Quote from: Snowman0147;795064So if Anita believes in her cause so much why did she leave?  Why not call out the death threat giver as hateful loser and gave the speech anyway?  If she was serving a cause she would do that.  The fact she step down and played victim tells me she really doesn't believe in her cause.  Maybe because she is a coward, or maybe because there is not enough profit in the speech itself compared to playing as the victim?

Because if she gave the speech and nothing happened, then it wouldn't fit the narrative that her detractors are dangerous, when in reality they're as much slacktivists as the Outrage Brigade, possibly even more since many of them can't drive yet.

A canceled speech due to death threats gets covered as if the death threats were real, so she keeps the narrative going.

Quote from: Will;794996It needs to be less hostile and unwelcoming to some groups.

QuoteI'm sure people disagree with me, but I don't think rpg.net was always this bad.

From about 99 to around 2003 it was AWESOME! The best place on the net. My home away from home. And I'm sure others felt that way too, hence the continual hatred towards what that place has become from ex-pats. I still miss rpgnet. The place that wont ever exist again. I'm here because its the closest.

Quote from: BenTheFerg;795039It is this kind of callous indifference about the rape threats,  vile abuse, doxxing and finally death threats that really sticks in my craw and those of others.

Can't you simply accept that being subjected to that level of hate for having views which oppose yours is truly terrifying?

I realise we will never agree on the idea that feminism has a valid case on gender representation in gaming but. .... can you at least treat your intellectual opponents with some humanity?

Gamergate has, with their threat patrol who are responding to threatened social media accounts and reporting harassment.

Callous bastards.

Quote from: BenTheFerg;795039It is this kind of callous indifference about the rape threats,  vile abuse, doxxing and finally death threats that really sticks in my craw and those of others.

Can't you simply accept that being subjected to that level of hate for having views which oppose yours is truly terrifying?

I realise we will never agree on the idea that feminism has a valid case on gender representation in gaming but. .... can you at least treat your intellectual opponents with some humanity?

Here is why most gamers may seem "callous" on that front to you.

For one, rape/death threats have been common online for years now. Its one aspect of trolling online that will continue until the government imposes Orwellian-style regulation of online activity, or 14 year old boys stop being 14 year old boys. And trolling of that sort didnt begin with the internet. Any kind of celebrity ever has dealt with it, from Stephen King to Mr. Rogers. Most of us don't take such trolling seriously. Some people do, but that reaction seems incredibly naive to the rest of us.

On that note, the special reason no is sympathetic towards the trolling of, say, Anita Sarkeesian is that evidence has since shown that many of these threats pre-date Gamergate, and that Anita has been dishonest about those in a clear attempt to create a false narrative. There is, truuthfully, nothing to connect Gamergate to the majority of trolling Anita was subjected to, but she chose to do so. That choice does not imply the actions of someone who is afraid, rather the actions of someone who is using those threats to further her own agenda. Now, granted thats a much healthier response, but it still is one of many things that calls her honesty into question.

Moreover, to continue with Anita, she drew alot of attention to a rather horrific flash game that simulated causing injuries on her face. And it was awful, just in really bad taste. However, any sympathy for Anita on that matter gets thrown out the window when you read her fanfiction about ruthlessly killing the male designers of videogames she doesn't like (true story). That's where sympathy becomes replaced with a sense of hipocracy for me and others.

Secondly, its been strongly implied again and again that the threats/doxxing/what-have-you is only happening to women who speak out against Gamergate. Thats an utter construct far from the truth. Its been going on everywhere to everyone involved on both sides. GG supporters routinely face the same trolling daily. This logically sggests to me that blaming one side or the other is ridiculous. So when someone does that, they in effect forfiet what sympathy they may have been afforded. They are seen (fairly or unfairly) in the same light as Sarkeesian-opportunists). This may indeed be very unfair to a few people who are genuinely ignorant. But I personally believe people are responsible for thier own ignorance. Even when it comes to people I really like, like Felicia Day. I do feel bad for her, but I think her reaction was wrong. Ethically she mis-stepped. And I think as someone who ostensibly has been a gamer ( I won't say "part of gaming culture" because I think gaming culture is a fantasy created by psuedo-activists and egocentrics), she should know better to buuy into the stereotypes the media is trying to push.

