Worth Reading: 09/15/2014

Cool. I stand corrected, and I thank you for providing some facts on the matter. I still think a lot of people believed that the tag referred mostly towards anti-gamer articles in the press, though, as I did. I also know a lot of people abandoned #gamergate for #gameethics at one point, so obviously many did realize that gamergate had too much hate associated with it.

@scarycrayons: I don't get why she included Jennifer Lawrence in the beginning. She has nothing to do with any of this. Female celebrities weren't hacked because these men hate women or feminism, or because they're MRAs, or any other bogeyman. They were hacked because these criminals were perverts and had no scruples about invading their privacy and posting their pictures online. They wanted to see nude celebrities that they couldn't find on Mr.Skin.

@patrickklepek https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z13fftyjopfahdvz504cdldh0zr1j52o12w Have you seen David Hill's excellent breakdown of some of the issues with GamerGate?

She uses a lot of strong language in the piece, but I'm not seeing where she groups all men together or mentions that every single person who has anything to say about gamergate falls under the umbrella that she's talking about. She doesn't really specifically define what she means by 'they' in most of the digressions, but there's stuff like 'And everywhere, sexists, recreational misogynists and bigots are losing.' Then later 'the people perpetrating these attacks on women...' which isn't gendered, and is the lead in to the thing you paraphrased. She's not talking about 'men,' she's talking about 'people perpetrating the attacks.'

She's pretty general in this bit: 'The gamersphere then collectively wet its knickers over not being allowed to mercilessly slut-shame their chosen target without being called out, because freedom of speech.' which that rubs me the wrong way a little bit -- she's diminutizing people who identify as part of the gamersphere. If there's any bit in the article I'd want her to rethink, it'd be that.

'The gamification of misogyny predates the internet, but right now, in this world full of angry, broken, lost young men convinced that women have robbed them of some fundamental win in life, it’s rampant.' She does mention men here but it's a general aside and not addressing the 'they' specifically.

Basically, everything in her article is aimed specifically at the people doing the attacking -- if people are fine with stating opinions and not leaking nudes or insulting people, I don't think anything in the piece applies to them.

Edit: Oh, and 'they dare to come into their special boy spaces and actually demand a voice...' genders the space, not the pronoun. Edge case again, but it's still not a blanket statement about males or people that think there's a point to gamergate -- neither of those groups is singled out anywhere in here, unless I'm missing something or being oblivious.

This is in no way to say I don't believe the swatting video (which until now I thought was an urban legend), but what I can't understand is how they got all of that information on him and his wife from just the two of them streaming on Twitch.

Was also nice to see Total Biscuit give some recognition to Jeff and the rest of the crew for doing what they do in his video.

So this is what the argument has been reduced to? "It was posted in the news section, and not clearly marked enough". This is the basis for a "-gate" scandal these days?

And for that, she was subjected to the same avalanche of juvenile misogynists who have been abusing Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian.

Add the words Agenda and Politics to that. Everything a person does is due to an agenda, everything a person says has some sort of politics tied to it.

God damn, watching that video of the guy who got swatted pisses me off. I can't believe people can be that horrible. I wish I could beat the shit out of people like that.

Sure, people believed it referred to those articles as opposed to the campaign against Quinn, but for journalists/critics, they had already seen what happened to Quinn. So when you have people with honest concerns about gaming journalism using that hashtag, journalists were naturally going to be skeptical about their intentions.

@sergio: I don't think the word "legitimate" fits well in your post? It implies certain things about the attacks that are making me very uncomfortable.

It's good to see Jim Sterling's piece mentioned here. He seems to get a bunch of shit for what he says but it always seems that whatever he has to say makes a lot of sense. He often has a lot interesting things to say

Yep. "GamerGate", from its very inception, was a sham based on hate, misinformation, and downright lies.

Corruption, cronyism, all that business is unquestionably an important issue we need to consider in games journalism, and I am sure there are plenty of moderate, reasonable people who saw the "GamerGate" thing and thought "yes, finally, this movement is for me, there's a lot of problems in games journalism!". But at the same time, it should have been pretty clear with a bit of research that the whole thing was rotten at its very core.

If you're a reasonable person with legitimate grievances about games journalism, that's awesome, because there are definitely plenty of those that we should be considering. I can stand with that! Like how the GB crew is such awesome pals with Harmonix, yet they've frequently reviewed many of their games! COLLUSION*.

