True skeletongater
#SkeletonGate
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True skeletongater
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Numbers show: largely not about ethics
http://www.newsweek.com/gamergate-about-media-ethics-or-harassing-women-harassment-data-show-279736
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After reading lotsa wall of text I have something clear…
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![](https://slm-assets2.secondlife.com/assets/2323680/lightbox/SIRIUS Halloween Skeleton 1 Blue Lighting still 512.jpg?1286931881)
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
@CCC:
Numbers show: largely not about ethics
http://www.newsweek.com/gamergate-about-media-ethics-or-harassing-women-harassment-data-show-279736
Good read. Just a few details to note:
1. Adobe didn't actually pull out their ads. Actually they pulled out months back or something like that but requested Gawker remove their logo
2. The reason why Leigh Alexander's article is being branded as a problem isn't just its critique but that GamerGaters see it as part of a conspiracy by journalists to basically destroy their name because there were a wave of articles released around the same time coupled with a secret journalistic email list. I don't believe it, but I'm here to say what they believeMinor details when it comes to the overall picture, but because of these inconsistencies, bonergaters are branding the article and Newsweek as a whole as "Yellow Journalism" or "Corrupt" or "poorly researched" or whatevs
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Man, it is totally convenient that EVERY news outlet that publishes an opposing viewpoint or points out the public image issues of GamerGate is corrupt.
Having to actually do work to clarify a mission statement as well as the actual ethical problems they see in journalism so that their mission seems consistent and unbiased looks HARD… better to just keep piling onto Gawker whose only crime is being anti-GG at this point than to put in all that WORK.
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Hell I'd say if anything it's a good indication that something's wrong if your movement needs to be relocated away from 4chan because you felt that 4chan had "Thought and tone policing mods"
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@Purple:
Hell I'd say if anything it's a good indication that your movement needs to be relocated away from 4chan because you felt that 4chan had "Thought and tone policing mods"
Someone on the Fark thread about this pointed out that your group has to be really scummy if reddit bans you
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http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/gamergate-supporters-party-at-strip-club.html
barf I didn't need to read that.
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@Purple:
Hell I'd say if anything it's a good indication that something's wrong if your movement needs to be relocated away from 4chan because you felt that 4chan had "Thought and tone policing mods"
The topic literally got banned on 4chan
Obviously it's because moot was dating a girl. Or something. Conspiracy
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The topic literally got banned on 4chan
Obviously it's because moot was dating a girl. Or something. Conspiracy
Yeah, that seems to be a fun trend going on. SkeletonGaters getting mad because they realize that [Internet male they are a fan of] completely disagrees with GamerGate. And it turns into a spiral of "we thought you were cool!" But then they learn that [male they were a fan of] has a girlfriend and that said girlfriend is OBVIOUSLY forcing them to be anti-SkeletonGate.
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http://badassdigest.com/2014/10/27/film-crit-hulk-smash-on-despair-gamergate-and-quitting-the-hulk/
Hulk Critic talks GG and emotional truths
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Oooooh Sweden's about to get doxxed for real reals.
http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/24/7059381/swedish-devs-against-harassment-sexism -
Hay, guise. Tea Party is anti-GG.
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"Don't compare them to us. WE're the REAL Tea Partiers"
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To be fair you really shouldn't be comparing them. To bunch the Tea Party with the skeletons would be to significantly improve the Tea Party's image.
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Can't tell if they don't know the roots of misogyny or are associating women with hatred
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Hay, guise. Tea Party is anti-GG.
The Tea Party being largely composed of the oldest boomers and youngest silent generation, probably has the following opinion:
"WE GOT NUTHIN TO DO WITH NO SILLY ATARI CRAP"
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how appropriate that the made-up term for "hatred of video games" in actual English means "hatred of marriage"
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@CCC:
Oooooh Sweden's about to get doxxed for real reals.
http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/24/7059381/swedish-devs-against-harassment-sexismSweet, it will go nice with all the DDoS attacks from the Julian Assange stuff. :v
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Also if u want a laugh
![](http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i212/Faltzer_Black/Mobile Uploads/1BvOv.gif)
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So what's going on in GamerGate news:
Milo goes on NPR. But he gets drowned out and Leigh Alexander doesn't showed up.
Brianna Wu incites an attack a fruit company thinking it's a game developer. The company is now getting into game development.
A Christian gaming review site of all things is on our side.
sideshow.)(unlike or ).
More evidence that the doxxings weren't GamerGate.
If a VERY LARGE portion of your group is harassing women, it is part of your group by association. Your movement is TAINTED.
Large portion
Lol.
Really, though. If such a large part of GamerGate is coordinating these attacks, where are they meeting? How are they organizing? KiA won't allow it. 8chan won't allow it. And those're the two biggest hubs of GG activity. Where could such a vast amount of people (mostly random schmucks and anonymous users) meet to cause this mayhem?
I believe I said this in the other thread as well, but I will reword it for you again: on the top 10 list of the world's LEAST important problems, CORRUPT VIDEO GAME JOURNALISM probably falls close to the number 1 spot. Corrupt journalism as GamerGate see is is NOT IMPORTANT. Harassing women and others on a grand scale and silencing people through fear IS IMPORTANT and is the side of gamergate that I am focusing on in this thread.
Isn't "there are way more important problems in the world!!! stop caring about this thing I don't care about!!!" just silencing the issue?
Also, gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry. And gaming journalism is the media face of it.
And again, GG isn't the one who censored like 20,000 reddit posts, deleted all the threads in 4chan about it, and had a complete media blackout when it came to something that is actually relevant to helping women in the games industry.
