. Many comments I've seen against GG have been pointing out that 'gamers' are trained to win. Which I mean, yeah, you want to win the game, and if you're the type of person whose life revolves around one thing you're going to relate all your life experiences to that one thing.

 

It's almost sad in a way.

[sclpls]

The GG mob has adopted the worst impression of progressives in an attempt to "use their logic against them." It's something conservatives have leveraged effectively for years, accusing somebody of the thing you're doing.

 

Also, since all the GG stuff is anonymous, without "organized demands" nobody is responsible for anybody else's behavior, so when the mob does something awful, and a person says "man, this mob did something awful!" any random person can say "I'm not in that mob, gamergate rules!" An ouroboros of bullshit!  

 

Oh yeah, it's textbook right-wing radio material where you have these radio hosts complaining about how women and minorities are engaging in "special pleadings" while simultaneously complaining about how really it's white men that have it tough.

 

People brought up Brad Wardell, and he seems to trade in a tremendous amount of that sort of rhetoric.

[sclpls]

Huh, Mother Jones links together a bunch of the studies on video games, aggressive behavior and gamergate.

Honestly, I'm pretty skeptical about a lot of studies about behavior. I think there's really valuable things to learn, but I never know how to judge them. Blargh.

Also, a female teen aspiring game dev admits that gg makes her afraid about entering the industry.

 

I think that Mother Jones article does the thing that so many journalists are guilty of when reporting on studies from the social sciences, and ignoring that correlation is not causation. Also, every study I'm familiar with that links video games to aggressive behavior has only observed short term effects so on top of that there also appears to be a lot of overstating the case about what these studies actually demonstrate.

[Twig]

Also, a female teen aspiring game dev admits that gg makes her afraid about entering the industry.

This post has been deleted by the author.

 

I think we can all guess why. |:

[Bjorn]

She took her Twitter down as well.  I looked through the responses to her earlier, 95 percent of them were positive, but there were a haundful of ggers trying to explain how she had gg all wrong, watch this video, then you'll understand!  One guy was being pretty shitty.  Also, the bipolar guy I referenced earlier also showed up Tweeting her, that might have had something to do with it as well. 

[feelthedarkness]

Oh yeah, it's textbook right-wing radio material where you have these radio hosts complaining about how women and minorities are engaging in "special pleadings" while simultaneously complaining about how really it's white men that have it tough.

 

People brought up Brad Wardell, and he seems to trade in a tremendous amount of that sort of rhetoric.

 

Yeah, also, case in point: Jerk Lawyer pointing at the mentally ill business guy as representative of the "anti-gg" faction, when there is plenty on non-anecdotal evidence of GG people being extremely abusive. 

[Henroid]

Apparently Goobergate is using all its sockpuppet / bot accounts to mass report people on Twitter now for - get ready for it - spam. It kinda seems like the final cries of the beast, flailing its limbs around, trying to give one last "fuck you" to everyone. And yet it is ironically silent.

[Cyborg771]

Related, this is one of the funniest exchanges in the social media history of Gamergate.

 

Still not really sure I understand what's going on here. The only name I recognize is Anil and from what I understand he was an unrelated journalist who Cernovitch attacked over nothing.

[namman siggins]

Wu did a two hour special with journalist Glenn Fleishman to address all the accusations leveled at her 

 

http://5by5.tv/isometric/26