But if you're associating yourself with "GamerGate" for that, I'm sorry but I'm afraid you've hitched your wagon to a train of shit. Find a better movement. Make a better movement. Don't attach yourself to hate because it happened to gain some traction, or waste your time trying to "legitimize" something started with such an INCREDIBLY obvious agenda of hatred and misogyny.

*Note: no, I don't think GB is corrupt for being friends with Harmonix. I think that is silly. Yet it's an incredibly obvious and overt close dev/journalism relationship that seems to be exactly the kind of thing GamerGate is so upset by, but somehow it completely slipped under their radar? How odd that the bastions of research and fact-checking that is the GamerGate movement somehow missed such an easily-confirmed target for one of the centerpieces of their "concerns". Huh. Weird, that.

Also that there was never any call for a boycott to Game Informer, a publication owned by Gamestop. Isn't that an obvious potential conflict of interest?

@joshwent: seems pretty unfair to think someone should have to take abuse from a bunch of ungrateful pricks every hour of the day but then when he fires back a (completely harmless) quip, he should be crucified. Patrick is about a thousand times more patient with these people than I would ever be in his position.

I get holding people in power at a higher standard but come on, dude. That's a pretty ridiculous response to a harmless comment.

You should look into what Zoe Quinn's been up to the last week and a half or so. It dismantles the foundation of Gamergate and undermines what it stands for to a significant degree. I've been asked not to link to it by the moderators, but if you do a little searching around on your own, it should be pretty easy to find. Or just look at Zoe Quinn's twitter from around September 6th, she said a whole lot after keeping it under wraps for weeks. It's pretty amazing to see her turn all that shit on its head like that, she's definitely a stronger person than a lot of people give her credit for for enduring all of what she did.

I think it's worth reading the piece Jenn Frank wrote on her blog before "On Leaving" as an interesting companion article. It's called "You have to protect yourself" and it's about how difficult her experience has been as a freelance writer trying to work in game coverage. You can all point to harassers and say "those awful people," and you'd be right to do so, but the deep-seeded, more depressing truth of the matter is in the systemic devaluation of the sort of work Jenn Frank was doing. If anything, I almost feel happy for her that she got out of an industry that took her love and dedication and offered so little in return.

That's why so many people who write games coverage are so dismissive of gamergate's claims of unethical journalism, which while not always unfounded, show such a tremendous misalignment of priorities, that responding to them can end up dislocating the priorities of publications and writers themselves. Not saying that legitimate ethical issues shouldn't be addressed, but none of the issues I've seen presented via gamergate come anywhere close to the severity and pervasiveness of the issues Jenn Frank brings to the forefront in her "You have to protect yourself" article.

I get what you're trying to say here, but you seem to be under-informed as to what the idea of misogyny actually encompasses. Misogyny doesn't just manifest in straight-up vaguely-cartoony moustache-twirling "hatred" for women, the kind where you think they should be barefoot in the kitchen and only speak until spoken to and you should be able to hit them whenever you feel like it. It doesn't have to be something indefensible or incredibly heinous to be misogyny.

Sexual objectification of women (particularly unconsenting) is part of the concept of misogyny. Seeing a female (celebrity or otherwise) as an sexual object whose private photos you have a right to view just because they're available is still misogyny. It's showing a lack of respect for someone because she happens to be a pretty lady you want to see without her clothes on, which you can pretty easily break down to "lack of respect for someone because they're female" because obviously if they weren't female, you wouldn't care about seeing them.

I hope that last extrapolation helps make it pretty clear? After all, how can disrespecting someone precisely because they are female and have something you want NOT be misogyny at some of its very simplest?

It can be a crime (the actual hackers), probably not quite a crime but still shady as shit (having a large hand in distributing the pictures) or even relatively "innocent" ("I still respect her as a person but I reaaaally want to see her boobs and it's not like little old me looking at them is really hurting anyone, really"). It can be any of these things and still also be misogyny.

@dudleyville: It's interesting how you seem to be intentionally reading a very specific grammar out of something that is quite clear.

Yeah, pretty much this. Maybe there is something legitimate to be gleaned from the arguments that have been going on, but I haven't actually seen it.

