SOOO... GAMERGATE

oh buddy.

"feminism" is a terrible term. It should probably be something like "humanism". Equal rights, freedoms, and safety for all.

author=GreatRedSpirit
Oh yeah, fuck D&D 5e too!

GRS, assuming you are not being snarkastic:

Not that I have any opinion of 5E D&D generally speaking, but you have no fucking clue what you're talking about here. As a tabletop industry professional, I can assure you that article has been thoroughly and fully debunked. The tl;dr is that neither Zak S nor Pundit--ESPECIALLY not Zak S--engaged in any of the behavior they were accused of. These are bullshit fabrications from whole cloth. This article does not have a reliable factual perspective. It's just baseless mudslinging. I can source this with links to more accurate reporting, but as there are limited hours in the day and today is Halloween, I hope that you won't press me to.

GRS, I hope you will trust me here, because I really don't want to get into this can of worms on rpg maker dot fucking net. It's already been a cataclysmic shakeup in the social circles important to my day job.

This is just wrong. You should stop thinking things like this. Forever.

I'm sorry, would you care to explain your fundamental opposition to basic and obvious truths? If you take nudes of yourself and post them to the internet, whose fault is it there are nudes of you on the internet?

I have zero doubt, absolutely none whatsoever, that anyone who knew either you or myself sufficiently well could paint a 100% factual portrayal that could make either of us look like the most disgusting, hideously vile creature that has ever walked the earth. Everyone has done things that could be considered hideously wrong or bad without mitigating circumstances. There's probably very few people who couldn't be made to look awful if presented in the right light.

Well in my case, I have said things online (in chats with my girlfriend, specifically) that make me look like an unbelievably awful and repugnant asshole and an abusive monster. If she were to release those chats publicly, I'd be fucked. This is because those logs of me being horrible actually represents me being horrible. Not any instance of cherry-picking or narrative construction. But because me being a shitty, shitty person was caught on tape.

Anyway I don't know about you. Have you cheated on anyone five times recently, one time with a married person, and then said that you shouldn't have to come clean about any of it because you're a special snowflake ~important voice in gaming~? No? You haven't done any of that? Then you're a better person than Zoe Quinn and I am pretty sure any factual portrayal would reveal that.

Yes, how dare someone threaten legal action over being sent death threats, threats of violence, rape threats, threatening or offensive phone calls to her family members, release of her personal information, etc. Whatever is the world coming to?

By the way, if by your own logic the fact that nude photos of her exist means they're free game, then an IRC chat she can get into is also free game. If you don't want people to eavesdrop on you having a conversation about harassing and threatening someone on the internet...

You know...

don't do that.

My point wasn't that her reactions were somehow completely unjustified, at that point she was in a social media war that she hasn't strictly speaking started, so obviously her measures were justified. My point was that I could not understand why you found her bragging obnoxiously about being a spy to be fucking endearing or, as you put it, "rad". I just don't see anything remotely charming about that.

Nobody is perfect. I have said some truly horrible things in my life to people, and some of those things are floating around the internet. If you don't know the girl, how on Earth can you justify ever judging her from what happens in a single blog? Posting blogs of her evil ways is not a reflection of her character, it's a reflection of yours. I learned this the hard way. When you do this, you are the villain.

But don't listen to me. I'm just a 30-something crazy fellow conjuring spirits in his basement and reading 2000-year-old religious manuscripts. But then again, that applies to any priest of any path. Part of this is understanding the nature of what it means to be human. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Don't tell me how awful Zoe Quinn is. The plain fact is that you're no better.

That applies to all of us.

Listen man, I'm really not a very good person. Certainly not perfect. I've done all kinds of horrible, horrible, horrible things in my personal life--many in the last eight years, many in the last three weeks-- that I'm deeply, deeply ashamed of. But one of the few things I feel totally certain of is: fuck you, I'm a better person than fucking Zoe Quinn. The only good thing about her benighted existence is that it makes me feel so much better about my own conduct. I am not a good person. Not by a long shot. Perfect? Ha. I'm not in the same universe as perfect.

But Zoe Quinn? This is someone I can comfortably feel morally superior to. Because unlike Solitayre and unlike many people I DID bother to read that entire thing. And the picture her own words and actions paint of her is ATROCIOUS.