GOSH GG is just helping everybody out left and right!! It's helping women! It's fighting bullies! Wow!! As a woman is is about to go into the games industry, i can safely say GG is doing a shit ass job of making me feel safe and they sure as shit aren't helping me get a job.
Would you rather they do nothing at all and let the trolls run completely rampant?
You can enter enter TYFC's contest if you want. :U
This image has fuck-all to do with what holy was saying. I'm glad some artist somewhere made this image for you to spam around to silence any sort of social discourse on games
Sure it does. It's a concise image of what I had said: That for all the ~acceptance~ third-wave feminists preach, many are just privileged white women (now with added using minorities as their mouthpieces!!!). How is that silencing?
(The artist of that is Plebcomics, btw.)
and most of US think a good game would still be good if a dev gave more female/trans/gay roles once in awhile
When did I say that I didn't? :U
@Purple:
You have no idea what their ethics policy was. They said they revised some stances, but what parts? How do you know what they changed? Is it really enough just to say "We have an ethics statement"? Next is, Was The Escapist really that big of an offender to you?
Pretty sure the revisions were mostly disclosure-related. They weren't bad to begin with.
It wasn't a big offender, and at most, people were told to adblock them (then again, they were out before before the emailing advertisers campaign came full force). If they just had a containment thread for discussion on it, and stayed out of the happenings, people probably wouldn't even mention them.
@Purple:
"Trying" being the key word. We have stated that there are well-intentioned people, but we still have a lot to say against GG as well. But no one seems to be receptive of any dissenting articles because "it doesn't represent GG as a whole" when there's a huge amount of disgust tainting the waters.
Because most of said "dissenting" articles read suspiciously like smear campaigns.
Notice how NOTHING good GamerGate does gets acknowledged. Nothing about going after harassers, nothing about tracking one of these harassers down, not even raising money for charities. Not even an acknowledgement that they're actually pretty diverse (instead of just basement being basement-dwelling white men). Nope. GG is just fully made up of white misogynist manbabies.
There's also nothing about the harassment on the GG side. Nothing about how a transwoman got outed and threatened, nothing about how Boogie got death threats just for trying to stay neutral, nothing about how KOP got sent that knife in the mail. Not even an acknowledgement that maaaaaaaaaybe their side has a few bad eggs. The LEAST they could've done is report on the mass censorship going on on the issues that started it in the first place.
But no, they just prop up the LWs as martyrs and keep bringing them up even though they're not relevant. Zoe Quinn? She's was part of the catalyst, but that's it. Anita Sarkeesian? She does Tropes vs. Women, but that's it. Brianna Wu? WHO?
@Purple:
Any sensible article we've brought up has made it clear, along with the discussion here, that we recognize that there are well-intentioned people. Yes, Gawker may have phrased certain aspects incredibly poorly, but the issue should be directed towards Kotaku. Or, rather, why not aim at the higher level companies of other websites then?
You seem to like analogies, so hopefully this'll make sense:
A bunch of kids are having a picnic in the woods. There are bees going after their food. Normally they can be ignored, but today? No. Thinking they've had enough, some of the kids pick up rocks and lob them at the nearby beehive. The beehive falls and there's a swarm. Who do you think the bees will go after: the kids who run away, or the ones who pick up sticks and keep hitting the beehive, somehow thinking it's a good idea?
@Purple:
They're third from the top, among others
Dear god that was dumb of me. Sorry about that, man.
@Purple:
I understand that Gawker owns Kotaku, but why not just direct your attention to Kotaku? Is your inflammation at gawker really so bad that you must aim at the more vocal company?
Because if you try and take down Kotaku by itself, Gawker can just move everyone that works there and make a new website. Our efforts would be in vain.
@Purple:
No, but generally you aim at the larger parts before adding the window dressing.
Didn't you just say we should after the small fish (Kotaku) instead of the big kahuna (Gawker)?
@Purple:
"Yeah those guys are shit, but really trust us, the're not the real GG even though they're mods for one of the headquarters"
I… didn't say they weren't?
I'm guessing you misunderstood: I'm talking about the AntiRadfem subreddit itself (As in, where they're against the crazy "kill all men" types). I wasn't talking about the mod himself. (Apparently the subreddit doesn't even exist, though.)
A: Need to reorganize and actually create a fully accepted central resource that has the authority to speak for the whole group and can make statements clarifying it's positions on things, with at least a clearly stated, publicly posted manifesto.
We're making a dossier, if that's what you mean. :V
B: Leave GG as it is, but accept that the public at large will always associate the movement with the bad eggs, the misogyny and the hate, but that kind of public image is simply what comes with the territory of having a group structured this way, and that not every single media outlet getting this impression is doing so out of corruption or self interest.
So be it.
The lack of structure is probably what got us this far in the first place. Without a leader, there's no one person these people can character assassinate (as in, slander and smear until they're a laughing stock with no credibility). They have to settle for going after us as a whole. :U
We know that they want "Ethics" in Journalism, but exactly what they're targeting has been wide reaching so far and isn't concise, unidirectional or well spelled out.
1. No relationships between journalists and the people they're covering without full disclosure in their articles.
2. No hiding things potentially harmful to the customer because of said relations.
3. No collusion between competing sites/magazines/etc…
4. No agreements to give a game a certain score because of relations (since they can impact whether or not people buy it).
5. Follow the SPJ code of ethics to the best of their ability.Pretty sure there's a few things I'm missing, but it's late and I'm tired.
Meanwhile, IGN continues to take money to heavily promote the games they review like they always have, It's still widely accepted that EA is unethical as all hell, the Shadow of Mordor controversy
See the bee analogy I gave Hermit.
or worst of all, GameSpot, who fired a reviewer for giving an advertiser's game a bad score get no attention from GG at all.