Thirdly, gamers are geeks. Geeks know ALL ABOUT being hated for having views, interests, ways, what-have-you that are unpopular. Geeks have been ostracised and demonized since the anti-intellectual mainstream evolved in the Western World. So yet another person who is coming along and spewing  hate at them but wants sympathy because a few anonymous people online hate them back, well, kinda sticks in the craw of many geeks. It's like an Italian guy trying to play the Race Card in Harlem, for lack of a better metaphor.

Strawman? If anything it's you lot who are stuffing it full of hay.

'Feminists interested in inclusivity' doesn't solely mean 'OH NO A KNEELING WOMAN MEN WILL GO RAPE NAU'

It, in fact, often means folks feeling like the hobby is more open and includes them. Whomever 'them' is.

I mean, if the point wasn't 'including' it'd be called something else, like MenFeelBadity.

That's why people celebrate things like 5e's 'paragraph,' Paizo having a range of characters, and so on.

Yeah, it runs the risk of tokenism. But, you know, why not sometimes someone is Indian and nobody makes a big deal of it? Just cause?

(Witness some comic book guy losing his shit over the fact that Sanjay and Craig cartoon happens to have an Indian kid.)

Quote from: Will;795082Strawman? If anything it's you lot who are stuffing it full of hay.

'Feminists interested in inclusivity' doesn't solely mean 'OH NO A KNEELING WOMAN MEN WILL GO RAPE NAU'
It, in fact, often means folks feeling like the hobby is more open and includes them. Whomever 'them' is.

I mean, if the point wasn't 'including' it'd be called something else, like MenFeelBadity.

That's why people celebrate things like 5e's 'paragraph,' Paizo having a range of characters, and so on.

Yeah, it runs the risk of tokenism. But, you know, why not sometimes someone is Indian and nobody makes a big deal of it? Just cause?

(Witness some comic book guy losing his shit over the fact that Sanjay and Craig cartoon happens to have an Indian kid.)

IGNORATIO ELENCHI

It's dishonest to challenge gamers to do something about anonymous internet threats; gamers are not the NSA, nor are they an omniscient deity, there is no credible circumstance in which gamers could ever actually regulate internet threats.  That is the job of government agencies.  It's dishonest to suggest (or more often, imply) that gamers need to do more about anonymous internet threats, which brings me to why this narrative is run.  It is a bargaining position, a drama bomb that anti-GG types will drop to put gamers on the defensive, to try to coerce them into some other concession.

These other concessions are things like "stop using your name, make up a new name" or "parrot our words on this topic".  Parroting their words, becoming part of their gang on the surface, is what they want most.  Bullying doesn't work without at least a successful threat display, and getting a bunch of people to say the same thing in a threatening tone is one of the simplest.  Once a bully has at least the appearance of a mob backing them up, not giving in to their coercion starts to look risky.  In contrast, it looks cheap to acquiesce and speak the words the bullies have demanded.  Once the words are spoken, the speaker appears from the outside to be part of the gang, and appearance is all the gang leader really needs to operate.

Quote from: Alathon;795087It's dishonest to challenge gamers to do something about anonymous internet threats; gamers are not the NSA, nor are they an omniscient deity, there is no credible circumstance in which gamers could ever actually regulate internet threats.  That is the job of government agencies.  It's dishonest to suggest (or more often, imply) that gamers need to do more about anonymous internet threats, which brings me to why this narrative is run.  It is a bargaining position, a drama bomb that anti-GG types will drop to put gamers on the defensive, to try to coerce them into some other concession.

These other concessions are things like "stop using your name, make up a new name" or "parrot our words on this topic".  Parroting their words, becoming part of their gang on the surface, is what they want most.  Bullying doesn't work without at least a successful threat display, and getting a bunch of people to say the same thing in a threatening tone is one of the simplest.  Once a bully has at least the appearance of a mob backing them up, not giving in to their coercion starts to look risky.  In contrast, it looks cheap to acquiesce and speak the words the bullies have demanded.  Once the words are spoken, the speaker appears from the outside to be part of the gang, and appearance is all the gang leader really needs to operate.

Funny thing is, there is a twitter set up just to flag abusive tweets from the GG side of the fence. It was set up by GG supporters.

I don't see the other side doing anything to police the idiots on their side, but GG is actually trying.

I personally don't give much of a toss about this, not my scene, but as this turned up on the BBC news site and interrupted my usual reading habits, i though i'd post it here for you lot to argue endlessly about.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29821050

Quote from: One Horse Town;795101I personally don't give much of a toss about this, not my scene, but as this turned up on the BBC news site and interrupted my usual reading habits, i though i'd post it here for you lot to argue endlessly about.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29821050

Wow, I see she's gotten some profession style tips and makeup work now.