Also, fuck you and your condescension.

Considering the outpouring of vitriol in your post, I doubt you'll believe me, but I want you to know that I was aiming for earnest, not condescending. What I said about being a child of a violent divorce is true and still pretty emotionally fraught stuff for me.

To think making social progress is something to be feared...

Here's the key thing, though...the vague concept of "social progress" does not justify lying, misrepresenting the facts, and just generally being a vile, disgusting asshole.

Not to mention uh, her personal life has absolutely nothing to do with her creative output. None of our business, not a valid argument.

I agree that arguing what a vile bitch she is germane to absolutely nothing except when someone makes claims like that she is a "rad person". I'm not using her personal shittiness to justify gamergate, to be clear. I'm just arguing it as its own abstract, unconnected point...in the gamergate thread. I don't blame anyone for being confused, but I hope I've unconfused it.

If it was the other way around--if Zoe Quinn was a man, whose spurned ex-girlfriend wrote a blog post shaming him--I'm 100% certain she'd be called a crazy bitch and receive hundreds of death threats.

I gotta disagree with you there. In fact, I'm 100% certain that you're wrong.

My girlfriend said to me last night that there is a "feminist test" where basically you look at what a woman is being condemned for and ask if a man would be condemned for the same thing, and she went on to say that Quinn's behavior passed or failed, however you care to put it, this test: that her behavior is plainly unacceptable for ANYONE. And if "Zach Quont" has built the same fortress of lies, infidelity, and self-serving bullshit, I'd think he was a total shitheel too. And I'm not alone. "He" makes Don Draper look sensitive, honest, and decent.

tl;dr feminists and women can be awful people too, bro.

What bothers me (and I'm not saying YM is guilty of this) is this whole "Well, Zoe Quinn did hblblblbl" comes dangerous close to saying "she deserved it." "She had it coming." "She's a bad person and got what she deserved."

All of these things are true at the time of this writing. Zoe Quinn actually DID deserve the emotional distress she suffered for being as shitty of a person as she was. What she DOESN'T deserve is the massive boost this will all eventually give to her overall fame and cultural relevance, or the legions of useful idiots ferociously white knighting her, including the entire goddamn mainstream media.

Two important caveats. 1) The people who threatened her with death and rape and whatnot were WRONG. 2) If she were actually killed, or raped, or grievously injured, or something similarly serious, I would never say THAT was something she deserved. But yeah, she's an evil bitch, and I think she deserves emotional distress for being an evil bitch.

I need to clarify this, because I am talking about what she deserves in some fully abstract and karmic sense. I am not saying "X, Y, Z" actor was justified in their bad actions. They fucking weren't. This is a subtle but massively important distinction.

Zoe's personal life is none of our business

As mentioned, I don't think that her personal life has any bearing whatsoever on anything except that she is a shitty person. I certainly don't understand how her personal shittiness birthed "gamergate", it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But as someone actually said she was a "rad" person, this became a subject of debate. And honestly, when you decide to become a public persona on the internet, when you become internet famous, then you open yourself up to having your character publicly debated on internet forums. Fuck, I'm only 1/10,000th as internet famous as Quinn, and I've experienced this myself.

It really is that simple. "Is it okay for women to be sent rape and death threats?" The answer is always "No." Always. It literally doesn't matter what X or Y or Z did or might have done. It just doesn't. It's not a game where it's okay for "your side" to do i if you can point to instances of the "other side" doing it. You just say no, and you condemn anyone who does it.

Um, obviously. No one disagrees with any of this.

Why would anyone not condemn people who make rape threats or threaten to shoot up schools? It blows my mind.

No sane person would not condemn that. I condemn it, certainly. I think you're arguing against a straw man here.

I am not a #GamerGate defender. I don't think anyone here actually is.

I just really, really don't like Zoe Quinn, or Anita Sarkeesian, or Social Justice Warriors/the PC police. I don't actually think that has fuckall to do with "Ethics in Game Journalism". And I think that the #GG movement is hopelessly problematic because of the toxic, misogynistic, rapy element it has attracted and the vile things they've been saying, not to mention the entire premise that launched the movement was completely untrue.

author=DarklordKeinor
All of you have expended more effort than this issue deserves. GamerGate will go away if you simply let the feminists scream in their little vacuum of irrelevance. Political correctness intrudes upon every industry; are any of you honestly surprised the gaming industry was finally assaulted by it?

