Game developer Brianna Wu fled her home last night, following what is becoming a distressingly frequent case of women in the gaming scene expressing fears for their safety due to online harassment.
Wu, a developer in Boston who recently released the well-receivedRevolution 60 mobile game, said on Twitter last night that she and her husband had called the police and left their home to stay elsewhere after receiving a spate of vile Tweets that included death threats and the couple’s home address.
The police just came by. Husband and I are going somewhere safe.
Remember, #gamergate isn’t about attacking women. pic.twitter.com/ZU6oEVxMGL
— Brianna Wu (@Spacekatgal) October 11, 2014
Wu, who has written about the harassment against women in gaming, has long been critical of the recently-formed Gamergate movement and what she and others have seen as the targeting of women in the industry. Earlier this week she caught the attention of users of the pro-Gamergate message board 8chan after Tweeting snark about the movement, only to then see users of that board mock her, post details about her husband and ultimately publish her personal information (a screencap of a post with redacted info remained on the thread on Saturday).
“I was literally watching 8chan go after me in their specific chatroom for Gamergate,” she told Kotaku today. “They posted my address, and within moments I got that death threat.”
Wu contacted the police and tells Kotaku that they offered to send patrol cars by her home. As she noted on Twitter, she left home last night and has not returned.
Wu’s account of her harassment was widely retweeted last night and viewed, by many, as a distressing new incident to add to the progression of people in gaming, mainly women, who’ve born the brunt of intense harassment largely due to their views on games and the gaming scene. Wu joins Zoe Quinn, the indie developer who was the original target for what was then not yet called Gamergate in late August and who said she had to leave her home due to threats. There is also Anita Sarkeesian, the critic behind a video series about the depiction of women in gaming, who chronicled in late August the most recent threats that had her leaving home and notifying police out of fear for her safety.
Captain Richard Flynn of the Arlington, Massachusetts police department confirmed to Kotaku today that the police took a report on the incident last night and that “the matter is now under investigation by our Criminal Investigation Bureau.”
While Wu received a lot of sympathy online, she was also charged by some with making the whole thing up. She bristles at that, of course. “I am a professional developer,” she told Kotaku. “The quickest way I could think of to end my career and destroy my credibility would be making something like this up and getting arrested for filing a false police report.”
Wu’s main Tweet about the harassment has been re-tweeted more than 7,000 times. The originating account was suspended last night, though the identity of who committed the harassment remains a mystery. Wu received a lot of sympathy online, but her experience also became a new flashpoint for ongoing discussions about harassment, the Gamergate movement, and intersections between the two.
Some supporters of Gamergate denounced the harassment, urged the account to be reported, and pushed back at the idea that it is representative of Gamergate:
But there are also observers who’ve thrown up their hands at this point, saying Gamergate is too linked to reports of harassment and that those who support its ostensible mission — the defence of gamers against anyone in the gaming media or gaming scene considered to be anti-gamer — should disassociate themselves from the Gamergate label:
Ostensibly, Gamergate was born of a desire to defend gamers’ interests. Technically, the Gamergate hashtag was started by actor Adam Baldwin — he was the first one to use the Twitter hashtag, back in August — and it’s been used regularly, more than a million times since, for a variety of reasons, doubtless by a range of people, from harassers to critics to people with legit questions and concerns about games reporting.
Baldwin may have given the movement a name, but the movement itself had already existed. In the days prior to Baldwin’s tweets, it was not defined not by an overarching desire to see more accountability and transparency in the games press. It was aimed at a single woman: Game developer Zoe Quinn. Quinn had been accused of sleeping with games journalists in exchange for positive coverage — accusations which were swiftly debunked, but have lingered nonetheless. It was in response to accusations about Quinn that Baldwin tweeted the hashtag, and the two things — Gamergate and the campaign against Quinn — have become intertwined.
Since the initial accusations, Gamergate has expanded to cover a wider variety of topics, including anger over articles critical of the “gamer” identity and even claims (untrue) that the site you’re reading is anti-gamer. Women in gaming have been in the line of fire for a lot of this, which is what has garnered the movement a repulsive reputation to many that it’s failed to shake off.
Threats and harassment involving people in and around gaming also, sadly, appear to be proliferating and go back some time. For two years, gaming critic Sarkeesian has been dealing with harassment and threats from some who dislike her videos that critique the depiction of women in games. [UPDATE: It should be noted that Gamergate people have complained of harassment as well. The pro-Gamergate reporter Milo Yiannopoulos, for example,
Tweeted a photo several weeks ago of a syringe with fluid in it, presumably mailed to him by someone who dislikes him or his work. He mostly appeared to laugh it off.]
Death threats against game developers are also all too common. In early 2012, we reported about how Robert Bowling, a developer then working on Call of Duty,was sent suspicious packages by players furious over things as minor as changes to features in the game. “People were revealing my home address and my girlfriend’s telephone number and doing things like that, and encouraging people to show up or send stuff or to call,” he said at the time. “People would actually follow up on that.”
The fact that threats like that are increasingly commonplace or that some people can bear them doesn’t make them ok, of course, and has left many in the gaming scene wondering how in the world to de-escalate things. Consider the Kotaku staff among that group. We hate the harassment, the intensity of it, the turning of concerns and questions into threats. We assume our readership is with us in our condemnation of the kind of harassment that Wu and everyone else in and around gaming have received.
“I don’t know what else to do but stand tall,” Wu told me today. “I’m not letting people intimidate me and will keep doing what I love.”
To those reading this who feel that coverage of harassment and threats is a dismissal of concerns about how the games media or gaming industry works, know that it’s not. We’ve addressed and investigated such topics before and will do so again. But Friday’s incident brings a different aspect of the Gamergate controversy to the fore: the targeting of women, the sense that discussion about gaming, games media ethics, and gamers will be forever contaminated by an ugliness disproportionate to the issues at hand. This is a potential new status quo that we at Kotaku reject. The kind of harassment that sends anyone in the gaming scene fleeing from their homes is detestable and should be condemned no matter where one stands on anything else.
Comments
145 responses to “Another Woman In Gaming Flees Home Following Death Threats”
This whole thing is dumb.
This is the Gawker Network, They get paid per click hence the usual rubbish seen on Kotaku recently. Most of the Cayman Island Gawker company posts are clickfest rubbish, with the occasional diamond ion the rough. It is more an aggregate site now.
#gamergate is the thing that is dumb.
It’s all dumb.
It’s Allure media in Australia. They just license the Gawker content and add some .au stuff.
Yes, yes it is. GamerGate isn’t to blame for disgusting stuff like this. People should stop linking the two.
“John Scalzi
Face it, dudes: “Gamer Gate is a toxic thing. You can’t say you support WITHOUT explicitly standing with those that hate and harass women. ”
How about this:
“John Scalzi
Face it, lady’s: “Feminism is a toxic thing. You can’t say you support WITHOUT explicitly standing with those that hate and harass men. ”
Neither of these groups are hate groups, both groups have there share of nutters though.