You do realize how old that is, right? It's like 7 years old.
It's used as an example of how gaming journalism's corrupt, but it's so far in the past that we can't really do anything about the incident itself.
For example, a lot of people hate Metroid: Other M because it takes Samus Aran, a character a lot of people considered a stoic badass and made her introspective and moody. I've heard mixed things, but overall I've heard the gameplay isn't BAD, it's at least fairly solid, but that portrayal of Samus rubbed fans the wrong way. People want to see themselves represented CORRECTLY in video games.
You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who DIDN'T think that portrayal of her was godawful.
Basically, imagine a game developer decided he wanted to make an action game where your awesome player character eventually has to interact with a character who is a self described "Gamer" and they just completely make the gamer out to be a whiny little manchild, and your player character makes horrible disparaging comments about this "Gamer" character as soon as you leave the area that character is in.
A lot of Women and LGBT folks see the current state of video games as doing this to our communities, for example, That's how I felt when Super Princess Peach came out. Despite having a really well defined action-based moveset in Smash Bros, Peach's primary way of doing things in SPP is getting super emotional.
Because all wimminz is emotional amirite?I'm willing to bet there are people belonging to Racial minority groups that feel the same way, but I'm not going to comment too heavily on that as I'm not in any of those groups myself, but I'd stand by them in the event real issues got brought up there.
Please stop taking "more interested in a game being good than filling minority quotas" to mean that I think minorities are actually well-represented or that I wouldn't like to see them done better.
(Though on the topic of SPP: It's really unfortunate that the emotions have such a sexist connotation for women. By itself, using emotions to manipulate the environment around you is a really cool idea.)
@Monkey:
If you think Anita Sarkeesian is an extremist you're a fucking joke. And really that's the problem, to the GG demographic feminism = extreme.
You're talking about the woman who wrote in her undergrad thesis that there are no negative traits associated with masculinity ever in TV and all positive feminine traits are only ever positive when its for women.
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But you're right in that she's not advocating for the deaths and loss of rights of all men 5evr like the extreme extremists.
What would be a better word to describe it? Radical? Nah, same connotations. Pushy? Nah, that implies there's no weight behind her words. I'm not sure, really; extreme is the closest thing I can think of that fits off the top of my head.
@Monkey:
None of you penny ante amateurs know goddamned anything about journalism bad or good, and didn't even care about it until this little Salem shit whipped you into a mob.
Everyone knew game journalism was shit, but hey, this was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Starting a separate organized movement makes a lot of sense and is a clear plan of action that would distance you from the jerks, refocus your message and allow you to better represent and serve your cause. You could do it if you wanted to. Or you could get the message out to someone who better knows how to organize. Reach out to the members of the community that really care about the cause. People who care enough to think that if something as silly as painting a new banner could advance their cause, then they should go for it. If that's already happening, join one of those movements. Don't complain that it won't work if you haven't really tried.
Except most of us are anonymous.
With anonymity, anyone can waltz in, spray shit everywhere, and then leave a little "Gamr get wuz heer" message and it would be blamed on us. And even if we changed our name, do you really think sites like Kotaku would be all like ~"GamerGate has turned a new leaf. They're good guys now!"~. No, they would hurl the same insults at us and blame us for everything because they're corrupt in the first place. At best, we'd be stuck with a new name and nothing else, but more likely, we'd lose momentum since everyone would be confused scrambling to start anew since we're not exactly a himemind here.
@CCC:
Numbers show: largely not about ethics
http://www.newsweek.com/gamergate-about-media-ethics-or-harassing-women-harassment-data-show-279736
Soooooo misogynistic.So lesse, according to this, about 1.5% of tweets with #GamerGate are directed at Anita Sarkeesian. So many, amirite (or if we're going by that article, less than 0.5% wow!!!).
But take a look at the actual tweets with the two together. Tell me, how many of those are condoning her harassment and/or demanding more? Same with the other women. How many tweets are there directed at them with harassment or threats? (No, calling them an idiot doesn't count.)
(Also, the fact that so many articles and so many sensationalist pieces are written about the LWs definitely contributes to it. How many people are writing about ~poor Nathan Grayson getting caught up in all this what a widdle victim he is~? How many news stations is Nathan Grayson going on and talking about this? Honest question. How many?
Also, If you assume every #GamerGate tweet directed at someone is harassment, take a look at this. Jon McIntosh? A man?? GETTING MORE HARASSMENT THAN ZOE QUINN?!?!?!?!?!? He's not a woman, how is this possible?)
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Except most of us are anonymous.
With anonymity, anyone can waltz in, spray shit everywhere, and then leave a little "Gamr get wuz heer" message and it would be blamed on us. And even if we changed our name, do you really think sites like Kotaku would be all like ~"GamerGate has turned a new leaf. They're good guys now!"~. No, they would hurl the same insults at us and blame us for everything because they're corrupt in the first place. At best, we'd be stuck with a new name and nothing else, but more likely, we'd lose momentum since everyone would be confused scrambling to start anew since we're not exactly a himemind here.
Then DON'T. BE. ANONYMOUS. If you believe in your cause at least have the balls to put your name out there. Staking your name on something, say on a petition, is like the bare minimum effort anyone can put into a cause.
Would you still get insults flung at you? Maybe. Maybe you would never be able to shake off the misogynist labels. Does that matter more than disenfranchising the parasites that abuse your system to abuse others? Is that more important than organizing your efforts, which can only benefit you? Does that actually worry you more than your supposed cause? Really? You do realize that real activists suffer far worse than disses and still get shit accomplished.
