"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

[jccalhoun]

Honest question: are there any pro-gamergate ecelebs that aren't terrible people?

[Problem Machine]

Is that like dehydrated water?

[twmac]

Really good piece by Lindy West:

 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/07/daryush-roosh-v-valizadeh-and-his-acolytes-pilloried

 

This stood out (emphasis mine):

 

"To see Roosh and his acolytes pilloried on an international scale has been a strange experience for me. I don’t write about them (because I’m busy, they haven’t earned my time, and they have mistaken attention for legitimacy, a delusion I have no interest in feeding).."

[Vainamoinen]

Sorry for posting double content, but I thougt this to be an interesting observation about gamergate, 'censorship' and their desperate need for opposition. I posted the stuff in gamergate spheres, of course, and *surprise*, downvotes galore. Frankly, it's a bit depressing. So, maybe reposting it here is more fruitful:
 


For funsies, I investigated the Fire Emblem Fates "censorship" case a little bit.

 

And boy it is a wonderful exemplary case when it comes to gamergate reality construction. Evidently "SJW" now means "opposed to diversity". Now, I have seen people perform that leap of utter idiocy a few times. But, in all seriousness, whatever "SJW" meant yesterday, forget about it. Let's just use a new definition so it fits Fire Emblem Fates.

Yesterday's "SJW" was the fantasy of people who violently demanded that developers put an LGBTQ agenda into their games. In the Fire Emblem Fates case, the term "SJW" somehow seems to describe people who censor LGBTQ stuff from Japanese games.

Sacrebleu. Man, those stupid SJW make no sense at all, yet AGAIN.

I am absolutely enamored with the way the argument flows here, as it once more shows "SJW" to mean absolutely nothing. It's the ultimate label devoid of any kind of meaning besides maybe "person I don't like". There's literally zero fixed ideology attached to it, the perfect versatile fascist enemy figure.

 

 

The first info about the Fire Emblem Fates stuff I found was on thegg.net – known for the most ludicrous of conspiracy theories (see the Tale of Tales/Sarkeesian bribe absurdity they still have online, to their embarassment). However, as their website is so funny, I stuck around a bit to see how far I could get with this source.

Apparently one Alison Rapp, proven to be of female gender (oh noes!) and wearing a hipster nose ring (double noes!), hence clearly being one'o'dem, has made some precaaaarious statements on twitter concerning education in game culture (she's for it, sadly) and xenophobia in so called progressive US culture (she somehow manages to think it's there although clearly US media is generally perfect before SJW fuck it up again). And there have been some femimimisms from her, I must report. Scary femimimisms you should shield your children's eyes from.

The frequented gamergate website has no idea what position Rapp holds exactly and whether she has any kind of influence on actual gameplay decision making (she's been with Nintendo for only two years and only as a marketer, so how about no influence at all). Rapp's outspoken sex positivity and her embrace of the Japanese culture will not play into their judgement, even though the proposed cuts mainly concern homosexual content – content which Rapp would certainly advocate for whenever she could.

So Rapp is pro LGBTQ, which makes her an SJW, and SJW are known to censor LGBTQ stuff from games, so evidently it must have been Rapp who censored Fire Emblem Fates.

The finest hour of gamergate reasoning.

 

 

The most hilarious thing I found on thegg.net was some kind of history about the 'petting minigame' "censorship" issue. The first source to report on the cut and deplore it was kotaku and, to be more precise, Mr. Nathan Grayson (name spelled correctly here), who would be gamergate supporters' enemy no. 1 if gamergate made no difference between male and female targets.

So when in January it looked like Nintendo wouldn't cut the minigame – some random gameFAQ users had said so after all – thegg.net calls Grayson and kotaku liars immediately, adds a whole lot of screenshots as "proof" and litters their website by discrediting the only source they had as of then (emphasis in bold by me):

  None of it was true [...]
  Kotaku made everything up to get clicks [...]
  called Kotaku out on their lies [...]
  proved Nathan Greyson [sic] (writer for Kotaku) to be full of nonsense [...]
  now we know for a fact that it's [Grayson's report is] BS" [...]
  Kotaku once again been caught lying [...]
  Lesson well learned, trust nothing that's written by Kotaku [...]
  Kotaku has once again lied to earn themselves some easy clicks [...]

Two updates on the same day, several screens scroll. Fuck Kotaku, man.

Needless to say, the section is in no way transparently corrected when Nintendo confirms that, yup, exactly the cuts Grayson had been reporting would be applied. You may search an apology to kotaku until judgement day. Instead, thegg.net "authors" follow up with an impressive amount of social justice outrage about social justice warriors.

 

 

TL;DR:
kotaku protests against those cuts,
gamergate supporters protest against those cuts,
real gamers as opposed to gamergate supporters protest against those cuts,
LGBTQ gamers and their friends protest against those cuts,
and the female developer targeted by gamergate supporters at Nintendo USA very likely protests against those cuts, internally, as well.


But gamergate needs enemies to thrive... many, many sneaky enemies. And that's the only takeaway here: Enemy definition is far more important than the issue at hand. Judging from the ggnet article, just about 20 times more important.

[Twig]

This thread seems unhealthy.

[tabacco]

Yeah, I'm kind of curious what the continued value of this thread is. I think we all agree that GG and its friends are gross, so what's going on in here?

[Vainamoinen]

Nothing that hasn't been going on for 300 pages. Still, if there's no value perceived in this thread anymore, I've no problem with having it closed and/or abandoned.

[tabacco]

I'm going to go ahead and close this, as I'm not sure a 300+ page GG-watch megathread is really helping anyone anymore, but I'd say if people want to make new threads for specific topics, go for it.