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> Anti WTO protesters are really concerned over globalization, while Gamergaters are not concerned over journalistic integrity By what basis do you make that a

> Anti WTO protesters are really concerned over globalization, while Gamergaters are not concerned over journalistic integrity By what basis do you make that assertion? Can you read their minds?! This seems like a pure, basic composition fallacy to me. > alleged lapsed ethics served women The lapses were mutually beneficial, and there was harassment against the men involved as well. > and hate groups that simply target people they hate (and they hate those people not for what they do, but for who they are) Then why were these 'hate groups' active before the allegations were made, if they all truly only target people for "who they are" and not "what they do"? > Gamergate is clearly the latter. Again, by what basis do you make that claim? Are you just listening to the media reports that emphasize the harassment perpetrated by a segment of the GG crowd (while conveniently ignoring the harassment other GG members receive from anti-GG ones?) > The comparison between them and political movements I'm not comparing the movements themselves, but how they're marginalized in order to suppress their message and become vilified in the minds of the public.

eropple 11y ago
> By what basis do you make that assertion? I know them by the fruits of their labors, as they should be known. The concerted attacks on Anita Sarkeesian--an academic, not a journalist--and Jenn Frank--a writer of opinion articles, not a journalist--and a handful of others who just happen to be loud and female and mostly not-journalists but still just so very unethical, we promise, prove the mistruths in those the declarations of intent, be it from outright liars who are participating to the useful idiots who cover the brigading scum. > The lapses were mutually beneficial, and there was harassment against the men involved as well. Yeah, Nathan Grayson totes had to flee from his home and completely uproot his life. Wait, no, the other thing.
- kinghajj 11y ago
  > prove the mistruths in those the declarations of intent, be it from outright liars who are participating to the useful idiots who cover the brigading scum. You've just stated exactly my point!!! Not everybody that identifies with GG has malicious motivations, they're just "useful idiots" who need to think more critically about the statements they ingest. Hence my complaint about over-generalization: if you outright vilify people and call them names, they'll only get defensive and be less likely to consider critiques. > Yeah, Nathan Grayson totes had to flee from his home and completely uproot his life. I never meant to imply that the distribution was equal, and I acknowledged previously that there were lots of goons acting completely reprehensibly ("Now, there probably are sexist feelings at the root of many of their members' concerns").
  - eropple 11y ago
    Useful idiots are still morally culpable for providing cover for bad people. You don't get a pass on aiding malice through ignorance. And there is a point at which the intense clinging to "well both sides" goes from ignorant to in itself malicious. At this point, months into this, I don't think you can be in that epistemic closure without actively adopting its mores. I have stopped entertaining the notions of people who want to hurt my friends, and the people who want to defend them. Changing minds is a nice-to-have, but putting a stop to the bad behavior is a necessity. So at this point I think that it is sufficient to beat them. Which has already happened; they've already, individually and in aggregate, lost the battle to dominate the industry, to freeze out people who want to cater to people who aren't young white males. The GamerGate people will have their sinecures and their friendly developers (which is why the shirt-rending screaming about "SJWs" is hilarious, it's not like the industry is going to stop making games for young white males), but as a whole, they've lost, and I'm okay with not really making nice-nice to them as they fade to irrelevance.
    - nailer 11y ago
      > And there is a point at which the intense clinging to "well both sides" goes from ignorant to in itself malicious. Seriously, if you're ignoring one side being horrible but not the other, that's endorsing harassment and threats.
- nailer 11y ago
  I don't know who the other person is, but Sarkeesian made up a bald faced lie about a Hitman game rewarding you for killing strippers when it penalises you, and Johnathan Macintosh (the dude from femfreq) thinks I'm a horrible human being for playing Mortal Kombat. What they say doesn't really affect me: I think most people know they're nuts with an agenda, but saying FemFreq makes up stuff for attention is completely reasonable.
  - eropple 11y ago
    So here's the thing that's gonna blow your mind: I don't have to agree with FemFreq to think that the GamerGate swarm's behavior toward them is fucking unacceptably horrid and that it's because they think there's room for video games that don't cater to young white males. Though the people involved would be called "friends of friends", I only very rarely agree with the second-order conclusions that FemFreq makes and I think their politics in particular around violence in media are profoundly weird and wrong. I have no beef with Mortal Kombat, and I own MKX. I've met Zoe Quinn probably half a dozen times and I don't really care for her schtick or even the games she makes (though I'll give her credit for Crash Override, I think that's a good idea). I think Brianna Wu is kind of personally odious and is being as vocal and visible as she is to help raise her own profile. I think Shanley Kane is kind of a bully who wants people to feel bad at least as much as she wants things to change. But all of that--yes, literally (who), all of that--is secondary to this: on the big, important