Do yourselves a favor: take a deep breath and go on about your day. The more notice people give to the attention starved feminists with GamerGate the longer the problem will last.

I hope you are right, but based on personal experience, I fear you are wrong.

author=kentona
"feminism" is a terrible term. It should probably be something like "humanism". Equal rights, freedoms, and safety for all.

I agree with you and I'd go a step further. Modern (radical) feminism is terrible. It's toxic, it's a cancer. I am a hardline, old school liberal. I have absolutely no problem with old school, egalitarian feminism, women having equal rights with men, and whatnot. But radical feminism, with its bullshitty bullshit about rape culture and patriarchy and Anita Sarkeesian and the tumblr set blogging about shit like "HERE IS WHY I BELIEVE ALL PENIS IN VAGINA INTERCOURSE IS RAPE" (an actual thing some very vocal actual feminists actually believe)?

Fuck. That. Noise. Forever. It has literally ruined the word "feminism" for egalitarians, moderates, and all reasonable people that believe women should be treated the same as men.

@Liberty: gotcha. I am trying.

I am more interested in reaching the middle (most of RMN, the mainstream media, the vast majority of humans, gamers and non-gamers, et al.) than in converting any on the Social Justice Wario side. I agree that the latter is impossible.

I do agree with the notion that Radical Feminists won't be sated by pretty much anything. The same goes for any kind of radical personality or belief. When someone becomes radical about something, they don't just want to see its opposition die- they want to see everything that doesn't align with their own beliefs be silenced too. It's a pretty scary concept that we're seeing in a lot of places in the world today.

However, there is a very distinct line between Radical Feminists and everyday, completely normal and understandable Feminists, so it's pretty much entirely wrong to group them into the same category like Keinor just did.

EDIT: I'd also like to say that it's because almost everyone involved in GamerGate refuses to see the lines between radical/sensible and mentally ill/mentally sound that the problem is so fucking bad right now. Nobody wants to give anyone else any credit, which is why the discussion has fallen apart so badly on Twitter and the like.

It's also why the discussion is working so well on RMN- because most of the users are sensible, mentally sound people who don't scream and jump to conclusions about such things.

author=Max McGee
The well is being poisoned and it is becoming impossible to tell signal from noise, because the most vile are the most vocal, even if they are not the majority.

This is one of those societal problems which has become terrible because of social media. It's also something I struggled with for a long time, as I would often just broadly label Feminists and tear them down based on people like Anita Sarkeesian.

I think its sad that almost all modern day debates- gender based or otherwise- suffer intensely because of fuckwads like that who can't stop screaming generalizations and mudslinging for a single second.

The best contribution we could do to quell it is to be conscious of the portrayal of things in our games. Games can change a generation, the existence of GamerGate made it more than apparent. If we kept the future we wanted to build in our heads, the games we create should be able to help subliminally ease the thinking of the people our games reach into a better next generation. Cos we can

This is what I've said literally every time someone brings this discussion up. It's the best option that Game Designers and other artists have. Thank you for joining me in expressing this notion.

An event like GamerGate shows that we aren't just people who design entertainment, we actually have an impact on the world, something I was told otherwise all my life up til' now.

This is something that's really important for any Game Designer to keep in mind.

author=Nivlacart
I don't think the feminism debate can ever be solved within our generation though. Going about with 'Men get treated this way too' or 'Women get this-and-this that men don't' could go on forever, but it's not something awareness can fix. It was never a matter of a gender disparity, but that assholes live on in this world with traditional, shitty values. And converting all their thinking in a generation? Highly doubtful. It's something that needs to be waited out until it dies out, and to keep it discontinued, proper parenting.

This brings me back to that Einstein quote I posted who knows how many pages back.

author=slashphoenix
There are some pretty extreme feminists out there, but Anita ain't one of 'em. TERFs, though...

I'm pretty sure any TERF association can be easily written off. SWERF(sex worker exclusionary radical feminism) on the other hand, I'm not so sure.