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"Abuse" isn't ambiguous at all. Anyone with a lick of common sense can easily distinguish criticism and abuse. Criticism is when you civilly express an opinio
by hyugh 12y ago
"Abuse" isn't ambiguous at all. Anyone with a lick of common sense can easily distinguish criticism and abuse.
Criticism is when you civilly express an opinion of someone or something else, or an action or statement they've made. Criticism is calling someone out and saying you expect more, or have X problem with Y statement, etc.
Abuse is when it moves into personal attacks, or calls for others to engage in personal or physical attacks. Criticism is fine if you disagree, but threatening physical harm or violence to someone isn't criticism - it's a threat. Digging up someone's home address and posting it online isn't criticism. Calling the police to raid someone's house with a SWAT team isn't criticism. Asking if someone would like to be raped because it's a "funny joke" or "satire" isn't criticism - it's threatening and abusive behavior. Any school psychologist can tell you which kids are joking around playfully and which kids are engaging in bullying, and those terms don't suddenly disappear just because we added 20 years to everyone's age.
A movement like GamerGate has many many people in it who willfully engage in what is clearly abuse - and yet the other members who claim not to support this kind of harassment or abuse have done absolutely nothing to stop it. If you're upset that your movement is branded as a bunch of harassers, maybe you should spend more time with the "good" people publicly calling out the ones doing the harassment in your name and asserting some kind of authority.
There's no ambiguity at all - you just want to pretend there is to avoid any responsibility.
- swatow 12y agoWhen people are exposed as saying "racist" things, they often experience a torrent of abuse, including violent threats. Do you think the ant-racist movement is morally equivalent to GamerGate because they have "done absolutely nothing to stop it"?
- NahBrah 12y agoDone absolutely nothing to stop it? GamerGate rooted out one of Anita's harassers and gave her his info. GamerGate has a harassment patrol that actively reports abusers. Maybe you should look at your own perception and realize that you're focusing on the 1% that is bad and ignoring the 99% that isn't?
- hyugh 12y agoSo you're saying GamerGate proceeded to dox someone it didn't like and gave that person's info to Anita? Yeah, good job differentiating "criticism" and "abuse" in that example. Who cares about the 99% that is good when GamerGate is continually defined, in every Google search, every Twitter search, every news article in well-known international journalist papers does nothing except point out the continual stream of violent, sexist, and disgusting rhetoric and vitriol come from the hashtag? Let me give you a piece of advice: if you don't want to be affiliated with the harassment aspect of GamerGate, stop affiliating yourself with GamerGate. Because there is literally no one else outside of GamerGate itself who thinks it's about anything other than harassment.
- swatow 12y agoYou seem to have moved the goalposts here, from actually being responsible for abuse, as a group, to being perceived as being abusive.
- GamerGirl 12y agoAnd strike 2. The "Gamergate harassment patrol" operates like the "firemen" from Farenheit 451. They actively seek out new twitter users to harass, particularly those who call them out for doing so. By all means keep trying to hold up terrible people as examples of "the good ones" though. It's entertaining.