things, they're right. American culture is profoundly racist and sexist and video game culture is worse than average. Games are built largely to pander--not even just your average "catering"--to young white males, and even as a young(-ish) white male that kind of sucks. This is something we should talk about. This is a real thing. What isn't a real thing is the straight-up fiction told by Eron Gjoni that led directly to destroying a woman's life. What isn't a real thing is the catastrophic misreading of a couple of articles about the sublimation of "gamer culture" (what a joke) into the mainstream. "'Gamer' is meaningless because everybody plays games" turned into, in the minds of some very scared and very small people, "fuck gamers they're dead." The request for more representation in games permuted somehow into "no representation for people like us", even though there's literally (who) no way on God's green earth that video game publishers would not still and forever cater to that population. "Some people who like games and make games hang out with and know some people who like games and write about games" turned into ethics in games journalism, while, all along and completely unmentioned, IGN et al, with their million-dollar ad spends (not necessarily corrupting, but a sort of bias that none of the GamerGate talking heads mention), and the straight-up YouTube payola schemes (you know, actual corruption) have gone unmentioned, almost certainly because they aren't "anti-GG". So even setting aside the bad behavior that overwhelmingly comes from one side of the aisle, we are starting at a position of fundamental reasonableness versus fundamental unreasonableness. Some of the people involved are people I would characterize as extremists, others to a large degree just bad actors. And if the criticisms actually were "FemFreq makes stuff up for attention," I'd probably honestly be partly in agreement. But it's not, it's really not. In the heart of hearts of the people doing this shit, it's that women and minorities are elbowing their way to the table and the specter of loss of relative privilege is scary so we'd better fight back and the only way we know how to fight back is to try to make them give up by making it not worth the damage to their lives. The fact of the matter is this: you lose when you start trying to hurt people. You just do. That, in the rhetoric you don't actually care about, there's a point to be considered actually and truly stops mattering when you are attempting, as a group, to hurt people in a concrete and tangible manner. A GamerGater being socially shunned for his retrograde bullshit is not the same as a normal person being forced from her--invariably her--home because of death threats toward her and her family. This is not the False Equivalency Zone, and you will find no takers here.
pron 11y ago
I am not going to address many of your questions because the answers are obvious if you honestly think about them (an honest reading of the rhetoric should supply all the necessary clues); also, I'm not familiar with the details (though it's still obvious what's going on). I do, however, want to provide some historical background about hate groups in response to: > Then why were these 'hate groups' active before the allegations were made, if they all truly only target people for "who they are" and not "what they do"? (I assume you meant "weren't", right?) Well, history teaches us that oftentimes there's a lot of pent-up anger in people that only rises to the surface -- in the form of mob violence -- in response to a trigger, which takes the form of an accusation of some illicit action taken by the mob's victims. For example, many pogroms against Jews were incited by some incident[1][2] (usually fabricated, sometimes partly true, sometimes blown out of proportion). Same goes for lynch mobs in the US. That's just how mob violence works. Also -- and this is very obvious, but I think I'll be amiss if I don't explain this point, you say: > while conveniently ignoring the harassment other GG members receive from anti-GG ones? You imply symmetry where there is none. In civilized society, it's perfectly acceptable to harass members of hate groups. In fact, it's a civic duty to do so. The KKK and the SPLC are not two equal-but-opposing sides. The former is a hate group while the latter isn't. When one harasses the other it's mob violence; if it's the other way around it's common sense. Also, the "harassment" against members of the hate group (although, again, I'm not familiar with the details of this seventh-grade kerfuffle) is often just calling them out for what they are. While clearly moronic villains, unlike in comic books, they don't appreciate and accept their villainy because they're morons. In their delusions they are misunderstood mavericks, and calling them out for the idiot brutes that they are makes them feel harassed, when, in fact, it's just that their behavior has no place in sane human society. And before you cry out, "I'm just a nonconformist with unpopular opinions, and the majority calls me a hate group because their PC minds can't stand original thought" let me give you a little advice. If you have two sparring groups, it's quite easy to tell which is the hate group baddies and who are the goodies -- and it has nothing to do with the majority. If one group has too many people you wouldn't want your daughter to date -- that's the hate group[3]. And if many sane people tell you you're part of a hate group, before arguing with them, try to think very hard if they may be right, because they probably are. Another tell: if a group refers to social justice as a negative -- they're the bad guys. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w_pogrom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w_pogrom [3]: If you think about half the population would be fine with their daughter dating people in one group and half with the other, then you may have a simple case of two opposing political movements.

