Worth Reading: 09/15/2014

I wouldn't get twisted up by people calling you a misogynist for not donating. Either they are idiots or it was something else, and if you're sure it wasn't something else then they were just being ridiculous.

Like, I DO actually support Zoe Quinn but haven't donated to her - I'm not a misogynist. I'm unemployed! I can't donate to someone when I'm just as bad off financially, but I do at least signal boost them for those that are interested.

Yeah I'm really upset. I'm hardly close to her, I've never met her in person but through all my interaction with her on social media she was the nicest, funniest lady and her writing is so good. The thing that pisses me off the most is that she was attacked by people who didn't understand how journalism worked and didn't understand the prestige behind the site her op-ed was posted on. People wonder why it's difficult for some to take GamerGate supporters seriously... this is why. If someone's argument for being against corruption is harassing someone who wrote a 500 word opinion piece with no disclaimers because op-eds don't generally use them then it's hard to take what they are championing seriously.

I don't blame her for leaving, though. I myself am considering going into entomology or mycology instead of games now from harassment towards myself and others and I haven't even published a game yet... probably not ever gonna finish what I've been working on, either. It's not worth it. You know what won't harass me for pushing inclusivity in games? Moths.

@dudleyville: When did he group harassers in with people who have a dissenting opinion? Unless you're denying that there was harassment going on, that implication was never made.

Did you know that she originally had disclaimers about all this and that the legal department of the Guardian removed them for being superfluous, then added them back in at her request once the hate machine started churning on her?

She wasn't attacked for being biased. She was attacked for perceived bias. There's a difference.

Oh, and and saying she knowingly antagonized a vengeful group is victim blaming through and through.

Damn. That last line is awesome. I'm stealing it from you. Thanks.

@nmarebfly: That is one story being told. I am aware

There really isn't a difference in this instance. The people who attacked her 'perceived' the bias that she wrote into the article

Victim blaming in the sense that I am blaming a victim. Sure. You say it like it is inherently negative. If you put bait on a hook, throw it in the water, and catch a fish are you going to blame the fish? It's simple logic. But that's an oversimplification. In this case I blame both Jenn because she already knew what response she would receive and I also blame the multitude of harassers for being scumbags

This. The internet is quick to demand facts, but rarely waits for them before it starts the outrage engines turning.

@sinisterraven: Jenn had originally included a sentence about her relationship with Zoe but the Guardian decided it was unnecessary and removed it. Also, not sure how she "knowingly antagonized" anyone.

I do hope you realize how silly it is complain about an opinion piece being biased.

I like this wording, it's incredibly mealy mouthed and dismissive. You realize you're basically accusing both her and the rest of the Guardian of lying, right? The story in question is here and the disclaimer is as of this writing:

• The following footnote was appended on 5 September 2014: An earlier footnote, appended on 1 September, made clear that Jenn Frank had purchased and is a supporter of Zoë Quinn’s work, although this is the first article she has written on the developer and that Frank has also briefly met Anita Sarkeesian. These facts had been included as a footnote by Jenn Frank when she filed her copy before publication but removed by editors because they did not fulfil the criteria for a “significant connection” in line with the Guardian’s editorial guidelines. However, the Guardian wishes to make clear that it was an editorial decision originally to remove the original disclosure, not one made by the author, and we are happy to have restored it in the interests of full disclosure.

If you don't believe there was a difference, why did you say 'I do know she wrote a biased article in a fairly well known publication with little to no reference of her relationship with the subject'? Are you willing to admit that something you thought you knew in good faith was incorrect?

Then let me direct you to my new YouTube series, "Jaded ironic hipsters react to Victorian Inventions!".

LAUGH at the dullards who don't even understand Morse's Code. DESPAIR at the ignorant folks who refuse to acknowledge the importance of vulcanization. And THRILL at episode one in which no less than three social media marketing experts get their beards caught in an electric dynamo.

But it wasn't. I read the article when it was first posted. There was no disclaimer. So thus my statement was correct. Whether or not there was ever thought of disclaimer is rather irrelevant. Even if she was told it was unnecessary she should have had the good sense to leave it anyhow. Also could you source things instead of just copy pasting the bullet point

@sinisterraven: There is no conflict of interest. It’s delusion. It’s bonkers. It makes no sense.

This makes me blood boil. You are a bully. Please don’t act so fucking irresponsible. Please don’t. I’m pleading with you. Why are you so cruel? Why? I’m at a loss of words …

When did I ever say 'conflict of interest' or bully anyone? I don't use twitter and I didn't attack anyone. You realize you are being more of a bully by attacking me, putting words in my mouth, and calling me names than I ever have during this whole event right?