How much do you actually care about ethics in gaming journalism?
#BonerGate #BarackOboner
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http://badassdigest.com/2014/10/27/film-crit-hulk-smash-on-despair-gamergate-and-quitting-the-hulk/
Hulk Critic talks GG and emotional truths
Wow, thanks for the link. Thanks for 'introducing' this reviewer to me, his articles are very interesting.
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Pretty sure the revisions were mostly disclosure-related. They weren't bad to begin with.
I wayback machine'd the site, and there were zero mentions of any ethics standard beforehand, so pretty much anything that could be stated may as well have been internal, and really, as I said before, it's all literally industry standard stuff.
It wasn't a big offender, and at most, people were told to adblock them (then again, they were out before before the emailing advertisers campaign came full force). If they just had a containment thread for discussion on it, and stayed out of the happenings, people probably wouldn't even mention them.
So my understanding now is that your aim is at big offenders, so again, why not IGN or gamespot? (more on that below)
Because most of said "dissenting" articles read suspiciously like smear campaigns.
By literally every major news source out there? Anyone on the white list either hasn't written an article or writes only positive articles.
Like, really? You guys can't handle a little heat because you think it's smearing? Deal with it and actually demonstrate a unified vision as to what you want to do if you want journalists to write it up. After visiting r/KiA, gamergate.me, and other places, I still haven't found anything that convinces me that you have any sense of what y'all want.
You want to be a legit movement? Then ante up and acknowledge that there are some real big problems with your movement and work towards fixing it, or live with it. Nobody in the world suddenly turned conspiracy on you to smear you.
Notice how NOTHING good GamerGate does gets acknowledged. Nothing about going after harassers, nothing about tracking one of these harassers down, not even raising money for charities. Not even an acknowledgement that they're actually pretty diverse (instead of just basement being basement-dwelling white men). Nope. GG is just fully made up of white misogynist manbabies.
Quite frankly, as has been previously addressed, none of that matters if you don't have a basis for which to say what IS or what ISN'T GG, which, based on visitations to headquarters, sites, etc., doesn't look very promising. Literally nothing I've investigated gives me any sort of leeway to say "well, at least what they're doing is worth while." And without that, and without a way to differentiate yourselves from the bad sides, it honestly makes it hard to say "these guys are about ethics" and that some percentage of gamergaters are reporting harassers or raising money. This is all inconsequential in the scope of what's at stake here. That women speaking up against it are frequent targets and that you guys literally have no way of removing that side from yourselves. You heard Holy's response about her trans' friends experiences after backing out of the movement. There are people getting harassed. You want straight facts? The fact is that the public doesn't give two shits about your movement unless you explain it, and even then, there's no way that they're going to overlook that this stuff is happening AND that you people are just waving it off as overblown.
Here is the way I describe the system as it stands. You guys may want to do that ethics stuff, but an incredible amount of energy is being expended currently on defending your movement as legit and saying it's about ethics when you can't even say what your demands are and what the criteria is. Harassment happens because you don't direct your energy to see what you should do next, and the whole thing just spins into defending yourselves instead of doing what you want. At most, you guys eke out a few directionless victories towards gawker and remove some sponsors, but you will never reevaluate where you want to go or what the movement's vision is, which is an i_ncredibly_ vital mistake to any organization.
But no, they just prop up the LWs as martyrs and keep bringing them up even though they're not relevant. Zoe Quinn? She's was part of the catalyst, but that's it. Anita Sarkeesian? She does Tropes vs. Women, but that's it. Brianna Wu? WHO?
And that's the kicker. Brianna Wu got harassed because she made a meme about gamergaters. And she has been harassed. You can view them as being propped up as martyrs even if they're not relevant, but what's relevant to most people is, hey, they are being targeted. And by labeling them as LWs, you remove them from power but also fail to acknowledge that, while this isn't about them, that THERE IS STILL STUFF HAPPENING TO THEM.
You seem to like analogies, so hopefully this'll make sense:
A bunch of kids are having a picnic in the woods. There are bees going after their food. Normally they can be ignored, but today? No. Thinking they've had enough, some of the kids pick up rocks and lob them at the nearby beehive. The beehive falls and there's a swarm. Who do you think the bees will go after: the kids who run away, or the ones who pick up sticks and keep hitting the beehive, somehow thinking it's a good idea?
Shit analogy, but the answer is probably both.
I get what your analogy is getting at, but the answer is that even then it's flawed because you're not a bunch of shitty bees. you're gamers for God's sake. Gamers who want gaming journalism ethics. Are you really lowering yourself when you keep saying you're doing the good fight?
I mean, yeah you guys operate on a hive mind, but if you want to assert legitimacy of your campaign, then grow the fuck up.
Dear god that was dumb of me. Sorry about that, man.
Right, so onto the actual question.
Why not actually go after IGN then? Hell why not go for anyone on that list other than the ones that are just the ones who wrote dissenting articles?
Because if you try and take down Kotaku by itself, Gawker can just move everyone that works there and make a new website. Our efforts would be in vain.
Why not apply that logic to every other site that has a parent company then? Instead, as previously asserted, it's all about anyone who says anything bad about you.
Didn't you just say we should after the small fish (Kotaku) instead of the big kahuna (Gawker)?
Big Fish being in the industry, not the parent company.
1. No relationships between journalists and the people they're covering without full disclosure in their articles.
2. No hiding things potentially harmful to the customer because of said relations.
3. No collusion between competing sites/magazines/etc…
4. No agreements to give a game a certain score because of relations (since they can impact whether or not people buy it).