I hope they catch the people who are sending out death threats and charge them accordingly, it needs to stop.
Edit:
@finaldelerium @james @drumrbaxj @Neo_Kaiser
I see you don’t like my comment, care to share why?
I see you don’t like my comment, care to share why?
Hahahaha! You literally went full walrus on us!
http://i.imgur.com/FxikD5Y.png
I sure did. 😛
It’s nice to know why people disagree with you though.
i love that comic. haha.
That’s a sea lion!
1. You’re putting words into someone else’s mouth.
2. The argument is a false equivalence. Yes there are some people at the radical end of feminism who hate men, but for the most part it has resulted in positive change. What positive things has GamerGate accomplished to offset all this crap?
Yes i am, the term Dude is mostly used to address men, so his tweet (imo) implies that he is stating that Gamer Gate is ruled by the minority that he feels hates women and to support it means you are one of those guys.
I just pointed out the the same could be said for feminism, there are women who identify as feminists who hate men, but it would be unfair to judge feminism by that minority, there is nutters in both camps.
I don’t think it is.
Feminism has been around for what 46 years now, do you think it is okay to compare something that has just started this year to something that is 46 years old?
Maybe we should give them more time to try and get some of stuff they want to get done, done.
Change happens sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.
Edit: I have corrected two posts below what i have said about the age of Feminism, if people would bother to read they would no this.
Okay. I’ll turn it around then: if the movement is so new and the only actions associated with it have been negative, why stick with that name? Pick some other identity that is clearly separate from all the death threats and misogyny and it’d make your life a lot easier. What exactly would you lose by doing this? This is what Scalzi meant when he said the word was toxic.
I know the feminism movement is a lot older (a lot more than 46 years), but it has never been so dominated by negative action like this.
Same could be said for feminism and they could also change there name as well, they could call it the Egalitarianism movement and they could separate from all the women in feminism that hate men.
Feminists haven’t changed there name, so why should the people of Gamer Gate.
Also Gamer Gates actions are not all negative: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fine_Young_Capitalists
Yeah my bad, apparently the first organized movement for English feminism was in the 1850’s, it’s much older than i though it was my mistake.
It’s not all bad, see the link above.
We just need to give them more time to do what they are trying to do (not the nutters. :))
Feminists haven’t changed there name, so why should the people of Gamer Gate.
Actually, they have. There has been a move to remove the militant aspect of feminism, and part of that is bypassing the word somewhat, and acknowledging that it has in some circles come to mean something that is ‘anti men’.
The recent Emma Watson speech at the UN was all about that, and the “He for She’ campaign, specifically because the word had become somewhat ‘toxic’.
No they haven’t, it is still called feminism.
Yes there has, but that still will not remove the association of the minority nutters from the word feminism and there will always be people who identify as feminists (minority) that are nutters, just as there will always be an aspect of Gamer Gate (minority) that are nutters.
Can you see how people judge the entirety of a movement based solely on the minority of that movement and how that is wrong.
The word toxic has been used to describe Feminism and Gamer Gate and the only reason why is because people are only looking at the actions of the minority’s and saying this is what the movement is about.
It’s sad really.
I really feel like you didn’t have to write anything twice just to offset the assumption that any voice veering from the requisite discourse is quantifiable insanity.
Better hit the history books boy.
If you had bothered to read two posts down from where i said feminism is 46 years old you would have seen that i corrected that mistake.
It’s good to see though that all the downvotes are from people like you that cannot refute what my original post said and are scared to even try.
James is the only one with some balls to defend the reason why he gave me a downvote in my initial post and i respect him for that.
The rest of you not so much.
I’m not scared to reply. I didn’t see the point because someone else made a reply articulating why what you said was ridiculous.
Don’t assume a downvote without a comment is anything other than a downvote. People choose not to reply for a whole host of reasons. Simply choosing not to engage in a discussion that they know is not going to go anywhere is a pretty common one.
He never said it was ridiculous and never proved it to be wrong (i addressed his comments in the reply i gave him and he did not try to prove my initial comment wrong after that), he in fact moved his position from trying to prove my initial post false/wrong to implying that Gamer Gate should adopt a new name.
And this is why people don’t bother to engage.
You made a false equivalence, he said so, you disagreed, you both moved on to other points. At what point do other people need to make the same point for you to simply dismiss? Do we need to devolve to “yes it is!” “not it isn’t!” “’tis!” “tisn’t!” like some Monty Python sketch?
You started this thread complaining about a well known author saying that the “gamergate” name was toxic. So I asked why you were attached to the name despite the negative baggage.
This is part of what is so puzzling: on the one hand people say that gamergate is about journalism ethics, but on the other hand you are acting as if gamergate and feminism are opposing ideologies.
It really doesn’t matter what you say – you’ve compared something negative to feminism on the internet. You’re basically Hitler now. You can’t criticise any aspect of the gender equality movement or feminism et al however loosely without the invoking the ire of the White Hetero Male PC Proletariat.
You aren’t allowed to play Devil’s Advocate.
You’re just being a douche. Try to take things here in the kotaku comments section easy. If you communicate on the level of other people they are more likely to listen and agree with you. This is why I think you are getting many down votes.
But it’s plain you have no real understanding of feminism, either in terms of its philosophical underpinnings or with regard to its history as a socio-political movement. Why then should anyone engage with your baseless assertion that “Feminism is a toxic thing”? Better educate yourself.
46 years…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffragette
I can’t recall ever hearing about feminists making viable rape & death threats to their ‘opponents’. Is that the crowd that you want to stand with?
And what exactly are you hoping to achieve with gamergate? I keep hearing “journalistic integrity rabble rabble” but never anything more specific than that. If you want higher standards in what is essentially a hobby press, good for you. But if you want to do it under this particular banner, you will be tarred with the same brush as the people who have full on attacked Zoe Quinn/Anita Sarkeesian/Brianna Wu/any prominent male dev/writer who’s supported not being a dick in this particular little affair.
avoiceformen.com/a-voice-for-men/threats-of-violence-and-death-against-doubletree-hilton-in-detroit-over-mens-conference/
avoiceformen.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/AVFM-Security-Letter-REDACTED.pdf
Last i heard they threatened to blow up the hotel.
There is no other group out there (that i am aware of) that hates the men’s right movement more than feminists.
Please correct me if i am wrong and you can find another group of people who hate men’s right movement more.
I don’t stand with either crowd, i was just offended that John Scalzi made his tweet predominantly male gendered and tarnished Gamer Gate with that brush, had he used “people” instead of “dudes” and not targeted everyone in Gamer Gate then i would not have a problem with it.
You now see how that works, as i flipped the gender and people got offended by it.
Bit of a double standard there don’t you think.
Oh John Scalzi is talking about men and Gamer Gate in a negative way, haha he’s so funny.
Oh god Chobi77 made a comment about feminism and females in the same context as John Scalzi tweet, get him.
I am not part of Gamer Gate, fyi, but i like what the non nut job part of the movement stands for.
