dreffen

The Info Leak about Quinn happened on August 15th. Yes there was as I said "terrible and disgusting" things that happened because of that. Guess what? I and many thousands of other people were not involved with that.

On August 27th Adam Baldwin coined the hashtag "GamerGate"

Less than 24 hours later somewhere around 12 different gaming sites all in unison posted "Gamers are Dead" articles, many somehow linking Anita into the mess.

And since then there has been almost zero attention paid to Quinn at all by GamerGate as a consensus. You don't see us all thunderclapping death threats... that was the media, the scared... sad media.

I wrote this, I deleted it, I wrote it agian then cut it into a txt file and read another page of comments.

I don't agree with harassment, racism, bullying or doxxing. I also don't believe in non equality feminism. This makes me part of #GamerGate. When I go deep, when I spend 15 hours a day on twitter playing both sides what do I find? I see the third teir of game journalists and devs throwing racist, sexist insults out to regular gamers. And guess what? the people sending the insults are followed by Jeff Gerstmann, Brad Shoemaker, Patrick Klepek and Vinny Caravella. These tweets go unanswered from anyone in games media and if any attention is brought to them they are conveniently deleted only to live on archive.today where few will ever see them again.

There was an issue before "GamerGate" that involved Quinn and that was terrible and its disgusting and sad that it happened.It opened a can of worms. I don't believe GamerGate was even about Quinn so much but about the fact that there were strange ethics practices going on. It caused a lot of people to take a look at the games media and if you think that's bad. If you really think that having people watch a site to make sure they are doing right by the consumer is bad? I don't know... I just...

I think the saddest part is how the Staff appears to be in some sort of bubble where they only see the retweets of their friends about these issues. Pretty early on Patrick muted me on twitter because I calmly asked him questions he wasn't prepared to answer. I reached out to him on tumblr (as I have before) and received no response. I see in this letter and from a lot of people on the "other side" about how they wan't dialogue but I guess that is just a mask of good faith? The first real mention of GamerGate on the site comes not as a "This is a complicated issue, both sides may have made a mistake and we honestly can't make an opinion at this time" it's a "no. you are wrong. We saw the stories that made up facts and only showed one side and now we stand on their side"

As I posted the chart before a very tiny part of GamerGate has been about Quinn and Sarkeesian. Especially as time moves on. The only thing that has increased is the net of media coverage and the amount of people involved. The only reason you can really think this is still going on for thousands of men and women who are Pro GamerGate is because you wont have the dialogue because you wont "Listen and Believe"

I feel like a criminal because I'm not allowed to want people to be kind and honest and when I ask for people to be kind and honest I get told I'm a shitlord pissbaby who isnt kind and insults people with lies.

I just want there to be the equivalent of Fox News for gaming journalism so the gamergaters can all go there.

So you're basically admitting right here that you're not willing to hear anyone out? Because that's what everyone involved is sick of-- Trying to actually do good and prove that they can do good, and being told again and again "how ironic, ha ha" and ignored for it. I know women and people of all colors have chimed in and are utterly sick of being called "tokens" or, in many cases, simply told they're not real, or that they're brainwashed. It's disgusting.

I'm a humanist.

When your only method of organization is a hashtag, you do not get to choose who can co-opt your movement. Those people weren't appointed as leaders, they can't be forced to drop their support, and in the swirling, chaotic mass that is social media, any denouncement won't reach the majority of people. I said it earlier in this thread; hashtags are perfect for anyone to jump on, sling shit, and bounce out. There's no organization, no way to form a majority opinion on anything, and no way to force people out.

The anti-GG field has its own share of extremists, even if they aren't as well known, and there's no way to force them out either. Doesn't mean you should throw everyone under the bus for their views/actions. Hashtags are the easiest and worst ways to say you are a part of something.

The best litmus test for situations like these is to see which side is most open to criticism and discussion. At this point all of the video game "journalism" sites actively refuse any discussion. The side that doesn't let the other get a word in is often the one who is hiding something. I'll continue to support GB by being a subscriber, but only because of this one fact that few recognize; gaming "journalism" has ALWAYS BEEN and WILL ALWAYS BE a fucking joke. Any pro GamerGate persons actions are ultimately futile. You're trying to fix a structure that was built from the ground up on bullshit. Giant bomb is a media website with fun personalities that I like, I hold no delusions of fairness or ethics of it or any website like it.

You also don't have to look far to see that GamerGate raised 11,000 dollars for a fundraiser against bullying. ( https://www.crowdrise.com/GamerGateStompsOutBullying/fundraiser/ )

Or that it managed to fund The Fine Young Capitalists project, where women create games.

I've read Jeff's statement and once again this whole thing has been portrayed as a one way street. Only people who were against gamergate or haven't even done anything(afaik some people were harassed who didn't talk about this thing) were targets of harassment, no mention of Boogie or TotalBiscuit, but whatever. What about comments years ago from GB's staff about European journalists? Which are clearly on the take and do this and that? I remember that distinctly happening multiple times. You can call people which you don't know personally or professionally all kind of shit and when it gets back at you(years later and from other people obviously) this is somehow farcical and just a smokescreen for people to instigate harassment. Nice narrative you've got there.

Look, I don't come to video game websites for journalistic integrity, I don't fight that fight. I thought something good might've come out of GG and the majority of events were negative(death threats for everybody). And I for one, don't think that game journalism WORLDWIDE is corrupt, so take it or leave it.