Sylect

you guys can keep engaging in the circlejerk if you want, going after the low hanging fruit, and i understand it, it's easy, but it is worth noting that it is comments like those that will only serve to polarize people. you want GG supporters to become more cemented in their position? keep mocking them. I dunno, I just agree with some of the other sentiments stated in this thread that there are more productive ways to go about this than making the same sweeping statements time after time even after someone has responded to them while apparently avoiding topics brought up you can't counter with some pithy one liner.

@stryker1121: A bit misleading, 21 of the 34 pages are links to digra. And none of the other # campaigns are being actually given weight within the movement. No one wants to split the hashtag up into a million different ones and attempts to do so are generally seen as destructive. the so-called "war plan" you are talking about is just an continuation of the advertiser boycotts.

Also, the amount of anime that these guys put into every campaign they try and start makes them look very childish which is something I have repeatedly tried to get people to stop doing.

@hippie_genocide: feel free to tell me what I took out of context or how I have misinterpreted something.

I also want to thank you all, this has been one of the more productive discussions I feel like I have engaged in on the topic of GamerGate, and while I understand that most of you probably disagree with the movement, you have generally been respectful of those in it, even in voicing your frustrations with the rhetoric that gets thrown around.

Shortly after the Zoe stuff, I came here to see if anyone had been talking about everything and saw that the site was mass censoring discussion, I understand it was probably to avoid doxing her or whatever but I think it was an error. Rather than having a voice on the topic early on and some ability to shape the narrative, it was left to the extremists to shape what the movement would be about. Until yesterday, as far as I knew, this was not a safe place to have discussion about this topic without the threat of being banned or whatever. There wasn't a place for someone like me who considers themselves reasonable but has questions and concerns about the possibility of a systemic problem to go. The Escapist has some very outspoken individuals on their staff who oppose GG, but they have still gone out of their way to let people know that it is a place they can go to discuss the topic. That is good, that is healthy. If you only let discussions of this go on in places like 4chan and reddit, people like me who consider themselves fairly moderate on the topic are going to have their opinions shaped as a result.

Now, part of that is my own fault, I am not terribly active on these forums because the 2 times I had posted before this I was barked at by the mods for breaking some rule. Which I understand, is necessary, it just has left me with a bad taste in my mouth for the GB forums.

I think if more discussions like this were to happen, the problem would sort itself out.

@extomar: Personally, I am not giving any click money to sites that I feel are a part of the problem. Though I think there are other examples where individuals don't represent an entire organization, I am doing whatever small things I can to bring their hypocrisy to light (ie tweeting about it, linking to stories about it, etc). Part of the problem here would go away if rather than simply screaming misogyny and banning people who identify as GG, a proper discussion was had. the reason why individuals getting attacked like you are talking about is because we don't feel like we have a voice and any time we try to speak up, it is silenced. I am not saying the attacks are completely justified, but there is a large portion of this that is a part of the consumer base lashing out after attempts to try and shut them up. There is a super Streisand Effect going on as a result.

Edit: I think most of the anger in this situation comes from a feeling that the individuals lack any sort of power to shape the industry they care so much about and that people they disagree with are somehow stealing it away from them. I don't know if I believe it is as dire as a lot of them but I can totally see a world in which their worst fears become a reality, and I think it would suck too.

This whole event has made me consider where I go for coverage, I still love GB and will continue to pay for/enjoy the site like I have for years but I am disappointing that they haven't weighed in with the exception of Patrick saying a little bit, anything else has generally been some mocking quip from Alex on twitter or on bombing in the am. I think they have the ability to champion a real discussion that cuts through the bullshit of sides and the weird civil war that seems to be going on, they have the clout and track record of integrity. Though I don't really blame them for not wanting to wade into this. Like I have said, I am following Total Biscuit because he has been unafraid to speak pretty frankly and openly about real issues.

Everyone else seems to want this to be a leaderless movement but I disagree, I think nothing can be accomplished as long as it is. I would personally say that TB is a good person to represent my feelings and beliefs and I would be fine with him speaking for me. It sounds like he is going to have a round table discussion today at 2 about the topic with some people, I am interested to see how that goes.

Yeah, I would say Anita is on the extreme left. Listen and believe and other garbage messages like that? A lot of people in GG including myself feel that deniers are being hoodwinked in the same way that they accuse us of. All I see when I see people defending these people are victims of con artists and hacks who are just trying to profit off of a social trend.

There was a campaign to counter the unfounded claim that everyone in GG is a right wing hack with more than simple claims, here are some of the results. It is counter to what you are claiming and it is a cheap tactic of the opposition to try and reduce it to that as if that is a valid reason to disregard the whole movement. For reference, here is where I fall on the chart.

If you are curious about the test, want to learn more about it methods or take it yourself, you can go here

edit: Nero seems to be one of the most "right wing" people in the movement, everyone else including myself, tends to be left leaning libertarians

edit 2: bonus tweet from the executive director of cloud computing at Dell. This one goes out to the people who though Boogie was a monster for comparing journalists to waterboarding

yeah, it is reductionist to boil it down to that one article, to GG, that article was the just the cherry on top. she has a history of attacking people she doesn't like, even possibly ending careers of young writers she disagrees with, etc etc. Yeah, she is a bastion of reason and "championing the little guy"

Oh and on the subject of trying to boycott people who do things you don't like, well there is the example which she originally re-tweeted to give visibility:

Just pointing out that both sides have legitimate grievances

@drdarkstryfe: it is pretty common to say that this is all fueled by some far right conspiracy but the facts don't back that up. It is more like the middle is fighting against the extreme left.

Yeah I actually tried to get GG to drop these guys because 1)they are gross for just so many reasons, not the least of which is that they are racist and horribly sexist and 2) Mix that together with being shills of The Red Pill and you have people I don't want anything to do with, I don't want to associate myself with that as I think there is very little we would agree on but I also think they give the movement a bad name because they have dumb beliefs. Those guys are tools with like 300 supporters on Patreon. I don't take them seriously and neither do a lot of other GG supporters. Should be be silenced? No, because that would be wrong. Are they wrong? Maybe, maybe not, but there is no way if they are right that anyone, including me, will listen to them because of their statements on other things.

I dunno, a lot of what I read of things that make people angry about the movement seem to be based on the idea that at the heart of the matter is an issue of sexism, I think sexism comes into it because of issues of hypocrisy from people who are against GG.

@milkman: well he is gay, so at least on that topic we should defer to him right?

No problem, I hope I haven't come across as to batshit insane. I would point you to Ubi Art as an example of what I am talking about.

@mrmazz It isn't my feelings, and a 10 second google search will pull up info, but yeah, they "buried that hatchet", and none of how that reads comes across as forced. I don't give a shit about gamejournalpros, why WOULDN'T something like that exist? I don't like some of the people in there but I didn't like them before I read the emails. Though I will say that it was the second part of that that concerned me, a large sentiment within GG is that you won't see major outlets reporting on it because it would be self destructive. this is a "who watches the watchers" situation. This is why you won't see fair coverage of the issue on Wikipedia (but who the hell cares about Wikipedia) and you won't see articles on the other sites because reporting is too hard.

I take the ad boycotts on a case by case basis, not sure where I stand on that one to be honest. I think there are plenty of reasons why a boycott against that individual could be warranted, that opinion piece wasn't really one.

No one has brought up hypocrisy as another central issue for GG, why was it acceptable to report on the sex life of one person (Max Temkin) but not on the sex life of someone else. so my take away for the journalistic ethics of these sites is that it is okay to report on the sex life of a man but not a woman, I don't know how else that can be interpreted.