I think that’s fair, John Scalzi took the brush and painted men and Gamer Gate then i took the same brush and used it on women and feminism, equality and all.
MRA? That’s who you’re now using to back your arguments? The MRA is a load of horseshit, and I say that as a white, male, middle class guy in his 30s. Any group that claims victimhood while punching down deserves the amount of respect they get (ie none)
http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/47787093.jpg
If you really, truly think that the mob making up GG is not predominantly male, you haven’t been paying attention.
You asked for evidence and i provided it, not my problem if you don’t like the truth that a group of feminist’s sent out death threats to the hotel to stop them from talking, that’s your problem.
So men have no problems then? they have nothing to talk about and are just getting together to piss feminists off?
Both sides, feminism and the MRA have the right to hold conferences and demonstrations in peace without being bullied by the other side.
Ahh male privilege, your words mean a lot more to me now /sarcasm.
cinemablend.com/games/-NotYourShield-Hashtag-Shows-Multi-Cultural-Support-GamerGate-67119.html
No i know that Gamer Gate is made up of many different people from different walks of life.
All you people seem to see things in black and white, or your for us or against us, it is littered through this thread and it just goes to show how close minded you people really are.
Protip: Use of the phrase “you people” tends never to get people you’re discussing with on side.
Really? are you under the delusion that anyone that has down voted me would ever open there mind just a tiny bit to see my point? that’s you included by the way.
I am not.
You havent done enough research then
I voted against your comment – because I can’t believe you seriously think there is any sort of link between one of the biggest political movements in the last 2 centuries and a bunch of gamers. Feminism has changed the lives of half of the world’s population, and the only positive thing you can say about GamerGate is that they donated $5000 to some campaign. Wow.
My point was, that if you change three words “Dudes” “Gamer Gate” and “Woman” and replace them with “Lady’s” “Feminism” and “Men” you get people being outraged even though the original tweet, labeled men as hating woman (which some do) when you turn it around and say some woman hate men, ohhh we cant have that now can we.
Not all feminists hate men.
Not all Gamer Gate supporters hate woman.
Feminism is fundamentally about allowing women to be equal to men on a social and economic level. It can get dressed up in a bunch of different ways, but it’s inherently a positive movement which is in no way detrimental to men.
GamerGate is fundamentally about male gamers not wanting feminism to infect their games. It can get dressed up in a bunch of different ways, but it’s inherently a negative movement which is detrimental to everyone.
Most definitely is not about that…
I agree that feminism is a positive movement, but it’s about women’s rights not about equality.
huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/11/men-women-prison-sentence-length-gender-gap_n_1874742.html
If they want the right to be treated equal why do they not ask for the same severity of punishment for doing the same crimes as men? Even if they do not want the same punishment as men, have you ever seen feminists have a protest about the differences in punishments received by men and women saying that the system is to harsh on men?
Where is the equality there?
If I could upvote just this bit, I would: “I hope they catch the people who are sending out death threats and charge them accordingly, it needs to stop.” Absolutely. Death threats and harassment are indefensible.
Unfortunately, your attempt at making the idea of feminism equivalent to a loose mob that is acting as cover for harassing behaviour is just wrong. Whatever points people originally had about ethics of relations between game journalists and developers have been so utterly taken over by the targeting of a few people that the name of “gamer gate” is toxic (and it was stupid to begin with; adding “gate” to the end of any controversy was old and lazy about two controversies after Watergate).
Feminism is about equality, focusing on where society consciously or unconsciously discriminates against women. To suggest that working for equality for women is the same as trying to harass or take something from men shows such a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world works that I had to downvote your comment.
Oh they are not acting as cover any more than the feminists that defend harassing behavior in there group.
Which is to say that neither group is defending hateful and horrible actions, these people are acting by them self’s and are the minority in each group.
Same could be said for feminism, have you seen some of the bat shit insane things that feminists have said, all men should be castrated, all men are rapists, baby boys should not be breast fed because that gives them an advantage over baby girls, etc, etc.
But when you stand back and look at it, you will relies that they are the minority in there group and feminism should not be judged on that minority, the same way Gamer Gate should not be judged by it’s minority.
No it’s not, it’s about woman’s rights.
Egalitarianism is about equality.
The fundamental problem here is not my understanding of Feminism, it’s your understanding that you think it is a movement for equality, it is a movement for women’s rights, not equality.
That’s why we have the two words “Feminism” and “Egalitarianism” and they both don’t have the same meaning.
What you just said was the same logic as this: “the suffragette movement wasn’t about equal rights to vote, it was about women’s rights to vote.” Yes, it was women asking for a right, but not to deny anyone else a right. Just to get the same as men. Equal rights, focussed on a female-specific injustice.
Feminism is a SUBSET of egalitarianism, not a different thing. Just as gay rights, race rights or freedom to worship (or not) are subsets of egalitarianism.
Not all equality is feminist, but feminism is egalitarianism.
So they also asked for the right to be drafted into war, because that’s how men got to vote.
Do you recall any demonstrations where feminists where holding banners saying “it’s unfair that men get drafted to war and die just so they can vote, we want that too” you know because of equality and all.
Again feminism is not about equal rights, it’s about woman’s rights.
In this particular case, there right to vote but not go to war and die for the privilege.
The right to vote wasn’t tied to conscription. I think you may be mixing up real life and Starship Troopers. In fact in some armies (India for example), serving military are not allowed to vote. In Australia, women had the right to vote nationally and federally by 1904 (states had introduced suffrage earlier bit by bit), and compulsory military service for men was introduced in 1911.
Women did campaign for a greater role in the military in the early 1900s and to this day. But when you’re barred from even serving in the military as a cook or a driver, it’s a much longer battle to actually achieve equality and serve as a soldier.
Just last year in the USA women finally got the right to serve as front-line troops…
THIS IS THE BEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED EVER!
Starship troopers or the right to vote? =P
I like what you say, and how you say it.
Thank you.
If you dodged the draft/conscription and got caught then you could loose your right to vote (Felony disenfranchisement), it was very much tied to conscription for law abiding men back then, women not so much.
The vote was tied to being law abiding, not tied to conscription. Women lost their vote for a conviction with a sentence of more than 12 months just as men did. You are doing what’s known as “moving the goalposts.”
Women are still fighting for equal rights. A couple of outlier situations where men do worse – being sent to die at age 18 in a war is definitely one, I grant you that – does very little to negate the fact that women have been and are still treated differently to men across large swathes of society. They’ve only been allowed in most pubs since the 1970s! In most countries they’ve had the vote for less that a century. They still earn less money, do much more unpaid work and do a far greater share of domestic chores than men even in households where both work. Being “manly” or “having balls” is a good thing, being “a girl” is an insult.
And to drag this post kicking and screaming back on topic, they get far more and far worse online abuse than men, and far more and far worse abuse in person too, on average.