And on another note, if you're the voice of reason on the side of the gamer-gaters or whatever you call yourselves, the kind of guy that isn't harassing anyone and just wants to be heard, maybe right now isn't the best time to be making your arguments and getting upset about being misrepresented. Because the fires set by the raging assholes are still burning. Trying to set fires of your own in protest of something else at the same time isn't exactly a great way to be heard, nor is it a great way to not be lumped in with the other people setting fires. You're not being victimized, you're running headfirst into a fucking minefield and blaming the press when you set one off. Wait until they've cleared the mines out before running in there, maybe you'll actually accomplish something.

I still can't for the life of me understand why people's britches are so twisted over the issues of collusion and conflicted interests in games media, or the perceived issues thereof. If you have issues with a games publication or a particular writer, don't consume their content. I stopped reading IGN when I became fed up with their ad-factory cover stories. There's a whole internet out there!

I don't know what to say to people who are so threatened by writers and personalities who they perceive as "pushing an agenda". What are they actually worried about? That game developers will stop making games for them?

I had not heard of swatting until I saw that video and MOTHER FUCKER. Are you really fucking stooping that low just because you don't like someone. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST

@gyrfal: How is that very clear? He uses the word "they" with heavy implication of people with dissenting opinion grouped with harassers. It is very much unclear. If he wanted to be clear, he would preface that saying that not all people in support of GamerGate harassed her. Being vague is either a mistake as a journalist in terms of writing or wanting to make a point. If he was trying to make a point, it was irresponsible and misinformed.

That destructoid video did amuse me. I know that making fun of someone for partaking in an entirely harmless hobby is a little mean-spirited, but I think being able to laugh it off is an important skill to develop. Even the one lady went "I have kids, I don't know what I'm doing with my life."

As for all this other garbage...fuck it. Doesn't seem worth my time to try and care in any which way.

@officermeatbeef: Looking at a woman's leaked nude photos is misogyny now? "Unconsenting sexual objectification" is misogyny?

Christ on a cracker, the extent to which serious terms have been stretched to meaninglessness still makes me do a spit-take sometimes. This is only slightly a step above throwing around the term "rape" for things that were in no way as serious or heinous.

Can we power down on some of the charged language here, folks?

@milkman: I tend to agree re: Jenn Frank. Though I think her reasons for leaving for probably a little more deep seated than the past few weeks events alone, I genuinely liked her and am sad she's decided to leave her video games work. This is a particular case where there's really absolutely no debating what happened to her was a sort of a tragedy; the argument against what she is alleged to have done is based on mob-fueled ignorance.

@scotto said:

Not just that, a real, honest-to-god, 193-year-old respected newspaper posted a disclaimer following their original choice of editing for what was extremely clear to anyone with slightest bit of reading comprehension an op-ed piece, and they were obviously LYING ABOUT IT. A publication with almost 2 centuries of established journalistic credibility is willing to risk throwing that all away just to get some insane heat off a freelancer who was never even in their employ, because... ummmmm.... COLLUSION!?!?

If you think you're part of GamerGate, well, I hope you're looking reaaaaal close here, because there's no better example of what it REALLY represents. It's a "movement" focused on insane conspiracy, provably false mudslinging, and "examining journalistic integrity" by people who don't really understand what journalism OR integrity are, while gleefully ignoring the dozens upon dozens of easily-confirmed, easy to find, and indisputable conflicts of interest that would actually be worthy of severe scrutiny and discussion. Because none of those targets fit their actual agenda of hatred and batshit craziness.

This. Ignorance is one thing, but willfully spreading a false narrative because you haven't taken any time to actually do any critical thinking or research on your part is irresponsible and deserving of nothing but scorn. And if you don't know or understand what an "op-ed" piece is, sorry, your opinions and "critiques" of journalism are useless, because you quite clearly lack a fundamental understanding of the field.

What's more, even if you didn't realize the piece was an op-ed... I can't even find a part of it that anyone could argue as false? Everything Frank mentions is easily verifiable as having happened. I was there on Twitter when it all broke down, I saw it happen. Though again, the point is moot because if you couldn't tell the piece was an op-ed from the way it was written, your clear lack of critical thinking and reading comprehension abilities means any criticism you have of journalism is fundamentally worthless.

