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She runs a show called 'Feminist Frequency', dedicated to calling out sexist tropes in video games (amongst other things). She appears to have become one of the

She runs a show called 'Feminist Frequency', dedicated to calling out sexist tropes in video games (amongst other things). She appears to have become one of the enemies of the movement known as "#GamerGate". Proponents of the movement will tell you it's about ethics in game journalism, but in reality it seems to have largely become corrupted by misogyny and the like. Several female game developers and journalists have received death threats; it's all rather ugly. This is the first time I've seen the movement appear on the front page of HN. I hope the discussion can be kept as civil as things normally are on here.

ben0x539 12y ago
I think calling it "corrupted by misogyny" is a bit misleading. As far as I can tell, it is as pure and uncompromising in its misogyny as ever, the journalism thing has been a smokescreen from the beginning.
- JayOtter 12y ago
  I was trying to be a little bit neutral but...yeah, I think you're probably correct.
- sp332 12y ago
  It's a bunch of things thrown together. http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4395 http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4395 "If you witness a group of issues, some relevant and some irrelevant, you will feel a need to respond to the relevant issues. If you witness someone responding to the relevant issues of the group, you will think they are responding to the group of issues. The exploit, taken from this, is then clear: Group up a bunch of issues (Apples, Oranges, Watermelons, Rat Poison) and then people who show concern about the Rat Poison will seem to be showing concern on Apples and Oranges. And people who are supporting Apples and Oranges could easily be mistaken for supporters of Rat Poison."
  - ben0x539 12y ago
    It's a bunch of things thrown together in a carefully calculated scheme to cover up an organized harassment campaign targeting women in the videogames industry. I appreciate that there's some decent people getting mixed up in a 4chan project with no ill intentions of their own, but that's not where the whole thing started.
    - Dylan16807 12y ago
      From what I've seen it's a giant mess and not intentionally organized that way at all. And yeah it started off in the worst way possible, so 'giant mess' is an improvement but not very good.
      - ben0x539 12y ago
        From the beginning it has been an astroturfing op "orchestrated" by some geniuses at 4chan. An irc channel central to the movement is named after a sexist catchphrase from the rant of the bitter ex-boyfriend of their first target. Logs from that channel have been publicly posted. There's no doubts about this.
      - Erwin 12y ago
        Look at this post in the subreddit, that seems organized to me: https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2jb6q5/boycott_up_wednesday_10152014_kotaku_week_target/ https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2jb6q5/boyc... Contains: a promotional poster of "boycott of the day", a pastebin full of "sample letters to use", a list of email addresses and twitter names to contact and talkint points when attempting to make Blizzard stop advertising at Kotaku, a site which is apparently "anti-gamer-gate".
Karunamon 12y ago
but in reality it seems to have largely become corrupted by misogyny and the like Not any more than you'll find idiots in any movement - I would liken them more to the vandals that presented themselves during Occupy Wall Street. I hang around the organizing points for the GamerGate stuff - people are remarkably level headed and respectful (and absolutely NOT driven by misogyny). There is no organized harassment happening, there is no corruption. Anybody attempting to agitate along those lines finds themselves massively downvoted/flagged/reported/etc. Sarkeesian et. al. are quite intolerant of any kind of criticism or disagreement - the trolls are, frankly, being made out to be a bigger issue than they actually are (not that people making death threats is even remotely okay, I'm pointing out that those people do not represent the movement). If you doubt this, I invite you to do the same. It really opened my eyes. Calling GG about misogyny or even about feminism has never been anything more than a form of well poisoning. edit I'm getting the "submitted too fast" thing now, so I can't respond to comments directly. I will do so below. -- I ask anyone that points out "harassment" to provide direct examples of organized harassment, preferably links so the rest of us can see them. Someone downthread brought up the git repo containing the markdown file - how is this harassment, again? * Regarding the #burgersandfries IRC - absolutely bullshit and absolutely disgusting. The name is even a reference to Quinn's personal life. That channel is on Rizon, is still up, and can be looked at on your own, but you'll note that this is not the organizing channel for gamergate (which is #gamergate). Perhaps GG started out of disgust for Quinn (and her professional behavior is hardly beyond reproach), but tying them together for the purposes of discrediting GG is a genetic fallacy. I'm not denying that organized harassment campaigns exist - but I am saying that #GG ain't it. * Regarding how the GG movement can only be defined by what is done under it's banner This line of thought allows any movement to be trivially discredited. Quite literally any movement involving strong emotions will lead to people doing stupid things. If you simply discard the entire thing based on that minority of people, you have been manipulated. This would allow people who disagree with such a movement to expend the slightest amount of effort to do something (or even fabricate doing something) distasteful in its name as a form of attack. Please recognize that this possibility exists. Your answer to "drop the movement" is not feasible as that is an untenable sequence of events. 10 Movement starts, 20 idiot does something, 30 movment discredited, 40 goto 10. * Regarding how GG isn't going after the big publishers GG is about games journalism, specifically the journalists themselves and their lack of integrity, not what the publishers do. We can't exert enough pressure to convince, say, EA to stop doing underhanded things - there are simply too many people who will buy their content on a schedule (like the yearly Madden rehash) for any kind of boycott to succeed. Seriously, gamers have been trying for years on outrages that are about marketplace behavior rather than social issues. It does not work. In other words, it's a matter of picking one's battles. Exerting pressure on the journalists is another matter entirely. A journalist is only as good as their credibility - and showing a pattern of anomalous reviews or undisclosed connections is a great (and tremendously effective) way of exerting negative pressure on that kind of behavior.
munificent 12y ago
> She appears to have become one of the enemies of the movement known as "#GamerGate". I believe she's been receiving harassment and death threats from well before the recent "gamergate" stuff.

ben0x539 12y ago

I think calling it "corrupted by misogyny" is a bit misleading. As far as I can tell, it is as pure and uncompromising in its misogyny as ever, the journalism thing has been a smokescreen from the beginning.