So yes, feminism is very much about equal rights, because while legally we’ve moved on a long way, in actuality sexism is alive and kicking. A cursory look at legislatures, boardrooms, TV panel shows, the news, movies and yes, computer games should demonstrate that easily enough.
I’m not expecting you to agree with me. In fact, let’s save time, assume you disagree and call it quits. There are games to play…
They dont like the comment, because it tears down their entire argument in one fell swoop. these sorts of movements have an either your with us or against us mentality
I don’t like what you say because YOU DONT A CLUE. About any of it, like literally missed on everything.
Feminism isnt toxic it is amazing, it is only toxic when you take extremist one at face value. Like ALL types of people they are the extremist who taint the thing for everyone else.
Any gamers who stand for gamersgate and believe the vile filth have every right to threaten any who speak up, have a right to do it, are supporting a hate group. Anyone who slags off these women just because the dont agree with their views are haters. They arent asking you to agree with them 110% they are asking you to listen, to question the status quo… you dont need to like them but deserve your respect.
Fine. Because comparing Feminism with Gamergate is like comparing Apples with a piece of lined foolscap paper.
Ugh. Sea lions.
While conceptually it’s a nice connection to make between the two movements in practicality they aren’t alike are they?
So let’s dissect this a little more.
“Gamergate is a toxic thing.” “Feminism is a toxic thing.” Firstly gamergate to my understanding is to stand in defence of gamers (but so far the impression I’ve gotten is only for male gamers). Feminism is to stand in defence of women, a section of the human population that for the majority of history has received a second lower standard of human rights. And to this day still do in a majority of the world (population wise, not geographically). So you wish to compare a group lobbying for the rights of what is basically entertainment and a group lobbying for rights of half the human population? Do you see where you’re getting dislikes?
Next up. “You can’t say you support either without explicitly standing with those that hate “insert section of human population”.” First off to date feminism in most of its practices doesn’t go about actively undermining the rights of men, their primary goal is to raise the rights of women. You might think this is a poor point to argue but it is important; this defines feminism as an ideal that is about improving the rights of one demographic and they do so by not bringing the other demographics down but by trying to raise themselves up. Gamergate in all examples of this group being linked to actions (to my knowledge) have repeatedly been linked to the violation of basic human rights, i.e. privacy, the right to an opinion, safety in your own home, etc. They forward their cause by harming those who don’t agree with their version of events. You should know history is littered by groups that believe the best way to achieve their goals is to be detrimental to groups outside their beliefs; for example – The Ku Klux Klan. The Nazis. Any number of African Freedom Fighting groups. I believe there’s a group in Syria doing much the same in current events. I realize these are far fetched comparisons to make, but you opened the door on far fetched comparisons when you compared a relatively young group that so far has a track record of violating human rights to a well established ideal that has a track record overall of improving human rights based on a conceptual similarity. Well conceptually gamergate is no different from the examples I listed either.
cinemablend.com/games/-NotYourShield-Hashtag-Shows-Multi-Cultural-Support-GamerGate-67119.html
No that was never my intention, go back and read my first post, the comparison was made to prove that there is nutters in both camps and each camp should not be judged by it’s nutters.
Do you not see how unfair it is to judge both groups by the minority’s that case problems?
Yes he judged Gamer Gate based on it’s minority, so i turned it around and showed what it would be like to judge feminism based on it minority.
Feminists have castrated men in the name of there movement, how many people have Gamer Gate supporters castrated? Feminists have killed people in the name of there movement, how many people have Gamer Gate supporters killed?
Also the majority of Gamer Gate supporters have done some good work, take a look at this link.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fine_Young_Capitalists
Kotaku giving this publicity but practically ignoring when the opposite happens and basically hiding it to 2 lines to make sure we hate those damn evil misogynistic gamergate people and to not see the fact the other side has complete fucking loons as well?
WHAT A SHOCK!!!!
Hey mate, what is the opposite of this?
Those who stand with GamerGate for the right reasons, are getting harassed, Doxxed, threated with death threats, etc 10 times more than those whom stand against it. Kotaku and other websites will not report on such matters as the belief from a lot of those in games development and the gaming media (But not all) is “Those filthy GamerGate people brought it on themselves.”
It’s the same mentality that anti-Radical Feminist (or Anti-Feminists) get from Feminists and Radicals in that domain as well. It’s alright for those on the Pro-Feminist side to harass, send death threats, etc to their opposition; but if the opposition responds, the media jumps on the Feminist side with their tales of woe.
Citation needed for this, friend.
Abuse against Pro-GamerGate people – Search the #GamerGate and look at the photos section. Lots of example there.
Pro-Feminists abusing Anti-Feminists – Look at any “I don’t need Feminism because…” photo openly shown on Facebook or Twitter.
So suddenly, I’m not searching for death threats & doxx, just abuse? That is a substantial downgrade from what you just said. And your second point there is entirely non-related to GG.
escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.861243-Pro-GamerGate-Writer-Sent-Syringe-Through-Mail
He is pro gamer gate and got sent a syringe through the mail.
And
cinemablend.com/games/TFYC-Discuss-GamerGate-Recovering-From-Hacks-4chan-Support-67239.html
The Fine Young Capatlists and what they went through at the hands of the anti-Gamer Gate movement.
There are nutters on both sides of the argument, never forget that.
HAH dont make me laugh
The opposite is kickstarter supporters getting blocked from the mighty number 9 forum and social feeds because they tweeted about gamergate.
Female game developers are releasing peoples personal details online and sending death threats?
Female GAME Developers. No. Angry hateful people who have been doing the EXACT SAME THING back at anybody who is a pro gamergate personality. You betcha.
I personally hate the bullshit, hateful, disgusting things the extremists of BOTH sides are doing, the fact that the extremists side of one is doing it simply because the person is a FEMALE, is indefensible. I have nothing to add there.
HOWEVER. The reporting on this site and other ANTI gamergate websites Implying this is a one sided issue against a solitary villain, is exactly that, painting a one sided argument, trying to force everybody to see it that way.
I want some objective viewpoints. But i dont know what i expect from the guy who tried to push everything under the rug with the incidents that started this whole mess.
In case you didn’t realise, this article IS about a recent threat coming from a gamergate guy, so there was absolutely no reason why Totilo should mention the other side. However, he still did just so that you guys could STOP accusing him and yet you still complain? He even says near the end that both sides have gone too far: And he is absolutely correct; this whole “gamergate issue” shouldn’t be a thing; people have the right to express concerns about games journalism and development OR women in games, but when these concerns turn into death threats you know that something is wrong.
Same can be said about anything really. When you have 2 groups of opposing viewpoints, then there will always be the “lunatic fringe” that will go into the wrong extremes. A prime local example is all the anti-Muslim media spin and the “war or terror” stuff going on in Australia today. Many Muslim followers are not like the gun-toting-beheading extremists, but they are copping a lot of hate from “Pro-Australia” extremists.
