Everything is Gamergate

Paywall.

Pretty sure everything is not Gamergate though.

Looks like the social justice types picked a fight with the wrong people.

If they hadn't fought back as hard as they did, we wouldn't be hearing both sides of the story today. In the end, Zoe Quinn got a well deserved taste of her own medicine. Get over it.

SoldierOfTheKing said:

In the end, Zoe Quinn got a well deserved taste of her own medicine.

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How so?

SoldierOfTheKing said:

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Funny, that's sometimes how I feel with regards to posting on here.

Anyways, was that supposed to be an answer to my question?

I have an apple here that I am pretty sure is not Gamergate. I'll now eat it to make sure.

Honestly, I don't even know what Gamergate is. I play a lot of videogames, but somehow I never got into conflict with any gamergates in the process. You guys keep shouting at the monkeys sitting on the other tree, I've got aliens to shoot.

As someone who did do his journalistic duty of examining both sides of the controversy?

The material in the OP is heavily inaccurate.

The gist of what went down is this:

1. Quinn's boyfriend posted material noting evidence that she had carried on affairs with as many as five other individuals, all of whom were in a position to serve as patrons for her career.

2. As much as people were upset about the prospect of a game developer sleeping her way to the top, folks really got heated when they realized that one of the people she had allegedly been with was a writer for what at the time was a leading video games publication, something that was a severe breach of ethics when it comes to journalism.

3. Once that was noted, the folks who were upset over it broke into three groups: people who were upset over someone sleeping their way to the top, people who were upset over such a clear breach of industry ethics, and trolls who saw this as another excuse to be trolls.

4. If things had stayed like this, the whole thing would have been a sneeze in the breeze. The publication in question conducted an ethics probe, censured the writer and another writer discovered to be in a similarly inappropriate relationship, made an official statement on the matter, and spelled out *explicit* rules concerning the topic.

5. Problem is, Quinn didn't leave it like this. She called in reinforcements, some of whom had issues of their own; for example, Anita Sarkeesian had recently been feuding with a group called The Fine Young Capitalists, and when she hopped on board the feud got absorbed into matters.

6. As if that wasn't bad enough, Quinn, her buddies, and a series of media figures who supported them took the trolls, held them up as being all gamers, and denounced video gamers as a collective whole. The closest thing I can compare this to is going into a biker bar, pouring a beverage over the head of the largest biker in there, and saying that you're doing this to "celebrate" his girlfriend now being your girlfriend. Yes, things got ugly fast as people who had no idea what was even going on turned on Quinn & co for the insult.

The truth of the matter is that people on both sides were engaged in unethical and illegal activity. For example, when Milo Yiannopolous exposed a secret mailing list where video game journalists were unethically coordinating their coverage of various events in order to maintain a party line, someone mailed him an unmarked syringe filled with liquid. Bet you didn't hear about this one, did you?

Or you had the Gawker media writer who made social media postings declaring that "Gamergate is why we need to start bullying nerds again" and stating "Bring back bullying". Gamergate screen-capped the guy's posts and showed them to various companies that had been advertising with Gawker, and sure enough most of those companies pulled their ads... an act that the mainstream media portrayed as "Gamergate going after advertisers".

The longer Gamergate was a thing, the more scalps it claimed. Several video game journalists' unethical actions were exposed. Dozens of then-prominent "white knight" types who arose to defend Quinn and Sarkeesian were themselves exposed for unethical and even illegal activity, with several going down for sexual offenses. A spotlight came down on the financial side of Sarkeesian's operations, raising serious questions. And last but not least, Gawker went the way of the dodo.

Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, Gamergate was, on the whole, a positive thing for the entertainment industry, as it weeded out several corrupt actors, put some predators behind bars, and made it clear that the general public would make their concerns known if people went too far.

If you want sources for any of this?

One good place to visit is Know Your Meme, who did a better job of tracking developments than even Wikipedia.

Or you have Youtuber PSA Sitch, who did a 7-minute video explaining the gist of matters.

Note that both sources have NSFW content, and so I'm not linking to them directly.

Ironhold said:

As someone who did do his journalistic duty of examining both sides of the controversy?

The material in the OP is heavily inaccurate.

The gist of what went down is this:

1. Quinn's boyfriend posted material noting evidence that she had carried on affairs with as many as five other individuals, all of whom were in a position to serve as patrons for her career.