5. Follow the SPJ code of ethics to the best of their ability.For you perhaps, but again, the movement isn't just you. Just listing things off the top of your head without a real sensible concrete list of demands is absolutely meaningless when you don't speak for the whole movement. All arguments otherwise are pretty much "we want more ethics or transparency" without actually detailing what the demands are.
When opinion pieces on one of the (I literally cannot believe I have to say it's only one of the) headquarters of gg are incredibly myopic about journalism or just make none, zero, zip of the points you make in terms of explicit demands, the movement is troubled in terms of where everyone wants to assert their direction.
There's also what Silence follows up with in the next post, but I won't go into that because there's no need to restate that gamergaters have zero clue what the hell goes into journalism, a point Zeph has restated consistently.
Except most of us are anonymous.
With anonymity, anyone can waltz in, spray shit everywhere, and then leave a little "Gamr get wuz heer" message and it would be blamed on us. And even if we changed our name, do you really think sites like Kotaku would be all like ~"GamerGate has turned a new leaf. They're good guys now!"~. No, they would hurl the same insults at us and blame us for everything because they're corrupt in the first place. At best, we'd be stuck with a new name and nothing else, but more likely, we'd lose momentum since everyone would be confused scrambling to start anew since we're not exactly a himemind here.
And this is exactly the problem is that nobody wants to solve anything that's an actual problem. With an actual organizational structure, you can't have anyone come in and say "Yeah my values are the same as these guys!"
And well, yeah you'll probably still get some resistance from Kotaku because, well, hey, they're still embittered. But you know what it does give you with other forms of media? Leverage. The leverage to say what your core principles are and direct the movement in whatever way you want to go (because as it stands there's a bunch who would rather not allow Gawker to survive this mess while others are trying to reach dialogue). Hell, PR would help a lot when it seems like all of us are misunderstanding your movement, so it seems.
And contrary to your opinion, the structure you have now is exactly a hivemind in the way it operates.
There is nothing magical about a movement which cannot be differentiated from its parasite. However, likewise, there is nothing shameful about admitting that you need to reset.
In truth, my expectation for this because of the esoteric nature of the movement is that you'll continue to restate mantra because you don't have a solid answer that is satisfactory because you don't know why you're not going after IGN and instead are direct your attention at a company that's been incredibly vocal against your movement but otherwise lack the acknowledgement of other parent companies in other sites. You will continue to refuse to acknowledge the problems of the movement as fixable. You can perceive that as our premature bias against the movement without looking at all the good you've done, and that's fine in the same way that we will not reach any agreement on the subject. My recommendation for you would be to shut the fuck up and do what you've been doing otherwise with the ethics stuff before the movement inevitably falls apart.
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I'm glad that you mentioned the SPJ Cru, and by glad I mean GROANING. Almost every argument I've seen on KiA, 8chan, or twitter about how "unethical" these entities are, especially and including your own, are scrub tier and display a lack of comprehension of what an ethics policy actually stipulates, so here's someone who actually knows a fuck what they're talking about, Glenn Fleishman. And for the record: had I run with some of the "underreported" stories GG supporters are clamoring to have covered, I'd have been fired from every newspaper I've ever worked on - on ethical grounds.
Fleishman, quoted in full:
THIS POST IS ABOUT ETHICS IN JOURNALISM
OCTOBER 24, 2014
Don't worry that I'm going to rehash what #gamergate is; I'm not. If you need a rundown or refresher, the most recent solid take on the history, nature, and problems with it as a movement that may have good people in it but which is entirely corrupted by its, uh, history, nature, and ersatz leaders is from the good Dr. Nerdlove. Read his analysis. (You should also watch this short video that does an academic dissection of GamerGate as a set of "base assumptions.")I'd like to talk about journalistic ethics. No, seriously, I would.
I've been a writer most of my life, and started to get paid for it in 1994. I began to report for major publications, like the New York Times, Fortune, Wired, and the Economist in the late 1990s, as well as write for a variety of so-called trade magazines and sites (both consumer and industry). Every single publication I've worked for has had some kind of minimal to exceedingly detailed policy about conflicts of interest and disclosure. The trade pubs are often much more specific and restrictive than mainstream publications about what is and isn't acceptable.
As a freelancer, I have to be very careful about my actions because working for multiple publications means an intersecting superset of rules that I should be following. But I'll be honest: it's really not hard, because I disclose early and often to my editors, and make intelligent decisions of my own before pitching a story or working on one where a conflict clearly exists.
As a reporter, I'm obliged to avoid conflicts of interest, but when they are present, I'm obliged to tell my editors. I have written many times about people I know, and when it's relevant to the story, it's mentioned in it. In every case, I tell my editors; in every case, my editors decide whether to disclose friendships or other connections. I've never pitched nor written a story in which I had a stake in a financial outcome of the firm in question as a result of the story.
I give money to Kickstarters, I buy products, and I support Patreon and other campaigns. Because I'm paying money out, unless the amount is large or I've dissatisfied with the project, or if I gain special access to someone or something as a result of paying, it's not typically considered a conflict because I don't have a financial stake: I, in fact, lose money through the action, rather than gain it. If I backed a Kickstarter and it never fulfilled or the product was terrible, it's absolutely required that if I were to write about it, I tell my editor, because it is very likely it would color my writing, and readers should be aware of that, should I be allowed to write about it. (As a blogger, I also disclose such things in my blog entries.)
Many GamerGaters, whether sincerely or otherwise, beat the drum of "ethics in journalism" as a rallying cry, but the most genuine portion of their concerns seem to focus on related to clear guidelines, disclosure, and the ability to provide feedback as readers on perceived bias that won't be ignored. Why the most well-intentioned individuals aren't taken seriously is that they typically aren't addressing the right part of the equation or are asking for things that already exist.