No, that's not how this works. An editor decides what an article looks like when it's published. If an editor chooses to remove something from an article, it is removed.

Not that it matters anyway because your entire premise is off. Should Patrick have detailed his personal relationship with every writer who's work he linked to in this piece? Are Patrick and Jim Sterling friends? Have Patrick and Chris Plante ever had a beer together? Has Patrick ever, god forbid, DATED one of these writers?

Jenn never tried to hide the fact that her and Zoe are friends. Anyone who bothered to do five seconds of research could find that out. She did nothing wrong. Cowardly bullies just saw their opportunity to attack someone and they took it.

Nope. She did write a disclaimer. The Guardian's legal and ethics team decided it wasn't worth including, so it was removed. But, please, continue whatever narrative fits what you'd like to believe.

There's so much crap in GamerGate that is annoying from both sides. First off, people like Leigh and people who work at Kotaku who try and lash out at every gamer by painting them all as white, cis-male, racists who live in basements and sports neckbeards and then the other side of the coin with the extremists from GamerGate who think every person at every site related to games is corrupt and evil.

I started following Jenn around the same time I started following Patrick, with 1Up and its plethora of podcasts and video content (all of it fantastic). She didn't deserve the hate she got, but at the same time it was the wrong time to write that article, in my opinion.

Dear god, who implied that? I skimmed some of the things posted here and didn't see it. As you said, you are not a misogynist, but boy does that make me upset that someone would lean into that way of thinking. What if I didn't know about the events of the last month, so I would obviously have not donated to anyone for anything, would that make me a misogynist? Man, I just hate everything about everything right now.

@milkman: This is quite clearly a blogpost and not an article meant to be taken word for word as fact. If Patrick had an actual article up in The Guardian under the 'news' and 'tech' sections then yes, he would need to make such references. As it is a list of links, half summaries, and tweets isn't an article anywhere

@chaser324 said:

Yep, this article's great.

If there's one good thing to come out of all the gamergate stuff, it's the glut of fantastic articles about how a noisy group of people can be confused and misled. I've especially enjoyed these by Liz Ryerson: http://ellaguro.blogspot.com/2014/08/on-right-wing-videogame-extremism.html and http://ellaguro.blogspot.com/2014/09/on-gamers-and-identity.html

That swatting-video was really powerful. What an awful and scary thing to have happen to your family.

Totally. I just finished it and man, that's insane. It really makes me wonder about the culture I say I'm a part of.

I linked the article in the sentence above the quote. Here is the link again.

What you said was 'I do know she wrote a biased article... with little to no reference of her relationship with the subject.' She did not, as a point of fact, write an article without the disclaimer. This is explained in the addendum now added. She DID disclose that information, and the Guardian's editors removed it. Saying that she should have had the good sense to leave it in is a value judgement and not pertinent to the actual facts involved (personally, I agree with the Guardian that it wasn't necessary.)

You may not have known this when you wrote the sentence originally. You know it now.

Are you willing to admit that your original statement was based on a poorly researched assumption (given that the disclaimer has been in place at the above link for 10 days) and while correct from your previous standpoint of incomplete information, was in fact not true now that you have been provided with further facts?

Yes, I'm sure their legal team went out of their way to remove a disclaimer about her relationship with the subject. Put that aside though. My main point was "She was attacked for being biased and using her position to further cloud the actual issue." I believe very firmly that her article did nothing to shed light on the issue but instead simply reinforced a highly one sided and misleading viewpoint on the topic. I have nothing personally against her and hope she does great in whatever she does next but that kind of slanted, obscuring writing is not reporting and I do not shed a tear for it leaving my hobbies. Similarly, the hateful and personal reactionary nature of the whole thing is terrible and useless. Note that I am making these comments here and not calling her house phone to say them because I think it warrants discussion, not attacks. I do not defend in any way the actions of those who caused her move

They state this as a point of fact in the disclaimer in the article. Are you now accusing the Guardian's editorial staff of lying? I'm assuming that you're being sarcastic here, I admit it can be hard to tell. This leads me to believe you are being disingenuous, personally reactionary, and simply reinforcing a highly one sided and misleading viewpoint on the topic.