2. As much as people were upset about the prospect of a game developer sleeping her way to the top, folks really got heated when they realized that one of the people she had allegedly been with was a writer for what at the time was a leading video games publication, something that was a severe breach of ethics when it comes to journalism.

3. Once that was noted, the folks who were upset over it broke into three groups: people who were upset over someone sleeping their way to the top, people who were upset over such a clear breach of industry ethics, and trolls who saw this as another excuse to be trolls.

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lol, this is all ridiculous. As I recall, a lot of his charges wound up being baseless, but even aside from that, the whole notion that people should get that worked up over video game “journalism” is patently absurd. Those “journalistic outlets” are little more than marketing tools for devs and publishers, except for the odd occasion where they do an article about crunch, which are usually about as hard hitting as a wet sponge.

But that absurdity is surpassed by the notion that she was sleeping her way to “the top”. A free-to-play, low budget indie game is not “the top”. I’ve shipped individual dlc and expansion packs that have sold more units than Quinn has in her entire career (despite the fact that we got into the industry around the same time) and you don’t know who I am because I’m a nobody and I don’t matter to the rest of the industry. If anybody in this whole saga had any right to be miffed at this alleged conflict of interest, it would be me, my colleagues and the other folks working in the industry competing for marketshare. And you know what? I can’t think of a single person I’ve met in this industry who cares about that at all, who doesn’t see right through this baloney, and who doesn’t think the gamergaters are a bunch of knuckle-dragging, misogynistic troglodytes. In public, we have to be polite to them, but in private, we both fear and loathe that crowd. I get off kind of easy because Im a dude, I’m not on Twitter, and my Facebook is locked down pretty tight; but I still have to be careful.

I’m not excusing anything the women targeted by GG may have done later on, but the pretext on which this whole saga was launched is so asinine that it’s insulting to my intelligence.

iluvatar5150 said:

I’m not excusing anything the women targeted by GG may have done later on, but the pretext on which this whole saga was launched is so asinine that it’s insulting to my intelligence.

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This is why I said that had it simply remained "Quinngate", it would have been a sneeze in the breeze and we all would have moved on with our lives.

But once Quinn called for reinforcements and the more mainstream outlets went off on their whole "Gamers are scum!" nonsense, Pandora's box was blown wide open and there was no going back.

edit -

When it comes to consumer revolts, I go all the way back to CBS News and Memogate. I've seen these things happen before.

Also, before anyone brings them up:

Deplorables - I had a front-row seat for that one

Kekistan - went to study them from the inside-out, and they accepted me as one of their own

Comicsgate - I was declared to be among their ranks by various "progressive" types who presumed that my efforts to investigate both sides of the situation instead of doing the whole "listen and believe" bit meant that I was just as "evil" as they presumed Comicsgate to be.

Ahh, the pointing without of self on the tree of purity, not understanding no one is pure , no not one . In the measurement of sin one finds out on the tree of purity, all, receive the same digital outrage (which is judgment from Romans 3:10 connected to all) which brings us back to the measurement that actually is no measurement. However, we create sons <-- words from thought in pride of judgment (Ex: Let there be Light... Gods... Son.) and conceptual sons (Gamergate) that hold different thought patterns to the individual on the tree of purity that add our sons to the topic<-- Conceptual son---> Gamergate..Notice the term, our, as self is included in these sons of the lesson I am giving to myself in the battle for the mind, in the mind, where entire thought trees can spring from the seed to the entire tree in a nano second and the decision to act on it like this comment of sons made manifest herein.

"You guys keep shouting at the monkeys sitting on the other tree", Herein is the human learning curve we all go through (duality of the mind) to realize its the same tree with limbs we seek to break on the one purity tree. In one situational picture, it devolves from digital outrage, to physical doxing etc... etc...

The digimind, naturally groups the sons created and assigns all to it not in the group think, like troll. Wherein the digimind has no conscious in the activity of judgment, especially in this format where we are what is written... only. Further combined, this format brings past brought to present thus future, must be the same in life story, Example: Read a background check and for most in the digimind that is us today leaving out what is read happened ___ years ago. Digimind uses the natural human what goes into the mind comes out in action combined to age .