One of the things a lot of Pro-GamerGate people want is the removal of these “Women in trouble” and “Gamers are sexist” articles from websites like Kotaku. Political Agendas have no place in a hobby like gaming, which has been on the rise when it comes to women playing, developing and covering games for years. But again, that fringe extremist (Anita for example) are determined to shove their agenda down our throats time and time again.
Fringe extremist simply because she sick of women only being portrayed in negative ways? Many women are gamers, and like all sorts of genres. If women aren’t allowed to like shooters or GTA type games because in those women are always helpless, easy and victims, then will get more bad games like Beyond Two Souls for women who don’t care for RPGs which never have a problem with having real women characters and even allow people to play as a female hero and have for decades.
Why can’t a woman be portrayed as a hero? Does the idea of that scare you?
The disorganised and decentralised mass collected under the gamergate banner has provided observers with a litany of examples as to why articles highlighting gender disparity in its various forms exist within games media.
How can you say with no apparent awareness of irony that political agendas have no place in the games industry whilst simultaneously pushing a political agenda? Come on, it’s time we all recognise that political agendas exist in all facets of this industry and that the sooner we come to accept that and pursue discourse on those terms, the better.
Oh I understand the irony. Spin me right round baby, because each side can and does play the political agenda card on each other.
All I want to do is play my games and not have to worry if I’m considered a misoganistic evil hormone driven male. Is that something that sounds so wrong in your ears?
If all you want to do is play games and not worry, why not do just that? Why bother attacking feminists for wanting to voice their opinion?
People having different opinions to you does nothing to stop you from enjoying the things that you enjoy. These people aren’t out to destroy gaming. They’re out to discuss gaming from their perspective. If putting out a series of youtube videos is apparently fringe extremism, how are these people such a threat to … well, anything?
On top of that, none of that has anything to do with the supposed issues of ethics in games journalism.
Actually, yes, it does sound a bit wrong.
At a fundamental level, the whole ‘gamergate’ thing is about a segment of the gaming community who are, for the first time, really being challenged by people with power in/over that community to confront some of of their unconscious (and, in some cases, conscious) attitudes and behaviors towards women, attitudes and behaviors that many people consider to be negative. It’s making them uncomfortable, and, unsurprisingly, they want it to stop. Yesterday.
I have some sympathy, because the gaming community and industry has been making me feel uncomfortable for decades. But, then again, why should I be expected to consider feeling uncomfortable as the price of admission to the gaming community and not you? What makes you so special?
What about gamers who enjoy those articles, and enjoy cultural and political critique of their hobby?
Gamergate publicly denounce the actions. Not accepted. Hes a part of gamergate.
Stephen buries the fact its happening on both sides. Accepted. Gamergate shouldnt be a thing anyway.
Okay.
Wait…
What?
It’s pretty sad how far blind support goes. It’s even sadder that any criticism is seen as an attack against women. People are angry and sad that those who are respectful members of the game community are being lumped in with sexist, seemingly violent morons, that they are barred from actually engaging in the discourse. It’s pretty simple, no one is attacking women here – they tend to agree that this needs to stop, they’d just like the opportunity to talk about it without being attacked. This doesn’t warrant blind defence of women because it is not an attack. Not everything is and it’s incredibly important to model the difference.
The fact of the matter is that the discussion you want to happen is not going to happen until you successfully distance it from its toxic origins. Any point you wish to make is being completely invalidated by the company you keep. The people spewing the hatred you denounce have not co-opted your movement, and they are not outliers: they are its founders, and its core. You have co-opted their movement, or, from an outsider’s viewpoint, been brought into it to try to give their movement a veneer of legitimacy and respectability.
The continued cries of ‘but it was always about journalistic integrity’ are objectively wrong and an attempt at revisionist history, or even, viewed though one lens, gaslighting. The history of gamergate is very clear and quite well documented. It all goes back to a single flashpoint: an ex with an agenda, a community all too willing to believe the worst of a female developer, and a handful of people who, for reasons unbeknownst to me, were willing to try to ruin someone’s life based on unverified and ultimately unfounded accusations they found on teh interwebs. The issue of journalistic integrity came later.
Until you manage a meaningful separation – and a meaningful separation is not pointing the finger at people spewing hate under the same name as you and saying ‘it’s not us, we just want to talk’, or ‘the other side has haters too!’ – I and the tens of thousands of others that you want to convince of the validity if your arguments are just going to assume that, at best, you don’t come from the same place as the haters but you have the same sorts of sympathies. The perception problem is yours to fix, not ours.
What game is the hot blonde with the big bazookas from?
Looks like the kind of game I’d like to play.
My DNA like the TNA.
And the award for most contextually inappropriate comment goes to…
I have to uprate, only because it’s so bizarre and out of place compared to literally everything else on the page.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5mLjKI968g sums it up pretty nicely
The hell is wrong with people :S
They are people, that’s the problem. Human’s blind faith and belief in stupid things like religion, political affiliation and idealisms turns them into hate monsters unable to agree with anyone whos viewpoint does not match their own.
Anyone who considers themselves an ally of the ‘gamergate’ movement is complicit in misogynism.
Any person practicing the teachings of Islam is complicit with extremist islamic terrorism….
Any person practicing Catholicism is complicit with child abuse….
Any person owning or driving a car is complicit with hit and run incidents…
Check out how broad my brush is!
I do believe at the moment that there may be a media watch special in the works about gamergate, them being a mediawatchdog program & making sure that their research is very credible before they air it, plus i also believe that rolling stone may have done an article on gamergate. Gamergate in my eyes is about 1 of the worst things to combine 2 paralell events involving women, the sl#t shaming accusations towards 1 woman & the coincidental release of an anita sarkeesian video about females in video games, combining the vile aspect of sexism of both, leading to 1 of thee most vilest sexism campaigns ever, the acceptance of women into the video game business has brought out the inner monster of sexists onto the internet, these women are being threatened by very evil trolls on the internet, who can possibly kill them if they know how to hack into what they believe is something that could harm their victim. (I know this after watching an interesting youtube video into hacking yesterday). This topic is 1 of thee most worrying concerning the threatening of women in a type of occupation that they believe is a very good choice working in, yet they still get abuse by being in that industry, this occupation is followed by being a female church official because of the amount of sexism that STILL persists in the anglican church. But there are some brave women in the video game industry who try to work despite the abuse from gamergate. May we hope that gamergate ends very peacfully & for it to be a reminder of the amount of sexism that still persists
When from the start GG was about saying because something was done by a woman it must be bad, to say that GG is about anything other than an unnatural disrespect of women and fear of equality is really stupid.
While many who support GG are against the death threats, they don’t seem to be against accusing women of sleeping around to get good reviews, they don’t seem to be against refusing to read an article by a woman and instead jumping to an outrageous conclusion based on the headline written by an editor, who is likely male.
Nobody can say a single decent thing done by the GG movement.
I’m too old for this shit. It’s actually kinda tragic that Adam Baldwin is a goddamn kook. I enjoyed Firefly but the only things I hear about him these days is when he says some insane, right wing crazy shit like “What hard evidence is there that Obama doesn’t want ebola in America?”