Losing Frank as a writer is one of the saddest goddamn things. Even the most cursory examination of her work and career makes it clear she loves games and just wanted to write what she loved, yet every single step of the way has been dogged with this kind of bullshit. It's a testament to how much she actually does love games that she stayed around as long as she did. The same could be said about any of the women involved in this, because who the fuck would want to subject themselves to this kind of horseshit on a daily basis for terrible pay and no job security if they didn't actually love the field?

I mean, I don't even have to deal with this kind of abuse and just seeing it happen makes me want to have nothing to do with games or gamers at all.

People haven't been reporting on this because TFYC have increasingly clearly come out as opportunistic scam artists.

The dude running it has never disclosed anything about who would be making the games, and if they would have any game making experience whatsoever. What is clear, is that the 8% going to the one winner of the contest (The other half dozen contestants getting nothing) is only 8% of net profit, which is what is left over once himself and any mystery developers involved have been paid.

Zoe and Maya's "Hateful rants" as you put it, were actually pretty reasonable questions about the transparency of TFYC's operation and why these women were being asked to contribute ideas to something they very likely wouldn't see proceeds from, instead of any number of great ways to get women into working in the industry. As well as their at the time backwards (Or they claim, poorly worded and easily misinterpreted) stance on Trans Women.

Someone seemingly unconnected to either of the two people you're assigning blame to linked to the main guy's public facebook page (the alleged doxxing) and the flood of traffic from the exposure crashed their site accidentally, having nothing to do with Zoe or Maya, as they themselves say here.

And as for the fair and balanced Forbes article, it gets several big facts entirely wrong in ways that are pretty easily researched. Rebel Jam, Quinn's proposed Game Jam, was conceived of a month and a half after her brief criticism of TFYC in response to something entirely separate, the disintegration of the dumb TV show pilot of GAME_JAM.

All that said, probably the grossest thing about TFYC is that as soon as the hate train on Zoe (which was based on the leaking of her private information and an entirely fabricated scandal) started, they were happy to jump on board and misrepresent all of this in order to throw fuel on the fire. This is spiteful at best, grossly exploitative of someone's disgusting harassment at worst, and given how closely they've aligned themself with 4chan and how much funding they've received directly from that side of this issue since, based on their entirely made up victimisation by Zoe Quinn, I'm inclined to interpret it in pretty much the worst way possible.

TL;DR?

Nobody has been reporting "That part of the story" because it's been fabricated by probable scam artists in an attempt to piggyback a harassment campaign into a crowd-funding venture.

@officermeatbeef: Why did you quote his response to me there, buddy? He was responding to me criticizing Patrick's comment earlier in this thread, nothing about Frank at all. (My prior post has been deleted, I think.)

I completely agree that all, and any of the shit she got is horrible, no excuses, period. But it seems like you're a little overeager to argue about it if you're inadvertently accusing me of "deserving of nothing but scorn", about a topic I wasn't even discussing.

It's time for everyone to take a big, deep breath, and think about what we're actually trying to communicate to each other.

He had a pretty rational argument for why he considers it misogyny -- do you have a counterpoint for anything he said, or does it just annoy you in principle?

I still don't even know what this whole GamerGate business is even about. That's how little I seem to care, I guess.

But the real important thing here is....I really don't like seeing Maisie Williams with a nose piercing. She seems way too young for something like that.

Also hey @patrickklepek! You've probably seen her doing work around twitter the past week or so, but if not I thought I'd bring your attention to the work of Jenni Goodchild, @pixiejenni on twitter.

She's been surveying the more reasonable members of the gamergate tag in order to try and glean some signal past the noise.

Overall, the grievances are slightly more rational than you might see from just browsing the tag, but a lot of it really comes down to fundamental misunderstandings of how journalism works, the nature of bias and objectivity, most of the actual points of the 'Gamers are Over' type articles (Which I'm convinced not many have actually read) and pretty much anything to do with feminism.

It's strangely relieving when ignorance seems like a much, much more common driving force than hatred. I'd be interested to know your thoughts on some of the things she's collected (there's a lot, and you actually covered a lot of it in your Q&A, which was awesome)

I encourage pretty much everyone else to give it a skim as well. It's a pretty interesting insight into what is driving these people. Or at least what they think is driving them.