The endgame:
The child sits on the strongest limb of the purity tree, Matthew 18:10 and once one doxes it, as comes natural to the older human in said dox, legal action etc etc is the double edged sword , I know 6 year olds with mad kung fu skills in the digiverse today, tommorows child, will be our judges in this... the digiverse . See 11 year old hacks voting machine in __minutes. So, it has begun (See Epstein--gate).

Ironhold said:

This is why I said that had it simply remained "Quinngate", it would have been a sneeze in the breeze and we all would have moved on with our lives.

But once Quinn called for reinforcements and the more mainstream outlets went off on their whole "Gamers are scum!" nonsense, Pandora's box was blown wide open and there was no going back.

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I don’t really buy that. The hoardes had already descended upon her. She might have gained less notoriety had she kept to herself but the damage on her had already been inflicted.

I see a lot of claims in the opinion piece, with no evidence, while others are misleading, for example:
"Using fake Twitter accounts, 4chan users posed as “angry feminists” and got the hashtags"
No evidence of the accounts being fake shown here.
"right-wing political correctness monitors like Christina Hoff Sommers"
Excuse me? I recently spent 5 minutes verify this claim on this. I see no evidence of her identify as a right winger.
"Recent right-wing furies over female Marvel characters"
I am pretty sure it has something to do with the leading actor "Brie Larson" making exclusionary remarks regarding white males. The PR guys at Disney went full damage control, with her. Half in the bag guys response to this nonsense in their review is top tier.
"Reddit threads defending sexist tropes in video games as essential cultural pillars." What threads? In r/Kia? In r/Games? In r/Gaming?
I have strong suspicion that they are responding to Anita Sarkeesian, videos.

This however takes the cake for me:
"In August 2017, a Google engineer, James Damore, was fired after an anti-diversity memo he wrote went viral."
Translation: I didn't read the memo itself, and just assume he's anti-diversity, irregardless of him stating multiple times that he is not anti-diversity, and offer suggestions to improve the situation.

iluvatar5150 said:

I don’t really buy that. The hoardes had already descended upon her. She might have gained less notoriety had she kept to herself but the damage on her had already been inflicted.

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It would have remained confined to the Quinn situation, and likely wouldn't have ballooned up like it did.

Her career would have been shot, but it wouldn't have come to affect so many other people like it did.

super animator said:

"right-wing political correctness monitors like Christina Hoff Sommers"

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Based Mom is, in fact, a self-avowed feminist.

The reason why she so often sides with libertarian and conservative groups is because she's disgusted by what she sees as the excesses and errors of the modern feminist movement and believes that these are signs that the movement has lost its way.

"Recent right-wing furies over female Marvel characters"

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This is a far more complicated matter than just "people don't want female comic book characters".

The long and short of it is that over the past few years, a number of comic book companies have set off on misguided "diversity" efforts wherein characters are being pushed solely because of their gender or some other class membership rather than their being strong, well-written characters.

The majority of the characters being pushed as part of this effort are, quite frankly, one-note. The writers who are handling them are so busy pushing their class membership that they have consistently failed to develop them out beyond their class membership, and in the case of the female characters it's become cliche for them to automatically be superior to any and every male character - including legacy characters - they happen to be with.

As if that wasn't bad enough, many of the writers behind these characters either explicitly created the characters because of their socio-political views (like Aubrey Sitterson and his complete re-do of the "Salvo" character from the G. I. Joe franchise [1]) or have begun to use these characters as author avatars so that they can spout their socio-political views to the masses (like the Sina Grace run on "Iceman" [2])

Between the $5 cover prices and the awful writing these characters represent, comic fans have been staying away in droves, satisfying themselves with $1 reprints and low-cost indie books. At a meeting of comic book retailers a Marvel rep was told to his face that these "diversity" titles aren't selling and that the glut of unsold product is harming comic shops, but very few people within the established industry listened.

This is what long-time fans, including women, racial minorities, religious minorities, et cetra, are upset about: the fact that a series of poor decisions that include pushing full steam ahead on the failed diversity initiatives is doing severe damage to the industry.

The sad, simple truth of the matter is that IDW, Marvel, DC, Image, Archie, Valiant, and several others are in such a dire situation that either they will not survive the next decade or will be forced to mutate into a form we today wouldn't be able to recognize. That's how bad it is.