eropple 11y ago

> By what basis do you make that assertion? I know them by the fruits of their labors, as they should be known. The concerted attacks on Anita Sarkeesian--an academic, not a journalist--and Jenn Frank--a writer of opinion articles, not a journalist--and a handful of others who just happen to be loud and female and mostly not-journalists but still just so very unethical, we promise, prove the mistruths in those the declarations of intent, be it from outright liars who are participating to the useful idiots who cover the brigading scum. > The lapses were mutually beneficial, and there was harassment against the men involved as well. Yeah, Nathan Grayson totes had to flee from his home and completely uproot his life. Wait, no, the other thing.

kinghajj 11y ago
> prove the mistruths in those the declarations of intent, be it from outright liars who are participating to the useful idiots who cover the brigading scum. You've just stated exactly my point!!! Not everybody that identifies with GG has malicious motivations, they're just "useful idiots" who need to think more critically about the statements they ingest. Hence my complaint about over-generalization: if you outright vilify people and call them names, they'll only get defensive and be less likely to consider critiques. > Yeah, Nathan Grayson totes had to flee from his home and completely uproot his life. I never meant to imply that the distribution was equal, and I acknowledged previously that there were lots of goons acting completely reprehensibly ("Now, there probably are sexist feelings at the root of many of their members' concerns").
- eropple 11y ago
  Useful idiots are still morally culpable for providing cover for bad people. You don't get a pass on aiding malice through ignorance. And there is a point at which the intense clinging to "well both sides" goes from ignorant to in itself malicious. At this point, months into this, I don't think you can be in that epistemic closure without actively adopting its mores. I have stopped entertaining the notions of people who want to hurt my friends, and the people who want to defend them. Changing minds is a nice-to-have, but putting a stop to the bad behavior is a necessity. So at this point I think that it is sufficient to beat them. Which has already happened; they've already, individually and in aggregate, lost the battle to dominate the industry, to freeze out people who want to cater to people who aren't young white males. The GamerGate people will have their sinecures and their friendly developers (which is why the shirt-rending screaming about "SJWs" is hilarious, it's not like the industry is going to stop making games for young white males), but as a whole, they've lost, and I'm okay with not really making nice-nice to them as they fade to irrelevance.
  - nailer 11y ago
    > And there is a point at which the intense clinging to "well both sides" goes from ignorant to in itself malicious. Seriously, if you're ignoring one side being horrible but not the other, that's endorsing harassment and threats.
nailer 11y ago
I don't know who the other person is, but Sarkeesian made up a bald faced lie about a Hitman game rewarding you for killing strippers when it penalises you, and Johnathan Macintosh (the dude from femfreq) thinks I'm a horrible human being for playing Mortal Kombat. What they say doesn't really affect me: I think most people know they're nuts with an agenda, but saying FemFreq makes up stuff for attention is completely reasonable.
- eropple 11y ago
  So here's the thing that's gonna blow your mind: I don't have to agree with FemFreq to think that the GamerGate swarm's behavior toward them is fucking unacceptably horrid and that it's because they think there's room for video games that don't cater to young white males. Though the people involved would be called "friends of friends", I only very rarely agree with the second-order conclusions that FemFreq makes and I think their politics in particular around violence in media are profoundly weird and wrong. I have no beef with Mortal Kombat, and I own MKX. I've met Zoe Quinn probably half a dozen times and I don't really care for her schtick or even the games she makes (though I'll give her credit for Crash Override, I think that's a good idea). I think Brianna Wu is kind of personally odious and is being as vocal and visible as she is to help raise her own profile. I think Shanley Kane is kind of a bully who wants people to feel bad at least as much as she wants things to change. But all of that--yes, literally (who), all of that--is secondary to this: on the big, important things, they're right. American culture is profoundly racist and sexist and video game culture is worse than average. Games are built largely to pander--not even just your average "catering"--to young white males, and even as a young(-ish) white male that kind of sucks. This is something we should talk about. This is a real thing. What isn't a real thing is the straight-up fiction told by Eron Gjoni that led directly to destroying a woman's life. What isn't a real thing is the catastrophic misreading of a couple of articles about the sublimation of "gamer culture" (what a joke) into the mainstream. "'Gamer' is meaningless because everybody plays games" turned into, in the minds of some very scared and very small people, "fuck gamers they're dead." The request for more representation in games permuted somehow into "no representation for people like us", even though there's literally (who) no way on God's green earth that video game publishers would not still and forever cater to that population. "Some people who like games and make games hang out with and know some people who like games and write about games" turned into ethics in games journalism, while, all along and completely unmentioned, IGN et al, with their million-dollar ad spends (not necessarily corrupting, but a sort of bias that none of the GamerGate talking heads mention), and the straight-up YouTube payola schemes (you know, actual corruption) have gone unmentioned, almost certainly because they aren't "anti-GG". So even setting aside the bad behavior that overwhelmingly comes from one side of the aisle, we are starting at a position of fundamental reasonableness versus fundamental unreasonableness. Some of the people involved are people I would characterize as extremists, others to a large degree just bad actors. And if the criticisms actually were "FemFreq makes stuff up for attention," I'd probably honestly be partly in agreement. But it's not, it's really not. In the heart of hearts of the people doing this shit, it's that women and minorities are elbowing their way to the table and the specter of loss of relative privilege is scary so we'd better fight back and the only way we know how to fight back is to try to make them give up by making it not worth the damage to their lives. The fact of the matter is this: you lose when you start trying to hurt people. You just do. That, in the rhetoric you don't actually care about, there's a point to be considered actually and truly stops mattering when you are attempting, as a group, to hurt people in a concrete and tangible manner. A GamerGater being socially shunned for his retrograde bullshit is not the same as a normal person being forced from her--invariably her--home because of death threats toward her and her family. This is not the False Equivalency Zone, and you will find no takers here.