Wow. I knew someone said that but I didn’t know it was him. Tragic indeed.
How does one prove he doesn’t want a deadly virus in his country?
At the moment there is no Hard evidence that Adam Baldwin doesn’t want Ebola in America.
There is no Hard evidence that I personally don’t want Ebola in Australia, but almost everybody would assume (correctly) that I don’t want it here.
I don’t follow celebrities, I enjoy them making movies I like and sometimes I listen to them talk about those movies, but rarely do I care what an Actor thinks about Politics on the other side of the world. But this is one of the weirdest craziest things I have ever heard. It’s actually shocked me to think that somebody would need their leader to prove he doesn’t want a horrible disease in there country. I know we say Americans are crazy all the time, but seriously this one just blows me away.
Tony Abbot may very well be the most hated politician this country has ever seen, when campaigning people where lining up to shake his hand so they could call him a dick head. And yet nobody has demanded he prove that he doesn’t want a deadly disease to outbreak here.
Well, we don’t have a Tea Party, and AM talk radio isn’t as pervasive as it is in the states. People here stereotype 2GB as a ‘bogan station’ but it’s not the same as conservative/conspiracy theory talk radio a la Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. And no Fox News helps. It draws out the weirdos like Adam Baldwin like moths to a flame. I just… didn’t know ‘Jayne’ was that batshit.
Tell me about it, I went and saw him speak at Supanova Gold Coast, he was funny, smart it was an entertaining panel. I’d never have suspected this paranoid conspiracy garbage.
And I’m a paranoid person, just not about ridiculous BS. Getting up at 2am to see if my doors are still locked.
Harassment of anyone re: the current situation needs to stop. Anyone for whom gamergate is a pedestal from which to express their views needs to discreetly step down for just a second, look around themselves and recognise that they’re engaging in a tumult of negativity and absurdity.
I recognise that there are people who have joined the movement with constructive intentions. Now is the time to realise that nothing will be lost if you step away from a movement that is actively co-opted by people whose only wish is to cause as much harm as anonymity will afford. Make note of your concerns, bring them up once all of this disgusting crap has faded away, be patient and bring them up at a time when your words will carry greater legitimacy.
Most importantly, if you are one of the people claiming to want mature discourse, step out from under a banner that has been used from its inception to wage a campaign of sustained and systematic abuse against female developers, female writers, and anyone who is deemed pejoratively to be an SJW. Condemn that behaviour because it’s not what you stand for, condemn it because tolerating two months of raging abuse is an untenable position for anyone to defend.
+1
I’m glad I scrolled through all the arguing to see someone else keeping a cool head of reason.
You were doing so well till your last paragraph.
How can anyone “step out from under the banner” when every other instance to bring civil discussion into the many subjects like journalistic integrity, political agenda pushing in media, and even the fringe extremism of Feminism used to shame gamers, is met with hostility, threats and misogeny claims from a group of people whom do not want to listen to anyone outside of their belief system?
Gamers and thier gates, tsk tsk
I have passionately argued with people over all sort of unimportant nonsense, I have passionately argued with people over things that matter. Not once even if the other side could not see the brilliance of my argument have I wished them harm or wanted a Mob to go and dispense my point of view.
Posting somebodies details online is the ultimate act of cowardice especially when your not exactly forthcoming about who you are and your location, just hiding behind your screen name.
@trjn
He said i made a false equivalence, but never proved that i did.
Prove the false equivalence, tell me the specific point that is false to the point where i could not find any evidence to refute your claim.
No we don’t have to do that, just use logic and facts to back up your argument.
To quote James.
There are women in feminism that hate men and there are men in GamerGate that hate women.
Feminism has been around since the mid 1800’s GamerGate for about two to three months now in that time there has been a lot of positive change for women, GamerGate in the past two to three months has also done something positive, they helped the Fine Young Capitalist’s by donating $5000 to there indiegogo campaign (you can find the information on the Wiki).
So can we agree, both causes have nutters and both have done positive things.
Where is the false equivalence?
http://i.imgur.com/FxikD5Y.png
Gamergate was built on a foundation of harassing women. Feminism was built on a foundation of bettering the lives of women. There’s a difference between something that starts off with nutters than something that nutters have used as an excuse.
Also, we have the term “misandry” to separate feminists from man haters.
I have no interest in continuing this discussion with you. Do not consider it a sign of me giving in to your superior logic or being scared. I simply see no value in continuing this discussion. You will never change your mind and you have shown me nothing that would change mine.
You paint with a very wide brush, if you believe that to be true then there is nothing i can do to change your mind, all i can say is go out and read a lot more about it or go into there IRC channel and talk to people who are involved and ask them what the foundation of GamerGate is, you will be surprised.
Agreed.
Yes there is, but again i say go and educate yourself and see where they are coming from and ask them how it all started.
No i thank you for stepping forward and engaging in a conversation, it’s more than most of the downvoters have done.
Likewise, all i can do is reccomend you go out and find as much information as you can about GamerGate and educate yourself (visit them on IRC if you can).
I am the walrus coo coo ca choo. 😛
Gamergate was built to make public the corrupt journalism, ethics, and favoritism, rampant in the gaming industry. The Zoe Quinn fiasco was just the catalyst that started it all off.
The Zoe Quinn fiasco – ie, the initial death/rape threats based on a bunch of idiots taking an ex-boyfriend’s rantings as gospel truth. Then, after people said “fucking stop that”, oh, hey, something about ethics in hobby press journalism!
Really want to defend this?
I hope they find the scum bags that post people’s addresses and lock em up. It’s despicable.
And as far as using these kinds of happenings to tar the name of gamergate, it’s important to remember that people will hate gender, race, nationality or whatever, under any banner they can, KKK, Westboro Baptist Church. Heck, people will turn Australia day into an excuse to be racist and use the Australian flag as their banner.
Hate and bigotry in all forms is inexcusable.
@jamesh
I am not attached to the name ffs.
Journalism and feminism are parts of gamer gate (Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn bought feminism to gamers) and on the journalism side i have seen a few articles about Gamer Gate where the comments section was closed down so people could not talk, i can’t remember if it happened here on Kotaku, but it did happen on IGN and DualShockers, they give a one sided account of what happens and shut down any information that would contradict the article, that’s not right.
If you think the name Gamer Gate is toxic, do you not also agree that the name Feminism is also toxic?
If we judge Gamer Gate by there minority, why can we not judge Feminism by it minority?
Dammit, I wasn’t going to but what you have said here is just so patently absurd that someone has to address it.
Ridiculous, untrue, easily disproven by hundreds of articles written long before these two came into prominence and a demonstration that gamergate was founded on attacking these women, not on dealing with corruption in games journalism.
You have an entire internet where you can talk. You have a hashtag that is meant to exist for talking about this and people on other platforms who are more than happy to present a one-sided argument in their own favour.
This essay, from RPS editor John Walker, addresses many things that have been talked about there and many more.
That’s a great article. Hadn’t seen it before. Cheers.