In many cases, the people they are criticizing aren't journalists at all: they are opinion writers or essayists who work in the games industry (or unrelated industries) who are expected to disclose conflicts but are engaged in either analysis from a specific philosophical standpoint or from personal experience.
Let's break this down into a few categories:
Facts and intimacy
I know it seems obvious that reporting requires facts, and anyone reading this shouldn't have trouble with this notion. But I see over the last few months that we have a narrative problem. A set of vociferous people point to first-person accounts and hearsay (people relaying what they were told by other people, sometimes through a chain of people) as truth. Truth requires verification. A story without verification is a rumor.
The infamous essay about a breakup that sparked some of the ongoing churn of rage is one individual's highly personal account from his perspective. The assertion by others, who do not have his lived experience, that everything he represented is true is not valid. One can accept that this is his perception of what he lived through; but one doesn't use as the basis of journalism the unquestioned acceptance of a personal account.
There is the additional factor of whether the personal details of an average person's life should be examined in the media. Investigating and reporting on intimate details is typically reserved for tabloids unless both the figure is well-known and an intentional celebrity (actor, politician, book author, etc.) and the matter relates specifically to criminal or sometimes hypocritical behavior.
The essay in question wasn't reported on widely initially, because it wasn't credible or noteworthy. The person writing it and the subjects of it wouldn't meet any legal test for being public figures in most jurisdictions. The allegations contained in it were non-specific and lacked details to verify. The nature of it was prurient. The amount of money at stake, if any, was tiny (regarding reviews that would increase anyone's revenue).
The credibility issue isn't that the writer was necessarily reworking a story or making things up; rather that, on its face, its veracity couldn't be determined; without actual harm or noteworthiness, there was no point to verify details.
By calling for this essay to be reported on a fact and then many later, much more poorly sourced (and often fabricated) story elements to be told, those demanding such coverage were asking publications to behave unethically and against specific widely accepted reporting practices, which I'll get into later under ethics policies.
Game developers obtaining favorable coverage
I'll exclude the specific accusations at the core of GamerGate, as they have been debunked. But the general principle is worth examining. Did a person or company use a romantic relationship, a friendship, an advertising contract, or access to events or advance review copies to get an article or review written from a certain slant, modified after publication, or removed? Did a product, event, or industry figure obtain the coverage they wanted by manipulating editorial decisionmaking and fairness? And if so, then what?
In GamerGate, one of the principal problems is that game developers are being heavily critiqued for allegedly engaging in these sorts of behavior, and typically independent game devs who are studios of one to less than a dozen people, who have little money or funding.
But game devs aren't journalists. They didn't sign up for any code of conduct with a professional organization related to publications, and they don't owe a publication any specific fealty. One can argue everyone should be held to an ethical standard in life, but that is separate from attempting to hold firms making games to what one can reasonably expect from a publication that claims to use facts and analysis as the basis of what they put out into the world.
Whether on their own or through press relations (PR) professionals, nearly all creators and companies try to get stories written at all, and preferably favorable ones, about their work. I get dozens of press requests a week from companies with staff ranging from one part-time owner to 200,000 worldwide employees.
If someone promoting their products misuses a connection or uses coercion, a publication is responsible for the outcome. (The person or company engaging in that behavior may be behaving unethically or illegally as well.)
As a reader or any interested party, you contact the publication, preferably the editor of the piece (if known) or the editor of the publication. You lay out the facts and sources of the facts. In many cases, an editor may be unaware of a writer's affiliation or relationship with a source or subject. There are regularly reports from the travel-writing world in which a writer received something free or discounted from a resort, airline, or the like, and didn't tell an editor because that was in contravention of the publication's policies. Ditto, restaurant and food reviewers who obtain free things or special treatment who don't tell their editors. When uncovered, there's often a big stink, and some of the writers involved may never write for hire again. (There are many food and travel sites that don't have such strict policies, and that's an actual ethics problem for believing coverage.)
If the publication refuses to acknowledge what you present, and you believe the facts tell a story, then you choose how to disseminate that. This is when it's critical to have verified facts of your own that stand up, because you could wind up accused of libel, and a publication with deep pockets or an angry owner might choose to sue you. This is very unlikely, though: very few web sites, in particular, have sued individuals who claim errors or bias in stories.
Many of the stories that allege ethical problems aren't about conflicts at all, but rather about political bias. While using the term ethics, the complaints relate to the specific inclusion of modes of thought. Some in GamerGate, for instance, object to critiquing the content of a videogame in a review as opposed to just its mechanics. That isn't an ethical issue.
Suggesting a writer be fired because you disagree with a review score or an opinion (especially due to a post labeled as opinion, analysis, op-ed, or an industry insight) seems extreme unless it's part of a provable pattern. Asking for them to be fired indicates you support the site, but disagree with its editorial judgment in providing that writer with work. If that's true, then the better course of action is to provide calm critique and documentation—or, ultimately, stop reading the site.
Many documented concerns and actual incidents (some proven, some alleged) about ethics don't show up on the GamerGate radar at all, because they often involve companies that make products the movement's participants like best. Leigh Alexander did a rundown. Recently, the makers of Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (Warner Brothers) were called out when its social-media PR firm required YouTube reviews to only post positive reviews if they wanted to get software codes in advance of release. This wasn't disclosed to those watching the YouTube videos (though some reviewers did so after the news came out). While YouTube reviewers may not be games journalists, they aren't far from it.