I'm willing to admit that originally there was no disclaimer on the published article then later they added one claiming that there had been one that was removed. Those are the full facts

You seem to be implying that Jenn is lying about the fact that she originally included a disclosure. Here's a footnote added to her article by The Guardian's editors that lays out exactly what happened:

These facts had been included as a footnote by Jenn Frank when she filed her copy before publication but removed by editors because they did not fulfil the criteria for a “significant connection” in line with the Guardian’s editorial guidelines. However, the Guardian wishes to make clear that it was an editorial decision originally to remove the original disclosure, not one made by the author, and we are happy to have restored it in the interests of full disclosure.

That's about as clear cut as you can get.

Jenn Frank is not, and never has been, a reporter and the article in question is an opinion piece, not a factual news article. I don't know if you're familiar with opinion pieces, but they tend to be one-sided because they are one person's opinion.

@sinisterraven: why dose she have to look at all sides of this issue, its her opinon piece wherein she chose to focus on the fact that this person (Fish was apprently added to it so perhaps its better to say people) was being harrassed on a bunch for a bunch of bullshit reasons. This is a thing with a lot of sides.

@nmarebfly: Yes I am. Seems MUCH more likely she never had one than them going out of their way to remove one. If they actually did then she is a casualty of the whole issue the movement is about: lack of transparency in journalism. If legal teams are intentionally making journalism less transparent then that is a clear indication that this sort of push is needed (the core movement, not the harassment and attacks)

Literally nothing in this post is true. This post IS in the news section of the site. If you look at it from the forums section of the site, it says "Article" right next to it, not blog. If you want to continue arguing semantics, feel free.

Jenn wrote an opinion piece. Like every opinion piece in the history of opinion pieces, it carried the biases of the writer. If this is people's idea of journalistic corruption, it's clear that they know nothing about journalism or corruption.

The stuff with Jenn Frank being forced out is one of the few times I've been legitimately upset instead of cynically rolling my eyes at the internet hate machine during this whole thing.

And I'll say that the article about Thief was saying a lot of the things I thought about that game when I played it. It's pretty blatantly flawed and nakedly mechanical, but it's a lot better than the general consensus gave it credit for. Not the caliber of the original games, obviously, but a decent simulacrum.

EDIT: That NES video made feel old in a "You damn kids, get off my lawn" sort of way, even though some of them are only a few years younger than I am.

@milkman: There is no blog section to this site. There is a blog section of the guardian. Big difference. Jenn's article was in the news section, not the blog section. It is not clearly marked as an opinion piece and if it was people would have less of an issue with it. Claiming people don't know anything without providing a strong reasoning for your own issues is a clear way to show you don't care about anyone else's opinion.

Anyway, been attacked enough here. Glad to see dissenting thoughts are so welcome here. People need to be more introspective when they claim to be against attacks

I agree. That's why I asked you to revise your opinion on Jenn's disclaimer. You were not willing to, or were only willing in the most vague terms possible. The sword cuts both ways.

Honestly, the whole thing experience is a bit like Peggle to me.

I keep trying and failing to parse this sentence.

The thing that actually bothers me isn't the lack of disclosure, it's the lack of complete truth. At least some of the anger and hate directed at Quinn was a result of her hateful rants directed towards The Fine Young Capitalists, which incited more hate and negative attention, eventually leading to their charitable indie go go campaign being hacked. It apparently cost them $10,000. None of that is mentioned in most of the articles covering this story, and that includes Jenn Frank's article. Here is one of the few articles to actually attempts to explain what really happened: http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/09/04/gamergate-a-closer-look-at-the-controversy-sweeping-video-games/

Do Quinn's actions excuse the harassment and threats that she received? Hell no, but it should still be reported as part of the story. When you intentionally avoid mentioning details like this, I believe people have the right to raise their hands and say "you're either too close to this situation, or you're too invested in only telling one side of the story, and you shouldn't be reporting on it."

If you can't even report all the facts before your op-ed article explains how you feel about the situation, I think that's a problem.

But I fully agree about the disclaimer. Once that fact was known, all frustrations related to the lack of a disclaimer should have been immediately redirected towards the website and editor in question, not Jenn Frank.

@sinisterraven: no one has attacked you, just asked you to justify/further explain your points that were called into question.

For those of GamerGate who honestly wanted to have a discussion about the problems in gaming journalism, their good intentions were doomed the second they decided to join a movement that was originally started as a harassment campaign on an indie developer. Did they really think the gaming press would take them seriously? The fact that you have good intentions and legitimate concerns is not enough- how you go about achieving those intentions will have a major impact on your success.