[1] The Salvo character, as introduced in 1990, was a buff, bald Caucasian anti-tank soldier with a fondness for edgy T-shirts. When Sitterson went to insert the character into his run on "G. I. Joe", however, the character had turned into an obese Samoan woman. In a 26-part Twitter spree he did in November 2017, Sitterson said that he made the change because he felt that the Hasbro-official design had an "alt-right vibe" that he felt needed to be "recontextualized" for the modern day.

Sitterson was already in trouble with Hasbro for insensitive remarks he'd made about 9/11 and for trolling a pair of fan websites, so when they saw what he wrote they forced IDW to fire him and cancel his Joe book outright. It's arguable whether or not Sitterson's firing precipitated the mass reboot of the Hasbro shared continuity IDW had going, especially given rumors at the time that Hasbro had been mulling whether or not to cancel the licenses IDW had.

[2] The first run Sina Grace had on Iceman was infamous for the fact that it focused solely on Iceman's LGBT status, which in turn was controversial as it contradicted decades of him being straight and actively dating women & had no lead-up. This culminated in an infamous issue in which Iceman's elderly parents, who were shown as being well-meaning but utterly confused, were treated as the villains of the book, with the issue's climax being his publicly humiliating them during a dinner in which they tried to reconcile and understand him. The book regarded Iceman as being justified in this, something that even some readers who were LGBT took offense at.

I am pretty sure it has something to do with the leading actor "Brie Larson" making exclusionary remarks regarding white males. The PR guys at Disney went full damage control, with her. Half in the bag guys response to this nonsense in their review is top tier.

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To put it bluntly?

1. Brie Larson can't read a room to save her life. Couple this with what is a clearly over-sized ego, and we have the foundation for what appears to be a rather toxic personality. If you think her remarks about "old white guys" is bad, find the interviews she did ahead of "Endgame" and you'll see her go after her co-stars over innocent comments. Even in those interviews you could tell that Don Cheadle and Jeremy Renner were absolutely sick of her, and there are rumors that other cast members have had enough as well.

2. "Captain Marvel" was an inferior movie in multiple regards, from the shoddy effects work to the poor writing (such that Danvers is essentially a villain for much of the film if you factor in the infamous deleted scenes) to the efforts to shoe-horn in "girl power!" as much as possible. If it hadn't had the Marvel machine backing it up, it would have failed.

3. Even apolitical outlets like The Film Theorists have noted evidence to suggest that Disney forced Fox to Nerf "Dark Phoenix" so that it wasn't any sort of rival to Captain Marvel, which Disney and the "good and proper crowd" had been going to length to push as the "girl power" event of the year.

4. Pursuant to the above, the same people were also going to length to destroy "Battle Angel Alita" because it had the gall to open before "Captain Marvel" did, thus stealing Larson's thunder. The fact that Alita was well-written, well-acted, and had bleeding-edge effects work while Captain Marvel was horrid and Dark Phoenix unwatchable has so frustrated the "woke" crowd that even to this day you'll find hit pieces being written against Alita and the film's fandom. That Alita was selling out within the first week of being available on home video while Captain Marvel is still cluttering shelves is taken by many Alita fans as final vindication.

"In August 2017, a Google engineer, James Damore, was fired after an anti-diversity memo he wrote went viral."
Translation: I didn't read the memo itself, and just assume he's anti-diversity, irregardless of him stating multiple times that he is not anti-diversity, and offer suggestions to improve the situation.

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Pretty much.

Damore's memo basically said "Google's current diversity programs are so ham-handed in nature that they're causing more problems than they're solving, but I have some ideas on how to fix that."

But because he dared point out that a major corporation's diversity efforts were backfiring spectacularly he's been subject of a non-stop smear campaign.

SummerMadness said:

How does every single topic that and vaguely references video games or comic books turn into an angry rant about Brie Larson. Is her success that bothersome to you? The reality is she has nothing to do with this topic, so please stop bringing her up because you hate her so much. That’s some deep-seated misogyny if I’ve ever seen any.

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I really get a kick out of the complaints of it being a bad movie. None of the MCU movies are any good. Yes, the fx in Captain Marvel were lousy, but it was better than watching any of the regular Avengers, particularly the three hours of vacuousness that was Infinity War.