Branthog

Unfortunately, this video is an arrow in nobody's quiver, because despite a storied career as a feminist, professor, and author, she is entirely dismissed for being the wrong kind of feminist. Her video was immediately responded to on gaming sites everywhere, such as polygon, who categorized her viewpoint as entirely dissmissible and part of a right-wing propaganda movement. (She's a democrat).

This is one of my problems with everyone who is on the "right side" of all this. Even if I generally agree with them, I find them so filled with hypocrisy that it is revolting. I have witnessed my fiance being attacked for "not being the right kind of feminist" numerous times (she minored in womens studies) and the people attacking her, like they did Sommers, are brutal.

If you don't fully support them (not just the issue, but them individually and everything they do or say without disagreement), then you are a basement-dwelling man-child that is probably one bad day from committing a sex crime.

If you're a woman, then you are clearly unenlightened and suffering under the dominant male patriarchy that has corrupted and brainwashed you. Similarly if you're anything but straight or white.

If you're an avowed feminist, then you are clearly not the right kind of feminist.

They want to have discussions. They say they do, all the time. But they never end up getting into any actual discussions, because they have a long list of excuses that allows them to dismiss absolutely everyone they could have a discussion with outside of their own echo-chamber.

Not very inclusive.

My apologies. I interjected without having understood the full context of your conversation.

I thought you guys were talking about people opining on having social justice and political issues become a common part of coverage here, which I would find incredibly disappointing even if I generally agree with the, you know, don't send death threats sentiment.

It has been made clear that Patrick is part of the team and that is not going to change and he has everyone's support internally. I am probably most at odds with Patrick's content than with anyone else's, but I don't begrudge him his viewpoint and frankly value it for its difference. I hope that articles like this are few and far between (for one thing, I feel they offer more impact and meaning than if they are a regular occurrence which starts to feel like supplemental click-bait), but because of the subject rather than the author.

I hope my voice is considered in what to cover and how in the future, but certainly not at the expensive of cutting Patrick or anyone else off at the knees. Hell, if it weren't for Patrick, this place would have been a content-ghost-town for the past year. I feel he is generally judicious with his "I want to sit and talk about stuff that is serious to me" moments. I don't feel that from most other people who cover games. His interest feels genuine and not over-indulged.

I don't see why there isn't the bandwidth for both conversations, if we can manage to fit pokemon, wrestling, movies, game of thrones, video games, sexism, and junk food all on the front page of a gaming site.

A bunch of idiots sending death threats are using "but ethics!" to deflect accountability while a bunch of game journalists are using "but death threats!" to deflect conversation of accountability over ethics.

Since maybe 99.9999999% of people who might be interested in discussing ethics and hypocrisy do not sympathize in the least with people how send death threats or harass people, I'm not seeing any legitimate reason this can not be a concurrent conversation.

To further the hypocrisy, any discussion of ethics is dismissed by journalists who say that it isn't a conversation worth having since the number of incidents and bad actors in gaming journalism is so infinitesimally small as to be representative of nothing.

Meanwhile, they have no problem scorching the earth underneath their entire audience of gamers, despite the number of bad actors in gaming who commit actual harassment or send death threats is infinitesimally small and representative of nothing.

It is possible that I could be wrong, here. After all, I kind of just want a healthy fire to come in and burn us all away and leave nothing but a scorching pile of dust that used to be game cartridges and see the industry return making televisions and radios or palying cards or something, but . . . are you guys not maybe conflating Quinnspiracy with Gamer Gate? If I have my time line correct, GamerGate was coined in direct response to the "Gamers Are Dead" articles that everyone colluded on to post at the same time with the same content across a dozen or two sites while Quinnspiracy was the initial Zoe crap, where people either cared about the sex, cared about the ethics on the journalism side, or circled the wagons and said there was nothing to see anywhere and you are all haters?

At least, that is how I recall the unfurling of events. Then again, the stupidity came from all sides in such rapid fire that it's hard to be sure, anymore.

How fucked is it that gaming journalism has worked itself up into such a tizzy that it seems to think that so many of its audience are woman-hating death-threat-senders that they might need to not only write endless streams of scolding articles treading the same road, but start a hash tag to convince them to stop sending death threats?