The disclaimer isn't even the issue. The sad truth is that if you write a biased opinion piece, which she did and I cannot fault her for that seeing how she has friends being affected by this, you are going to be attacked online. It shouldn't be like that, and I wish we could change that. But to be surprised when you are attacked? I find that odd. I know that if I write some blogpost about how I want more equality in games, but I find the ideas and opinions of Sarkeesian to be extremist, bad and I don't want her to dictate what game devs can and can't do, then I would most likely get attacked. I can be as measured, cool and diplomatic as humanly possible, but someone will attack me. And I am just a nobody, if I was a somewhat prominent writer? Multiply it tenfold.

Again, I hate that it happened and it really shouldn't, but it's odd to me that she didn't anticipate it.

People who expect journalism to be unbiased are the same people who expect journalists to be robots.

Bias is a fundamental part of human psychology. You can't just put it the side, it's always there, no matter what you do. If you read something that appears to be unbiased, then what that probably means is that the bias is invisible to you.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe "gamergate" was a result of the concept of "gamers" being attacked and generalized by the gaming press, which then led to many critical of the gaming press to unite under that banner. I don't think anyone started using "gamegate" as a hashtag before Leigh Alexander wrote her "anti-gamer" article, and many in the gaming press wrote similar articles.

It's true that some used gamergate hashtags to spew hate towards Zoe Quinn, but I'm pretty sure it didn't start as that. The Zoe Quinn thing started well before gamergate.

The worst thing about the whole "Gamer Gate" thing is the name Gamer Gate. I find it infuriating; like nails on a chalkboard.

Wut? An opinion piece is inherently biased, hence the word "opinion" in the name. Those kind of pieces are never going to be held to the same kind of ethical standards as a piece of hard-hitting investigative journalism. It seems to me that the people crying about ethics in games journalism have a totally warped view on how real journalism actually works.

And if you did write a blogpost saying that Anita was an extremist and that she was telling developers what to do, then yes, you would probably have some blowback as neither of those two statements are true. The things Anita is saying in her videos are pretty much gender studies 101 shit, hardly what I would call "extreme". She also isn't pointing a gun to developers' heads saying, "DON'T CREATE FEMALE CHARACTERS THAT I DON'T LIKE!" She is simply making critiques, a perfectly normal thing to do.

I like Jenn Frank. Her writing and opinions aren't perfect by any means, but I have enjoyed some of her articles. She didn't deserve the legitimate attacks directed at her. It's a shame she has decided to no longer write about games, but I don't really consider it a loss. She barely wrote about games to begin with, so we'll still be able to enjoy the occasional written work from her elsewhere.

At least it's better than donglegate.

Aw man. Not cool at all to see more one sided pieces PK. Especially after just watching your "Why bullies won't win" panel on your YT channel bro.

I'm not on a side. Most of all I'm just sad to see all these previously respected people act so immature and inflammatory.

Why all y'all gotta be butts.

@deadhalf:

Holding grudges isn't going to help anyone.

Some people said some regrettable stuff in the context of a really messed up night. Hopefully everyone involved has moved on.

Except that you've (maybe not you specifically, but mods in general) have deleted every single post with her name at all. It's getting to the point where I don't even understand half the conversation going on now because most of it is missing.

There's a difference in moderating and outright silencing conversation.

That Laurie Penny article that was linked in this Worth Reading is quite something.

There's nothing quite like grouping any criticism towards gaming websites or lack of research as being done solely by "shrieking men who are nothing more than animals" who indulge in recreational misogyny, hating queer people, and being racist.

Apparently I'm secretly a man, and I only dislike lack of research and generalising groups in a negative way because I know I'm a woman who isn't straight? This is news to me.

Somehow I get the impression that if somebody were to compare women as "little more than shrieking animals," there would be a lot more outrage than when Laurie said the same thing about men.

As you can see on this chart, hashtag GamerGate was first used on August 27th. It was used to spread videos about Zoe Quinn.

As you can see here, Alexander's article was written August 28th, after the hashtag was first being used.

So yes, it absolutely did start as an attack on Zoe Quinn, and yes, people absolutely were using the hashtag before Alexander wrote that article.

@gyrfal: By using "they" in the context that he did, the tone he sets is that "they" refers to the people in supports of GamerGate, the harassers and the people with legitimate concerns for transparency in journalism. If he words something like that, it needs to be clear, rather than vague as it appears he groups everyone on one side of the argument together. As I said, the people directly harassing her are not condoned by the majority opinion of the people who ask for more transparency and honesty. As a journalist, one who went to school as he has pointed out many times, he should know to use clearer language, unless he really is grouping harassers and people with dissenting opinion together. In that case, he is misinformed.