Seriously though - this is an example of why the ANTI-GG people don't want it to go away either, because if it ever did, they wouldn't get to be on the Beeb and MSNBC and write articles or give interviews... they'd lose THEIR celebrity status. So in a way, we're doing them a favor I guess.

Would be nice if they'd interview some pro-GG folks occasionally though. You know, fair and balanced and all that good stuff.

Well, here's an anti-GG article calling out anti-GG:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/10/how_to_end_gamergate_a_divide_and_conquer_plan.2.html

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;795104Well, here's an anti-GG article calling out anti-GG:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/10/how_to_end_gamergate_a_divide_and_conquer_plan.2.html

QuoteFrom the beginning, no one has really contested the idea that much of the gaming press is crap. The notion that Gamergate is really about "ethics in journalism" is laughed off in light of the harassment and misogyny that's been witnessed over the last two months—not because those ethics concerns are invalid, but because the movement has no credibility to be arguing over those things. Still, the ironic fact remains that moderates remain in the movement because of those concerns, not because of their misogynist tendencies. This wouldn't mean a thing, of course, except that addressing those ethics concerns will get those moderates to leave Gamergate. That is why journalistic ethics are important.

As a means to an end and not as an end in itself?

QuoteSo would it hurt to do something about all this? One site, the Escapist, did issue new ethics policies and allowed civil discussion of Gamergate early after the start of the controversy, and Gamergate members, shockingly, seemed satisfied, as the Escapist did not make the Gamergate community's boycott list, even after the Escapist subsequently ran 10 interviews with anonymous female game developers, many of whom were sharply critical of Gamergate.

It's almost as if the author wasn't expecting the GGs to be reasonable....

QuoteIt would behoove the press and other observers of Gamergate to recognize that the movement's flaws are, for the most part, flaws of the Internet, of online discourse, and in a larger sense, of humanity, and that the miasma that floats around Gamergate deserves to be attached to society at large. ... When I wrote about online anonymous culture, I found that verbal abuse, racial epithets, doxxing, and death threats were ubiquitous. The media's discovery of this abuse does not exempt them from doing the real work of researching it, reporting on it, and most significantly, not making it worse, especially when they are part of the story.

I think we can all agree on that.

JG

Quote from: jhkim;794959Yeah, I also don't buy S'mon's characterization of the male and the female brain as if it was an inborn universal. I don't claim to know what the pure genetic sexual behavior of humans without culture. Liberals tend to suggest it is more like bonobos, while conservatives tend to suggest it is more like chimpanzees - but we have major differences from either, and culture is a huge influence on sexual behavior.

In my experience, adolescent male gamers (like my son) don't have any notable tendency to want helpless damsels to rescue and screw. I think this tends to be a fantasy of people who feel less powerful than they rightfully should be, while people who are more fulfilled tend to fantasize more about being dominated (like dominators/dominatrixes). I associate power fantasies more with adults getting worn down by the job market. If anything, I think today's teens feel a little too powerful.

A little off-topic - I thought it was interesting to see the trope of rescuing the helpless love interest (i.e. wounded Peeta) feature so prominently in The Hunger Games.

Honestly I think the helpless damsel/dependent trope has fallen out of popularity over all, at least to some degree except in more comedic fiction. The hero and his opposition might outclass the dependent completely but that's different from being unskilled, helpless and
there only to be rescued.

But I'm getting off on tangent. sorry.

People can interpret this in a bunch of ways consistent with their platforms, but it's interesting:

http://www.pcgamer.com/researchers-find-that-female-pc-gamers-outnumber-males/

Overall, SLIGHTLY more women are gamers than men (very slightly, which might reflect population).
FPS/MMO are 33% female.

So ways you can take this:
Feminists have 'won'
Feminists are stupid because clearly the barriers are minimal or ineffective
Women naturally play some games more than others, but '1/3' market is pretty high.
Maybe women play everything about equally and FPS/MMOs have a less inclusive environment so they are least present there.

But hey, data.

Anita Sarkeesian appears on Colbert Show:
http://jezebel.com/anita-sarkeesian-on-colbert-gamergate-is-terrorizing-w-1652705621?utm_campaign=socialflow_jezebel_facebook&utm_source=jezebel_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

(Good job, GG, fighting her insidious influence by vaulting her onto the national stage!)