Have we not reached the saturation point where we're just preaching to the exhausted choir? We've certainly gone far beyond the point where completely rational people who sympathize with being sent threats and harassment are feeling put-upon by the whole infatuation and recognize how overboard we're going.

More importantly, what is the end-game, here? How long do game journalists and the handful of nitwits crying for attention by doing stupid shit keep sticking their tongues out at each other? So far, I see no end or improvement in site. We are going to roll around in this like depressed pigs in shit for another five or ten years. There is no ladder in this whole with which to climb out.

Also, if you absolute must engage in ridiculous icon-changing twitter-activism (boy, our parents who marched for things and were arrested and shot with hoses and bean bags must be proud of us!), at least use #KillAllDeathThreats.

Last I saw late last night, someone had sleuthed it out to allegedly being a game journalist on a click-bait blog/site/whatever in Brazil and they had or were in the process of notifying the FBI. Of course, this is entirely rumor and conjecture (at best) at this point, so who knows.

Are you guys daft? Of course you all get to decide. You think people who survive on advertising revenue make a habit of creating content that people do not want so that they can have a net-loss of eyeballs to sell to advertisers? Not only do you get to decide in a very democratic way, but sites like this (and television shows and movies) often directly solicit your input. It's a bit naive to suggest that people should consume it or shut up and ignore it. Look at how Polygon has been forced to change after all of their hoopla about "a new kind of journalism", to keep eyeballs on them?

Of course, since we're talking about eyeballs, it doesn't matter if people *like* the content. As long as they keep clicking on it, that is sufficient.

Oh, and guess what? If you *want* to see frequent social justice and political content on here and you want that to be a regular part of your gaming diet, then you can voice that opinion, too!

You have more faith in people than I do, perhaps.

You might dissuade someone who is prone to making harsh comments or even in saying mean things, but I don't think you're going to dissuade someone who is of the mindset that they go around posting threats and legitimately harassing people (I do take particular issue with some modern portrayals of what bullying and harassment are to cover such an absurd range of things as to be pointless and even counter-productive).

And people who aren't prone to that sort of thing wont' be prone to it to begin with.

Both sides are like this. They are entrenched and nothing will persuade. Not even holding a mirror up to them. That's how we end up with things like people being upset over the doxxing of other people they dislike, but doing their own doxxing of other people that they dislike. It's how we end up with "we want to start a discussion on this" while at the same time "only say the right things about this topic or you'll be silence" (mechanically through a process or by being shouted down).

I see people on many sides of these issues of the last five years being little different than those entrenched in abortion debates, gun debates, and religious debates. And just like all three of those, there are people who will never shut up about them and take every opportunity to turn a discussion of one thing into a discussion of those things... and there are people who are so exhausted of the rhetoric and drain-circling and navel-gazing that they just don't want to fucking hear it anymore. Not from any side of anything. (That's pretty much where I am on those things, and this thing).

Ultimately, everyone feels angry, everyone feels attacked, everyone feels unfairly judged and labeled, and everyone just keeps shouting and making demands. It's a bit shitty unsolvable mess. The only net-benefit of all of this is the same net-benefit of every other unending political bullshit -- lots of eyeballs on media outlets as angry masses flood to read stuff they can nod along with or be angry over.

Don't get me wrong -- if I thought this could be talked out or hugged out or something, I'd insist on a giant convention where we all get together and someone locks the doors until we get it out of our systems and grow a bit (all of us). I just posses no such optimism. I think one side are always going to be "social justice warrior feminazi blah blah blahs" and the other side is going to be "basement dwelling woman-hating manbabies"... and everyone else is going to be lumped into one or the other of those two whether they like it or not.

Maybe Jim Sterling and Boogie and others I've seen recently across the range of views on this are starting to contemplate the right solution. Maybe gaming has been usurped by "tumblr feminists" and "woman-hating basement-dwelling man-babies" and we just have to go find something else to do for a living or a recreation (because I have to tell you, having anything to do with gaming other than sticking a disk in and playing the game hasn't felt "recreational" for years, now).

"Random misogyny"?

Seriously, guys? Come on, now.

Are people out there really just randomly filled with a deep hatred of women?

Also, "organized"?

Seriously, guys? Come on, now.

Are you watching the same group bumble about as I am?!