Your right, there were articles about feminism in games before those two, but they bought it to the forefront of news, it was pretty much overlooked until they both came on the scene.
Really? so the fact the she slept with people in games journalism and that it bought to light the incestuous relation ship between indie developers and journalists has nothing to do with Gamer Gate? people just hate her because she is a woman and she had sex, right?
One of two things should have happened she should have come out and told the gaming media that she was sleeping with people who could effect her career in a positive way or the people who were sleeping with her should have recused them self from publishing anything positive about her or her game while they were in a relationship.
For the record it’s none of my business who she sleeps with, but it says a lot about her business ethics if she is willing to sleep with people who can further her career and not disclose it or have them recuse them self.
Where do people go for there gaming news online, Kotaku? IGN? Gamespot? DualShockers? if the sites people are going to for the game news are posting one sided articles and then shutting down any conversation about that article, while 100’s of thousands of people are reading it and not getting the complete story does that not seem a bit screwed up to you? it should be one way or the other, either they post the article and let people comment on it or don’t post the article at all.
Oh and the link to John Walker essay, why would i want to read that when he threw Gamer Gate under the bus on the 4th of September.
Judging the majority on the basis of the minority is wrong, it’s okay to condemn the people that do wrong but he is blaming everyone for some nutters actions, do you not see how that is wrong?
Do you not see how if we apply that same line of reasoning to feminism then all feminists are complicit of harassment / bomb threats / castration, etc as well?
I cannot believe i have to argue this point with people, it’s quite basic, don’t judge the majority on the what the minority does.
Not all Muslims are terrorists.
Not all Feminists hate men.
Not all people in Gamer Gate hate or harass woman.
Get it?
I don’t like the harassment / death threats etc, that comes out of Gamer Gate but at least i relies that it’s just the minority and not the entire movement, it’s unfortunate the people like you and most others in this thread can’t see that.
Something struck me about how you said that she should have disclosed that she was sleeping with people.
1. Quoted from TrJn’s article from RPS : Even now, the myth that Zoe Quinn slept with Nathan Grayson for positive coverage of her (free) game gets put forward. Coverage that never happened. For a while there was a concerted effort to identify some manner of corruption within the IGF Awards, which not only was so confused as to require time travel to have been possible, also wasn’t in any sense about games journalism.
2. Has this happened before, people disclosing publicly who they have slept with to better their careers? Besides in court?
You said you dont care who she sleeps with, but it seems quite contradictory to wanting her to disclose publicly who she slept with, dont you think?
Looking forward to a response 🙂
I never said she received positive coverage, just that she was in a position to receive positive coverage due to her relationship.
Agreed.
Not my concern and i never bought it up.
Generally people with good ethics would but they are far and few between, at the very least they would recuse them self from talking about the person they are sleeping with if they can help them in there career, most of the time though this comes out in court.
No, not at all if she is not sleeping with someone who is in a position to help here career than i don’t care, however if she is sleeping with people that can help her career than it’s in other game developers (especially indie game developers) that she disclose that relation ship or the person who can help her in her career.
So #gamergate IS about Zoe Quinn then? Everyone on the tag has been saying otherwise. Thanks for clarifying that.
This is what it’s about, Anita and Zoe were part of the problem but people have moved on to other more important issues.
Zoe Quinn with the FYC and Anita with her tropes of woman in video games series that only looks at games through a very narrow feminist lens.
youtube.com/watch?v=HJihi5rB_Ek
Look at that as a response to Anita’s videos, she presents the other side of the argument, Anita gives you the negative, KiteTales gives you the positive, which do you think is more credible?
Gamer Gate is not just about Zoe Quinn and Anita, it’s also about games development and games journalism.
Oh and look here, someone from Gamer Gate found the guy who was responsible for the death threats that Anita received and will most likely be turning that information over to the police.
twitter.com/sanc/status/521219154511417344
Cant you just fell the hate from Gamer Gate with such an action? what better way to show someone you hate them by finding out who was sending them death threats and reporting them to the police.
And in one paragraph you have just completely destroyed all your previous statements. No need to discuss this any more.
So you have no problems with indie developers having “romantic” relationships with the people who report on them, no conflict of interest there?
I think there can be an issue there, but you’re kind of coming at it from the wrong direction. I don’t think that developers and reporters can’t have relationships at all, nor do they have to go and declare them from the moment they occur. If a dev wants to try and sleep their way into favour with the media or whatever then that’s kinda gross, but hey. It’s a thing that happens.
I do think that if a journalist is involved with their subject though, that they should either hand the assignment over to someone else who doesn’t have that conflict of interest or disclose the fact that that relationship exists if it’s relevant. That’s a fairly basic principle of journalism.
I agree that people should declare conflicts of interest where they may be relevant. If you want tie that in to the Zoe Quinn controversy though, please provide links to stories that you feel were missing declarations of conflicts of interest.
If you can’t actually find any, and it turns out that the parties involved actually did decline to write reviews where there was a conflict of interest, then what exactly is the problem?
If it isn’t obvious from my other comments, no I don’t agree that feminism is equally toxic. I said as much when I called it a false equivalence.
While feminism does include some crazies at the radical end (one famous historical example is Valerie Solanas, who tried to murder Andy Warhol), it has achieved a lot of good: women can vote today, they have far better job prospects than they did even fifty years ago, and while not equal the pay gap is smaller than it was. On balance, it has made the world better.
I can’t say the same thing for gamergate. Donating to a crowd funding campaign doesn’t really cancel out death threats and harassment. I agree that it is unfair to judge a movement solely by its extremes, but I do think it is fair to judge it based on its actions overall.
Fun fact: people on both sides of the GamerGate thingamajoo have been “doxxed”. By the opposite side.
Fun fact: there are arseholes, just plain terrible people on both “teams”.
Fun fact: there are awful people living in your suburb, too! They’re everywhere.
Wait, none of those facts are fun.
So, did anyone hear about that pro-GG author who had a syringe with questionable fluid in it show up in his mailbox?
You mean the same guy who said you shouldn’t tell the public about that stuff?
I dunno, maybe?
Other names include Boogie2298 or whatever, you know, the fat guy that shows up here sometimes. He dared to have an opinion that was not inline with the masses, he got doxxed for it.
More recently than that, a GaymerX spokes(wo)man said that hey, games journalists should be held to some standard, and then they were harrassed and harassed until they eventually had to post “we don’t support gamergate” and written in between the lines you could read “please stop harassing us now?”.
As if it needs to be said, but I absolutely don’t condone doxxing or threatening people, even if they have different opinions than you. That’s fucked up is what it is. Doesn’t matter what side they’re on, that’s just not a thing you can do.
I’d say the only exception to this is to the people who are making threats, who are doxxing. Those people need to be found out immediately, preferably by police.
If you’re interested (though I suspect you may not be, and that’s okay), I could probably fetch a list of all known doxxed people.
