Meanwhile, Anita Sarkeesian cancelled a speech at Utah State University:

One hell of a bold claim. You base this on what, exactly? The notion that 'gamers' (for all the nebulous term it is) support them and that they are therefore obliged to support them (or at least stay neutral)? Do not bite the hand that feeds and all that? There's a minor problem with that, outlined in the second quote Banta pulled from the deadspin article.

Groups like Gamergate are often tarred by the brush of the segment that is most vocal in an early phase (99/100 times: the extremists). See Occupy (which got tarred with a violent brush early on), the Tea Party (esp on more left-leaning outlets) or, for a more enduring example, the police (ACAB anyone?) and the islam (do I really need to explain this?). It is not dissimilar here: Gamergate got the misogynist brush, in part because of the aforementioned hunting and shaming, in part of some people who're affiliated with Gamergate. On the other side, the 'feminist' group is very often equated to SJWs (in the derogatory sense of the word). Put the two together and there's a textbook Us vs Them situation in trenches deeper than those in Ypres.

The problem for Gamergate is that, for some weird reason my upper middle class white cis male mind cannot possibly fathom, the idea of equality/equity of the sexes is one that's pretty popular, and most people unfamiliar with the whole situation will sooner think of that than of rabid SJWs when asked what feminism is. In the court of public opinion, just about any argument that even remotely reeks of misogyny is probably 4-0 down already, if not 7-0, and given that the misogyny has been stuck to Gamergate for a comparatively long time now, it's unlikely it's ever going to go away.

 

I don't use the term as too many people misunderstand what people mean by it but feminists by and large aren't "SJWs". The majority of the time that I've seen people use this term is when words like "misogyny" are thrown around to deflect any criticism or when people are using the accusation of "internalized misogyny" to ignore a woman's opinion. The latter typically comes from men, which makes it particularly laughable as to me it seems rather sexist and insulting to ignore a woman's point of view while pretending to be out to save women.

HuffPost had Jemma Morgan, Jennie Bharaj, and Georgina Young on today: http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/se...n-video-game-culture/543c686878c90a71ff000157

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/16/t...omen-video-game-threats-anita-sarkeesian.html

Stuff is spreading to major news outlets and it doesn't look good

 

It's one that I agree with

Edit: in reference to the argument about sexism in games, that is. I'm sure people would be a lot less hostile if equality debates didn't seem to revolve heavily around depriving a demographic something they love.

 

That gets to something brought up in (I think) the Vox article about what games are. Trying to define what a game is, or what gamers are, leads to a No True Scotsman argument that ends up with everyone feeling angry. Stricter definitions should be used based on the mechanics of the game. Poker and chess are fundamentally similar (two or more players using a set of rules and a ranking system), just as Fate/Stay-Night and the Stanley Parable are (the player makes a series of decisions that result in a personal outcome). Finding definitions based on mechanics could easily limit the conversation to that kind of game, and by proxy that kind of gamer, without falling into a logical fallacy that results in hurt feelings and angry twitter diatribes.

 

So supposedly the guys over at GB, after being attacked by Wu over remaining silent, started weighing in by tweeting other people's opinions that apparently mirror their own.

Their opinion now being that the GG tag has become hateful, toxic and should be destroyed while Gerstmann on the bombcast said the ethics side of GG is 'farsical'.

 

With the holidays getting closer anti GG has been pulling out all the stops before we hit November. They're not doing too good of a job though. I think the StopGG hashtag, along with the BBC, Huffpo and MSNBC interviews were supposed to bury us quickly. Fortunately for us, they are their own worst enemy.

 

The media bashing gamers is nothing new. I don't think it's going to change anything.

 

I tried to sound neutral, but I'm genuinely gutted with how GB feels.

 

It's not surprising, kicking over a status que never gets the kickers any friends. While this is nowhere even near the league of the civil rights movements, King and his followers weren't making friends either when they protested. I'd go so far as to say that if you are trying to change something and you're not meeting serious opposition then you're doing something wrong.

 

Also a good explanation for Sarkeesian getting slammed over her analyses and a decision to disable YT comments way before this, mind. *shrug*.

 

Editorial by Jeff Gerstmann, with the rest of GB basically signing on. Probably one of the better op-ed's on the whole subject I've seen come out of a video game website.

 

I was shockingly surprised when they admitted the harassment was a two way street. Good on them.

 

So, Todd has gone on an Anti GG rant for some reason that also included him saying things like if JewWario were still around he would be against GG. Angry Joe, who may have been drunk at the time, has also been ranting on his twitter about Anita's cancelling her thing in Utah and shouting at Baldwin. Pol tried t get him on stream but it, unsurprisingly, didn't happen.

I hope this isn't the beginning of TGWG getting involved, it would not end well for them I think. Hopefully Doug will jump on this fast.

 

What's the Utah thing got to do with GG? I thought it was about AS calling her talk off because of poor security?

 

Joe's already moved off a while back to his own site, so besides his stuff posting on TGWG (of which I think there is very little since he takes ages to upload), there's not much problem there. The Gaming stuff got sectioned off from TGWG a while back, and the site meant for it crashed so there's been some ill-feelings between a lot of the gamer reviewers over that.

As for Todd and his circlejerk... fuck 'em. Todd's pretty much the best of the bunch when it comes to actual videos, but Nostalgia Chick takes forever to put stuff out and it's usually "Twilight but Cthulu!" stuff. The vampire chick does really good work though, and I don't think she's done much with Lindsey in recent months.

And yeah, I just blasted him for bring JewWario into it. Just fucking unnecessary.

 

Considering the amount and the viciousness of the threats being levied against both sides it's hard to not see a connection between what happened in Utah and gamergate as a whole.

 

Pretty much, somebody called in a probably fake massacre threat if she gave her presentation. Cops checked it out and said it was probably fake but that they would beef up security on campus and the place where the presentation would take place just to be safe. When Anita asked if people with legal permits would be allowed to carry weapons at the presentation the university said that they followed all state law by the book, which meant yes. She cancelled after she was told that. This, of course, has been pinned on GG because why not? There is also a bit of a stink about the emails the person sent. In them he compares what he's going to do to an obscure incident that happened up in Canada where some misogynist guy killed fourteen women on a campus up there. There is more then a few people who are starting to think the whole thing was pulled just so Anita could draw more attention to herself.

Not that there is any proof of that.

I can't stand her. I was indifferent to her before Spoony left, but her kicking the whole thing off by dragging up twitter drama over two months old that Spoony apologized for already was just stupid as all hell.

 

I think that's the most ludicrous thing I've heard from pro or anti GG. You have to be some special kind of stupid for that to make sense.