I have deeply mixed feelings about this whole GamerGate thing, but I've increasingly become annoyed with this "some of these Gamergate people are gross, therefore we must all shut up about gaming ethis" line. Dismissing entire movements because of extreme elements within them has long been used as a fallacy of oppression. Should the 60s anti-war movement have halted in its tracks because of the misguided actions of The Weather Underground and the Symbionese Liberation Army? Should people have distanced themselves from the civil rights movement because the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam made some inflammatory comments? Should people quit exposing and criticizing U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East for fear that they might potentially uncover things that might inspire Al Queda to do something bad? Now obviously, games journalism isn't even remotely as important as any of those issues, I'm just saying, every side of every topic has assholes that are going to make the normal people in it look bad and if you're constantly distancing yourself from extremists you're never going to accomplish much of anything. I certainly wish this conversation had been launched in a way that was less inflammatory but it is one I've been hoping to see happen for a long damn time now and I frankly don't want it to be stifled because of a whole bunch of trolls.

Check your facts before you go accusing people of being scam artists. If you actually took any time to research the company TFYC is working with on this project you would see that they're reputable. If you actually read their trans policy you'd see that the only criteria was to have identified as a female prior to the start date of the project -- that is to say, entrants simply had to think of themselves as female. If you actually stopped to think about what their project actually is, you'd see them making the game the entrant wants them to make, giving them a legitimate producer credit, as well as a solid chunk of the profits, is actually a pretty huge reward and incentive for people to take part.

As far as RebelJam is concerned. TFYC simply pointed out that there is no transparency over where that money is actually going other than direct to you know who's Paypal account. They were pointing out her hypocrisy in criticizing them. They were showing how you can just as easily look at what she is doing and paint it as a scam.

So, a certain e-celebrity didn't like their project for pretty dumb reasons. The members of the press they contacted to try and get media attention were apparently too lazy to actually research them and ask their own questions. Instead they saw what that certain someone had said on Twitter and took it as gospel. That... that is unacceptable. It just proves how cliquish games media is.

The mainstream games media continuing to refusing to report on the whole debacle is extremely disappointing. At best, it seems lazy. At worst it seems like they're afraid of having to be critical of certain people in the industry.

There's a world of difference between a movement having some extremist elements like in your examples, or TERFs for another (Trans-exclusionary radical feminists) which it's easy to separate from legitimate grievances, and something like this, where the movement is explicitly born out of paranoid, bigoted hatred, being used to execute an extremely vague campaign of frustration (see the main link in my last post for an example of the absurd range of aims and complaints held by good-faith members of gamergate)

What concrete complaints gamergate has have been addressed in a lot of different places! Patrick's Q&A, this post by Matt Lees, This one by someone else who went directly to the source and addressed a bunch of different complaints, This address by Rock Paper Shotgun about a lot of the nonsense being directed at them, and this great post that has been doing the rounds from a Dev and ex-pro-writer who addresses why this is a conversation that needs to happen, but not in this way.

Hope those links help! Only the freshest tinned opinions delivered straight to your door!

@dudleyville: I think your personal experience is clouding your judgment here. You're reading too much into these pronouns.

If I told you, "Jenny never came home from the concert. A pill slipped into her drink made sure of that. Her remains were discovered days later; she didn't deserve this. He took her life and her dignity and then he slithered away.... unnoticed..." I think you would very quickly infer that my use of 'he' refers to the murderer, the person who directly perpetrated the act I referred to in the preceding sentence. Not the band. Not the concert audience. Not everyone who likes music/concerts. Not all men. Just the murderer.

Oh god, this is still happening.

Maybe in couple more weeks cooler heads will prevail and we can finally start a real conversation about all of this rather than more hate, pot stirring, one sided reporting, broad generalization and navel gazing.

I'm surprised you'd just outright dismiss and mock @officermeatbeef's point, Marokai. Clearly, they explained how they believe unconsenting sexual objectification is part of misogyny's wider impact in society.

The point being, many men feel entitled to see or leer at the bodies of women, and while you may at times intentionally invite such attention(such as taking a nude photo for a partner or being involved in pornography), leaked nude photos are still unconsenting displays of your nude body that no one has a right to. It treats the female body as merely an object absent of a real human being. The concept of women's bodies being something any man is entitled to is certainly a part of historical misogyny and gender inequality.