pron 11y ago

I am not going to address many of your questions because the answers are obvious if you honestly think about them (an honest reading of the rhetoric should supply all the necessary clues); also, I'm not familiar with the details (though it's still obvious what's going on). I do, however, want to provide some historical background about hate groups in response to: > Then why were these 'hate groups' active before the allegations were made, if they all truly only target people for "who they are" and not "what they do"? (I assume you meant "weren't", right?) Well, history teaches us that oftentimes there's a lot of pent-up anger in people that only rises to the surface -- in the form of mob violence -- in response to a trigger, which takes the form of an accusation of some illicit action taken by the mob's victims. For example, many pogroms against Jews were incited by some incident[1][2] (usually fabricated, sometimes partly true, sometimes blown out of proportion). Same goes for lynch mobs in the US. That's just how mob violence works. Also -- and this is very obvious, but I think I'll be amiss if I don't explain this point, you say: > while conveniently ignoring the harassment other GG members receive from anti-GG ones? You imply symmetry where there is none. In civilized society, it's perfectly acceptable to harass members of hate groups. In fact, it's a civic duty to do so. The KKK and the SPLC are not two equal-but-opposing sides. The former is a hate group while the latter isn't. When one harasses the other it's mob violence; if it's the other way around it's common sense. Also, the "harassment" against members of the hate group (although, again, I'm not familiar with the details of this seventh-grade kerfuffle) is often just calling them out for what they are. While clearly moronic villains, unlike in comic books, they don't appreciate and accept their villainy because they're morons. In their delusions they are misunderstood mavericks, and calling them out for the idiot brutes that they are makes them feel harassed, when, in fact, it's just that their behavior has no place in sane human society. And before you cry out, "I'm just a nonconformist with unpopular opinions, and the majority calls me a hate group because their PC minds can't stand original thought" let me give you a little advice. If you have two sparring groups, it's quite easy to tell which is the hate group baddies and who are the goodies -- and it has nothing to do with the majority. If one group has too many people you wouldn't want your daughter to date -- that's the hate group[3]. And if many sane people tell you you're part of a hate group, before arguing with them, try to think very hard if they may be right, because they probably are. Another tell: if a group refers to social justice as a negative -- they're the bad guys. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w_pogrom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w_pogrom [3]: If you think about half the population would be fine with their daughter dating people in one group and half with the other, then you may have a simple case of two opposing political movements.