(I have, in fact, been given review agreements for hardware and software on a handful of occasions that stated that I couldn't write negative things about the product if I accepted the review copy or loaner. In the trade press, most reviewers are allowed to keep software licenses, but all hardware above a nominal value—well below $50—must be returned. I refused loans or licenses when those terms were offered.)
Collusion
A related ethics complaint is that after the creation of the tag #gamergate, a number of sites and publications published over a period of about two days stories that were headlined "the death of gamers," and which took varying approaches to talking about the end of a majority audience of a specific kind (young men); that gaming had expanded into a mainstream phenomenon in which many of the participants wouldn't use the term "gamer."
The meme spread immediately that many sites had colluded to produce essays simultaneously with a similar title, ignoring that a series of external events, including the tag created by a celebrity, pushed the subject into the news. The idea that games sites, fiercely competing for readers and advertising dollars, would collude to produce essays that ostensibly (but not if actually read) were intended insult many of their readers and were a coordinated attack fails the smell test.
But beyond that, the essays appeared not just on some games sites; rather, they included stories in tech site Ars Technica (which has libertarians at its helm and is owned by Condé Nast), Daily Beast (owned by the International Business Times), Buzzfeed (massively well financed independent journalism/meme outlet), Financial Post, Vice (indie media) the Guardian, and others. It would be a remarkable story if a political agenda and cabal spanned all of those publications writing about something newsworthy. The fact that most took a similar tack didn't occur to many critics as a sign that many different people (and their editors) had come to the same conclusions watching the same behavior and market changes unfold.
Related, some complain that there is a covert progressive agenda to rework the way in which videogames are reviewed to always include critiques based on feminism and the like, subtly or not so subtly pushing the review scores of games down so that those that don't toe a line of political correctness suffer in the marketplace and lead game studios to shift focus to narratives that many who align with GamerGate find politically oppressive.
Conspiracies that require many participants don't stand up to scrutiny, because everyone has separate agendas. The notion that hundreds of people across many sites are working together towards a groupthink was aided by the release of messages from a games journalist list, in which writers and editors talked in part about how to deal with some of the worst elements of gaming and their effects on their sites.
Nonetheless, for this conspiracy to be true, it requires participation across the many sites that make up the consumer-facing Metacritic score for games, and for multi-billion-dollar gaming companies to ignore the direct feedback of their customers and their field testing, and to accept that a coordinated political effort in reviews will change what the market wants.
More games may exist with broader and more subtle themes, but the games that rake in the most cash now will continue to zoom along so long as a market for them remains.
Ethics policies
A repeated cry for the last few weeks has been, "If only the sites would adopt ethics policies and stick to them!" But some sites have such policies; others should! Kotaku links from its About page to an extensive post from June 2013. Kotaku also said Patreon donations are off-limits to its writers in August 2014. Polygon has a specific ethics policy page that dates back to its launch in October 2012 (confirmed via the Wayback Machine). Joystiq has one. The Escapist (Defy Media) added a specific page recently. I can't find a policy on Gamasutra, IGN, or Giant Bomb, but the latter devoted a podcast to discussing games journalism ethics in 2012.
So there's certainly not a concerted effort to avoid the topic; some of the sites that have been most heavily criticized have had a policy in place for years.
I have seen many tweets and other posts that urge sites to adopt the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) ethics code, which is fascinating for laypeople to seize upon. There are many policies, and the SPJ isn't a guild or a licensing authority, which is how they are seemingly bandied about by gamers concerned with bias. I fear those urging this policy don't read the section entitled Minimize Harm, but only point to the Act Independently portion, such as: "Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity, even if others do."
The SPJ doesn't investigate and enforce policy violations. This is a living document that offers a set of best practices for publications. It's not a contract nor legally binding. All readers rely on the integrity of the publication that they are reading; the ethics guidelines help serve as a guide for how to trust them and a way to hold them accountable for hypocrisy.
It's not about the ethics
Ethical problems emerge in any industry that has its own trade publications, because the publishers typically obtain most of their money from those about which they write. As a long-time tech reporter, I've fortunately not experienced coercion or been offered bribes, but I have certainly heard and seen many occasions on which companies try to cross the line, as well as journalists offer to cross it.
The duty we owe our readers is honesty, not cringing fealty. Games journalism publishers, editors, and writers should produce work free of entanglements that materially affect their coverage and published pieces, but they shouldn't be barred from having friends and relationships, or having advertisers and sponsors. Disclosure is the name of the game, rather than the impossible notion of avoiding connections with others, especially in small industries, and making a clean breast of things when wrong decisions are made or writers or editors are misled.
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"Trust me guys, we know what we want in ethics. Sort of. Well I do. It's not really unified but you know it's about ethics! Trust me! Even though I think that there's a huge conspiracy against us in mass media as a whole, we really think that fucking gaming journalism is more problematic than regular journalism at that point. Gamergaters are the real victims here, not literally who?"
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
Wow, thanks for the link. Thanks for 'introducing' this reviewer to me, his articles are very interesting.
It should be noted that #Skeletongaters don't trust badassreviews because a single one of their writers has apparently been attacking gamergate on twitter.
That Hulk article is pretty much spot on tho
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So be it.
The lack of structure is probably what got us this far in the first place. Without a leader, there's no one person these people can character assassinate (as in, slander and smear until they're a laughing stock with no credibility). They have to settle for going after us as a whole. :U
Ok then. I'm done.
We are officially at an impasse. Deadlocked with no ground to gain.
This movement has problems, and you have stated you wish not to fix them and are fine with it, problems and all. There's nothing more to discuss.