——–
So hey, @finaldelerium wanna explain why you downrated there? What did you disagree with, I just have to know. Have people not been doxxed? Are there not bad people on both sides? Or maybe your suburb is filled with only the nicest people, and I should not have spoken so hastily?
If it’s the latter, I do apologise.
You’re talking about Milo, a guy who’s taking advantage of the controversy to get hits and to push his own agenda. It was only 6 months ago he was condemning gamers for another mass shooting.
Also, you went sea lion on him 😛
Difference being I was already there. I didn’t think I’d said anything particularly offensive…
Whatever the case, Milo’s gone full mast on this whole thing. While those are some questionable things you’ve mentioned, isn’t one of the “morals” of this whole thing that we shouldn’t judge a person’s character by who they were, but who they are?
“whole thing” “questionable things” “whole thing”
boy do I have a big vocabulary
Because there isn’t an ‘opposite side’ or ‘opposing team’ to gamergate.
Gamergate is a hate movement.
I mean, you’re wrong, but I can’t expect you to do any more than the bare minimum amount of research.
I’ll make it SUPER easy for you.
http://jezebel.com/gamergate-trolls-arent-ethics-crusaders-theyre-a-hate-1644984010
You’ve made it incredibly easy by linking Jezebel.
Come on, man, really? Like, that site is an embarrassment to journalism at the best of times, and you take their word seriously?
These are the same hypocrites who go “rahh rahh rahh oversexualised women” and then on the same day have a bunch of shirtless dudes for eyecandy.
Now there’s nothing wrong with that – everyone should have something nice to look at – but you can’t decry something and then DO IT WHILE DECRYING IT. It’s one or the other, not both.
That article is pretty grossly unrepresentative of the whole thing, though I wouldn’t expect much less from Jezebel.
“Jennifer Allaway is an independent social researcher whose work focuses on issues of diversity within the many facets of video games. She has presented the results of her study on the prevalence of sexism in the game industry and it’s impact on game content at many prestigious conferences, including GDC, PAX Prime, and Indie Game Con. She has also published a featured article on her research on Gamasutra.”
And your credentials are….?
@finaldelerium
Ah yes, the old “you’re not a chef so you can’t say this food tastes like shit” argument.
Great work.
You didn’t say it tasted like shit. You said you wouldnt eat it because you didn’t like the chef.
OH LOOK, http://www.standard.net/Police/2014/10/14/Utah-State-University-student-threatens-act-of-terror-if-feminist.html
@finaldelerium
The analogy would be that I didn’t like the restaurant. At any rate, you missed the part where I said it was well written but unrepresentative.
Re: that second link
you can’t link a psychopath, of which there are an acknowledged few, and say an entire movement is flawed. That’s like linking the WBC and saying “looking how broken religion is!”
Besides, that guy isn’t even tied to gamergate. There’s just a footnote at the bottom that throws him in with it, because that’s the cool thing to do.
I know I’ve done a real shitty job of talking “up” the other side, but it’s obvious we’ve seen different things. While you’re looking at the media who would not dare report a positive word about GG for a few reasons, I’ve seen the people behind it all, and though you wouldn’t believe me, it’s not a sinister bunch of Guy Fawkes masks and cheetos fingers rubbing their hands together and asking “which woman should we destroy next?” They’re always discussing the coverage they have, the articles being written, and how to deal with the journalist media they believe is corrupt.
I am not for one moment denying that people are being harassed. There’s a lot of that going around! But the majority knows that death threats and all that bullshit is not helpful to their cause, and they’ll decry it if it is even suggested. The people behind the threats, while they might support GG, are not supported by GG. They certainly don’t appear to discuss it with anyone before they send those threats off.
The problem is that GG provides the platform for that harassment. Where did the doxxer go to post Brianna’s personal information? The GG board on 8chan. Then the threats came immediately after that. Without GG that doesn’t happen.
That’s not even to speak to the fact that the GG tag was first used in a tweet posting a derogatory video about a woman’s sex life. The actual genesis of the term Gamergate was a harassment video.
While obviously I feel for the victims and no one deserves to be treated like this, I’m sort of glad these loudmouthed idiots are making actual death threats so the relevant authorities can get involved and apprehend them. I hope the courts treat them very unkindly.
Absolutely. Anyone who makes threats needs to be rolled in on by the authorities immediately.
Jeez, you want a website to do fair reporting, you get downvoted.
You want a website to acknowledge both extremist assholes are doing horrible things, you get “i havent seen any doxxing or death threats” when infact LINKS FROM POSTERS HAVE SHOWN THIS IS HAPPENING. Hell even this article has had stated ‘things’ have sent to a pro GG (who is gay mind you) reporter. But because he ‘supposedly laughed it off’ You get downvoted.
You simply mention that there are bad eggs in the otherside of the camp. “no they dont, oh by the way. heres a downvote”.
You scream out that the abuse than ANY person is getting, for ANY reason is absolute horse shit, you scream out that the abuse people are getting just because they are a woman is a fucking disgusting thing, but because you can see the points that the other side is trying to make, you get a downvote because you are not Screaming the same rhetric kotaku and other websites are yelling at you because you do believe that bullshit.
But of course, You arent trying to make people pick sides in this debate now are you.
Person A becomes object of hate for reasons.
Some members of Group B embark on a campaign of hate and attacks on Person A, in the name of Group B’s caused.
Some defenders of Person A engage in a campaign of hate and attacks on Group B as a result.
Therefore Person A is at fault and no one should take their side.
“The media” continues to report on the campaign of attacks of Person A who is still basically an innocent victim.
“The media” is therefore biased, somehow.
Group B is completely justified.
#gamergate
The fact you believe ONLY Person A is an innocent victim here is why i take issue with the media.
Neither Group B or Defenders of Person A IMO IS justified.
Strawman. I never said only Person A was an innocent party.
Downvoted for whining about downvotes.
All i know is, im thankful all i have to deal with here is downvotes for having a different opinion.
But at the same time, You can stick your downvotes.
If this were any other place besides Kotaku Australia’s comments, you’d probably have your address posted somewhere by now.
theralphretort.com
TBO, us men get threats all the time online. Generally pointless ones in random situations, but we just tell em to G* F*** T********* and all is good. Think some women are just too soft and sensitive thus take too many things literally online.
Not sure how many dudes have their home addresses posted with the threats…
So hey, someone sleuthed out the guy who made those death threats to Anita.
At least, I think it was those death threats. In context, this guy says “most recent” so if there were more since then, well…
anyway, go have a looksee.
https://twitter.com/sanc/status/521219154511417344
So why didn’t Gabe Newell “flee for his life” from his home when he received a twitter death threat this past week? Why are most journalists saying that the guy sending the death threat made a stupid mistake and shouldn’t be excused for it, but have said everything from “but I can understand where he was coming from” or “but obviously he didn’t really mean the threat”.
Why is that? Why is one person making a direct death threat clearly just internet dumbassery and another is clearly a direct real threat that you need to flee for your lives from? Could it be that one promotes a personal narrative of victim hood to capitalize on while the other lives in the real world?