You may not interpret such actions as part of that unfortunate legacy, but I hope you may not simply mock someone addressing it.

@marokai said:

Sexual objectification is more often than not profoundly sexist, and especially in the context of the acquisition and distribution of private photos. It can also be deeply damaging to the person on the receiving end. I understand that there might sometimes be some nuance needed when determining whether or not something is sexist, but not in this case.

@anytus2007: Of course I would take that those uses of "he" refers to the murderer. Whenever you change or introduce the subject of the sentence, you are supposed to reintroduce the name of the person/thing you are talking about. You cannot keep going on with pronouns because there is no clarity. My point is, as a journalist, which Patrick constantly brings up that he is, he should know how to deal with vague language that can lead to wrong implications and clear writing that let's the reader completely understand. I'm hoping that it is an oversight and not purposefully because, as I have said previously, that would be irresponsible as a writer.

@nmarebfly: Misogyny is the hatred or general discontent specifically targeted at women. Looking at nude photos that were plastered all over reddit doesn't imply hatred of women. Getting off to someone without their consent does not imply hatred of women. Hell, to say "unconsenting sexual objectification" is misogynistic would mean virtually everyone who has gotten any pleasure from someone without their knowledge did it because misogyny. There's absolutely no logical connection there. This is just "do not covet thy neighbor's wife" stuff.

Moreover, the first test of scrutiny would be to question whether the argument goes both ways; was the leaking of Dylan Sprouse's nude pictures an act of misandry? All those who looked at it and found sexual pleasure in it misandrists?

This is confusing the potential motive inspiring the action with the action itself. Could the spreading of nude photos of a woman be an act of misogyny? Sure, that could be the motive, which would then make it a misogynist act with that pretext; not just a sexual one. But the act itself is not inherently misogynistic, unless you subscribe to a sex-negative form of feminism. Accusing someone of being a misogynist is a serious term, and the way the internet has pushed people to casually throw around words like "misogyny" and "rape" are trivializing the serious weight of them.

Scam artists was probably a bit too strong in the language department, but if for no other reason than their gross bandwagoning on the harassment campaign in order to raise the money, largely from 4chan and Reddit, for their previously discredited project, I have a notably low opinion of their motives.

As for the reputable people they have working with them, so far as I can tell, you must be talking about the VFX and Graphic Design studio with no apparent game development experience that they have employed in the production of the concept art and motion reels for the entrant games. I can see no information as yet on their site or indiegogo page about who will actually be developing the game.

And to your point about their trans-women policy, I've seen from a number of sources that this has been changed since the time of the initial criticism, which is great! And in its current incarnation I have no problem with it, but at the time of the criticism, it was reportedly either different, or worded in such a ways as to be confusing. I'll try and find some solid sources on that, but as it stands I'm more inclined to believe one semi-substantiated side over another.

But all this is pretty moot if you really think that Zoe Quinn, whose name I noticed you seem to refuse to use, actually has that much influence on the entirety of games media.

Edited to cut down on the Quote tree length.

@truthtellah: My only criticism was the absolutist language being used. "Unconsenting sexual objectification = misogyny" is a hell of broad thing to say. The leaking of nude photos of women could be motivated by misogyny, but it is not inherently gender-motivated to do so. It's motivated by sex, I suppose, which you could then argue is implicitly sexist because people are usually only attracted to one gender, therefore it is always sexist to do something to a person you are sexually attracted to, but that's an argument that basically writes off all sexual acts as being hateful.

Few people who look at celebrity nude photo leaks are doing so because they think they "have a right to" or "own" that person's body. They're doing it for a cheap thrill and because we're attracted to controversy. To argue everyone who does so is bigoted against a gender is preposterous.

@parsnip: Keep dreaming, bub!

@dudleyville: Literally nothing was said that grouped dissenting opinion with harassment! It's amazing how people read what they want to and not actually what was said. #gamergateisalie

Even using the term 'GamerGate' fucking validates the idiots that think it's a big deal. The president of the United States covering up criminal acts while in office is not equal to some developer having sex with some journalists that didn't even prop up her game in any meaningful way. It's so fucking absurd that people are even comparing the two things.

It's been what, a month, and people are still going on about this crap? I'd sooner stab my eardrums out with a pencil than want to hear it all again. Sorry for the vitriol, but I'm just so over all of it.