The way your group is organized will continue to make the trolls and harassers capable of doing as they please with no accountability and no way to be stopped or truly divorced from your group. This, coupled with no complete and concise publicly stated game plan, ideals, or motives will continue to confuse and upset the general public which will resort in more negative coverage and criticism for your group as a whole, which will then make you all falsely believe you're being unfairly targeted by a conspiracy which will then make you double down on the confused people you wrongly perceive as attacking you more than the people committing the worst of the actual ethical issues which will just make you look worse and worse.
This will spiral downward until your group finally implodes.
But have fun not changing anything about what you're doing and complaining that nobody understands what your group is REALLY about. While it lasts at least.
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It honestly is a better use of his energy to just shut the fuck up
In the same way it's a better use of our energy to keep posting skeletons
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Hey, if I just announce that I'm the leader of gamergate, can I head the whole thing and choose it's direction and get some interviews? Since no one else is?
Just curious if its possible to take over an anonymous mob overnight without any previous place or experience in the organization and make some money.
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Hey, if I just announce that I'm the leader of gamergate, can I head the whole thing and choose it's direction and get some interviews? Since no one else is?
Just curious if its possible to take over an anonymous mob overnight without any previous place or experience in the organization and make some money.
Will this be the new "Ask Kishimoto?"
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Naruto is ending, why couldn't it be both?
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Naruto is ending, why couldn't it be both?
Alright #Gamergate head, first questions.
1. What is the point of #Skeletongate
2. What is the point of this horrendous war
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It's like arguing with an indoctrinated person. He's saying pretty much what every GG person likes to say but not really analyzing any of it because he believes all the conspiracies
I actually felt a bit bad for him at times when I think about it because there's people legitimately using GG to further their own ends. Then I remember his smarmy condescending tone and I shrug it off
One spot of bright news is that it's finally dying again http://topsy.com/analytics?q1=Gamergate&via=Topsy
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Next questions:
1. Under your leadership, why is #gamergate finally dying
2. Under your leadership, why is Naruto finally dying
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@Purple:Alright #Gamergate head, first questions.
1. What is the point of #Skeletongate
Getting enough people to view a place all at once, so that thousands or millions of eyes see the content being presented. With that many eyes to choose from, the perfect set of eyes may be found that posses the lobsters needed for immortality.
2. What is the point of this horrendous war
My parents reached America the year I was born, 1939. Entering school, I was already exceptionally bright, my perfect scores on early test papers arousing such suspicion that I carefully achieved only average grades thereafter. What caused such precociousness? My parents were intellectually unremarkable, possessing no obvious genetic advantages. Perhaps I decided to be intelligent rather than otherwise? Perhaps we all make such decisions, though that seems a callous doctrine. By seventeen, my parents were both dead, and I faced a different decision. My inheritance offered life long idle luxury, and yet, needing nothing, I burned with the paradoxical urge to do everything.
Do you understand? My intellect set me apart.
Faced with difficult choices, I knew nobody whose advice might prove useful. Nobody living. The only human being with whom I felt any kinship died three hundred years before the birth of Christ. Alexander of Macedonia. I idolized him. A young army commander, he'd swept along the coasts of Turkey and Phoenicia, subduing Egypt before turning his armies towards Persia. He died, thirty-three, ruling most of the civilized world. Ruling without barbarism! At Alexandria, he instituted the ancient world's greatest seat of learning. True, people died … perhaps unnecessarily, though who can judge such things? Yet how he nearly approached his vision of a united world!
I was determined to measure my success against his.
@Purple:
Next questions:
1. Under your leadership, why is #gamergate finally dying
Because Gai opened the gates months ago.
2. Under your leadership, why is Naruto finally dying
I felt it time to bequeath my work to someone who still retains a passion for the work. (see the Rock Lee manga for details.) But not before reaching an easily memorable milestone. Who can remember that Dragonball ran for 519 chapters? No, my series needed to be longer, and end on an even, easily recalled number.
Is 700 an odd number? I'm fairly sure it is even… What's the nearest prime number? 701? Blast.
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Man, nostalgia trip. And this account isn't even as old as that banner!
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@Purple:Man, nostalgia trip. And this account isn't even as old as that banner!
It is actually a brand new banner, made within the last twenty minutes.
The old was lost to the great purge of imageshack.
Wait, that was not a question.
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http://i.imgur.com/nlZ4Mbo.jpg
It is actually a brand new banner, made within the last twenty minutes.
The old was lost to the great purge of imageshack.
Wait, that was not a question.
Oh, uh….
"Man, nostalgia trip? And this account isn't even as old as that banner?"
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@Purple:
Oh, uh….
"Man, nostalgia trip? And this account isn't even as old as that banner?"
A woodchuck would chuck quite a lot of wood if a woodchuck could chuck wood.
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I have a question Mr. Emperor of SkeletonGate Sir.
Why do you dislike Super Jammin' Women advocating for more porridge in video games? Porridge is barely represented in video games, and when it is, it's bland and tasteless. I have never seen a cutscene in which even a single spoonful of Cinnamon is added to Porridge in any of Porridge's few appearances in games.
Why does SkeletonGate Oppose this?
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I have a question Mr. Emperor of SkeletonGate Sir.
Why do you dislike Super Jammin' Women advocating for more porridge in video games? Porridge is barely represented in video games, and when it is, it's bland and tasteless. I have never seen a cutscene in which even a single spoonful of Cinnamon is added to Porridge in any of Porridge's few appearances in games.
Why does SkeletonGate Oppose this?
I do not oppose it… I am pushing for harvest moon to get better graphics so we can have exactly that. This matter seems to be a confusion with Bronies, and their negative message of positivity.