JayOtter 12y ago
I was trying to be a little bit neutral but...yeah, I think you're probably correct.
sp332 12y ago
It's a bunch of things thrown together. http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4395 http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4395 "If you witness a group of issues, some relevant and some irrelevant, you will feel a need to respond to the relevant issues. If you witness someone responding to the relevant issues of the group, you will think they are responding to the group of issues. The exploit, taken from this, is then clear: Group up a bunch of issues (Apples, Oranges, Watermelons, Rat Poison) and then people who show concern about the Rat Poison will seem to be showing concern on Apples and Oranges. And people who are supporting Apples and Oranges could easily be mistaken for supporters of Rat Poison."
- ben0x539 12y ago
  It's a bunch of things thrown together in a carefully calculated scheme to cover up an organized harassment campaign targeting women in the videogames industry. I appreciate that there's some decent people getting mixed up in a 4chan project with no ill intentions of their own, but that's not where the whole thing started.
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    From what I've seen it's a giant mess and not intentionally organized that way at all. And yeah it started off in the worst way possible, so 'giant mess' is an improvement but not very good.
    - ben0x539 12y ago
      From the beginning it has been an astroturfing op "orchestrated" by some geniuses at 4chan. An irc channel central to the movement is named after a sexist catchphrase from the rant of the bitter ex-boyfriend of their first target. Logs from that channel have been publicly posted. There's no doubts about this.
    - Erwin 12y ago
      Look at this post in the subreddit, that seems organized to me: https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2jb6q5/boycott_up_wednesday_10152014_kotaku_week_target/ https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2jb6q5/boyc... Contains: a promotional poster of "boycott of the day", a pastebin full of "sample letters to use", a list of email addresses and twitter names to contact and talkint points when attempting to make Blizzard stop advertising at Kotaku, a site which is apparently "anti-gamer-gate".

Karunamon 12y ago

but in reality it seems to have largely become corrupted by misogyny and the like Not any more than you'll find idiots in any movement - I would liken them more to the vandals that presented themselves during Occupy Wall Street. I hang around the organizing points for the GamerGate stuff - people are remarkably level headed and respectful (and absolutely NOT driven by misogyny). There is no organized harassment happening, there is no corruption. Anybody attempting to agitate along those lines finds themselves massively downvoted/flagged/reported/etc. Sarkeesian et. al. are quite intolerant of any kind of criticism or disagreement - the trolls are, frankly, being made out to be a bigger issue than they actually are (not that people making death threats is even remotely okay, I'm pointing out that those people do not represent the movement). If you doubt this, I invite you to do the same. It really opened my eyes. Calling GG about misogyny or even about feminism has never been anything more than a form of well poisoning. edit I'm getting the "submitted too fast" thing now, so I can't respond to comments directly. I will do so below. -- I ask anyone that points out "harassment" to provide direct examples of organized harassment, preferably links so the rest of us can see them. Someone downthread brought up the git repo containing the markdown file - how is this harassment, again? * Regarding the #burgersandfries IRC - absolutely bullshit and absolutely disgusting. The name is even a reference to Quinn's personal life. That channel is on Rizon, is still up, and can be looked at on your own, but you'll note that this is not the organizing channel for gamergate (which is #gamergate). Perhaps GG started out of disgust for Quinn (and her professional behavior is hardly beyond reproach), but tying them together for the purposes of discrediting GG is a genetic fallacy. I'm not denying that organized harassment campaigns exist - but I am saying that #GG ain't it. * Regarding how the GG movement can only be defined by what is done under it's banner This line of thought allows any movement to be trivially discredited. Quite literally any movement involving strong emotions will lead to people doing stupid things. If you simply discard the entire thing based on that minority of people, you have been manipulated. This would allow people who disagree with such a movement to expend the slightest amount of effort to do something (or even fabricate doing something) distasteful in its name as a form of attack. Please recognize that this possibility exists. Your answer to "drop the movement" is not feasible as that is an untenable sequence of events. 10 Movement starts, 20 idiot does something, 30 movment discredited, 40 goto 10. * Regarding how GG isn't going after the big publishers GG is about games journalism, specifically the journalists themselves and their lack of integrity, not what the publishers do. We can't exert enough pressure to convince, say, EA to stop doing underhanded things - there are simply too many people who will buy their content on a schedule (like the yearly Madden rehash) for any kind of boycott to succeed. Seriously, gamers have been trying for years on outrages that are about marketplace behavior rather than social issues. It does not work. In other words, it's a matter of picking one's battles. Exerting pressure on the journalists is another matter entirely. A journalist is only as good as their credibility - and showing a pattern of anomalous reviews or undisclosed connections is a great (and tremendously effective) way of exerting negative pressure on that kind of behavior.

munificent 12y ago

> She appears to have become one of the enemies of the movement known as "#GamerGate". I believe she's been receiving harassment and death threats from well before the recent "gamergate" stuff.