3741

You don’t know what “irony” means. Or “shrill sanctimonious weirdo.” Or “insulin resistance.”

3742

Yeah, I found them and the finalists from the groups really aren’t good, but they’re college movies… they’re all kind of universally better than HIS movie though.

3743

Absolutely, it was the gamers are dead articles, the perception amongst gamers about what they were about, and most importantly, the mass of SJWs and journalists abusing gamers and gamer culture that caused it to turn from a non-event into the behemoth it was. It was the SJW and journalist trolling and abuse that birthed NotYourShield, a core part of GG that was entirely about countering identity politics and nothing to do with Quinns vagina at all.

Yeah, block pwk because he’s not acting like a good little houseboy and kissing the ring of social justice. The hugbox is broken and all these nasty people aren’t agreeing with me!

Another reason I’m so contemptuous of SJW culture is their continuing attempts to oppress free speech. It’s all about banning, blocking, filtering out anything which doesn’t kowtow to their cult. Unlike the virtual safe spaces of the white, affluent, educated, millenial slactivists I can’t actually filter out the racism and bigotry I’ve received out in real life, and at the same time, nor would I want to. You’ll never know what someone is thinking if they can’t say it out loud, and as a result nor will you ever counter it.

I’m just repeating my first posts from September here.

It depends if you think micro aggressions, cultural appropriation and causing shitstorms on the internet actually improves anything. I don’t. Trivialisation of a cause damages it. The second wave introduced legislation, changed systems, changed institutions. What have the third wave achieved? Social media shaming? Progressed science through shirtgate? Attempted to change gamer culture, but in such a hamfisted way it created a massive movement opposed to identity politics?

There’s no doubt there’s a blurred line between real activism and SJWs, and indeed I see cross-overs all the time (things like I cant breathe) but generally online social justice activists and identity politics only bring the negative to the table. A lot of it is to do with the aggressive nature of identity politics and SJW methods and tactics. Look at your impact on this thread for examples. If you let Soapyfrog do all the arguing it would have made my argument far more difficult to contextualise.

Apologies for SirBrucing this but 3 posts needed a reply.

3744

Giant Spacekat, developers of Revolution 60 and Brianna Wu’s outfit, will not be hosting a booth at PAX East due to death threats.

When Giant Spacekat was founded 4 years ago, speaking out on women in tech was the last thing on our mind. We just wanted to make games. But as founder Brianna Wu began working in game development, she felt compelled to speak out about her experiences.

At first, Brianna felt that hers was a unique experience, and not nearly the widespread epidemic. Sadly, specific violent threats from Gamergate have threatened all we’ve accomplished as a studio. What started as contempt towards the inclusive Giant Spacekat ideals, has over time become a near constant barrage of unwarranted hatred, harassment, and threats.

GSX has continually attempted to get support from law enforcement with tracking down and apprehending the individuals behind the explicit and detailed death threats. These are regularly sent, targeting Brianna by name and sometimes even with other identifying information.

Despite the credibility of those threats, and despite even the attempted action by one of those threatening individuals to act on those threats recently, very little has been accomplished by law enforcement towards the goal of apprehending these criminals, let alone towards preventing future threats.

As threats have recently come to encompass Brianna’s family, and appear to be escalating, Giant Spacekat has made the decision to prioritize its family, the employees, and their safety. Specifically, we have chosen to withdraw our presence from the Pax East 2015 Expo Hall, due to a concern that in a crowd of such a volume expected at Pax, the safety of our team can not be guaranteed.

Of note, we are in no way trying to imply that the PAX teams have been uncooperative regarding security requests, nor are we trying to imply that PAX is unsafe, or that the admirable efforts of the volunteer Enforcer team would be inadequate. This is a company specific decision, made out of precaution.

Unfortunately, as recent media culture has shown through the depiction of harassment and assault of a female game developer on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, even the best security plans can fail.

The bottom line, is that our employees, our team, are more valuable to us than table space, and we are not willing to even consider risking their safety, or privacy, in exchange for a few more eyes on Revolution 60 and our upcoming Giant Spacekittens division title, Cupcake Crisis.

Brianna will still be taking press meetings at Pax East 2015, and those meetings can be set up or requested through our press email address: press@giantspacekat.com

Additionally, Brianna and other members of the GSX team will also be panelists throughout the course of the event, on varying panels.

We appreciate your understanding in this decision, and your support of our intention to prioritize our employees, and their safety, above all else.

Giant Spacekat

Sucks it came to that, but oh my Lord at the Law & Order shout-out.

3745

She remembered to sign out of her sockpuppet accounts this time?

3746

Agreed on both counts. I know that an announcement like that isn’t the proper venue for humor, but I still would have appreciated seeing “cringeworthy” somehow included.

3747

It’s hard to even comment anymore:

Mighty No. 9 community manager Dina, who had gotten heat over the nepotism involved in her getting the job and the suspicion of her being involved in actual game changes while being a feminist admitted to wanting to “make it better” in a “shitty industry”

3748

Yes, you #gg people represent the oppressed gaming masses groaning under the SJW heel. My god, are you just trolling? Tell me you’re trolling, I could respect that. If not, it’s hard to believe that intelligent people are still spouting such utter bullshit. I guess that’s the enduring appeal of dumb conspiracy theories, especially when they can tie into the decades of misogyny in the hobby. Sad.

3749

Giant Spacekat, developers of Revolution 60 and Brianna Wu’s outfit, will not be hosting a booth at PAX East due to death threats.

This is bullshit. You can’t just let some toolbag threaten you, and cave into the threat. Because it essentially requires ZERO commitment on the asshole’s part to make the threat. If you allow him to take an action which requires essentially ZERO effort, and have it totally control you, then what’s gonna happen? MORE ASSHOLES ARE GONNA DO THAT THEN. You’re not gonna get LESS death threats by caving into them, you’ll get MORE.

They mention that one crazy apparently did “something” towards realization of one of these threats, but then the cops didn’t do anything? I’d have to know more about whatever that thing is to really judge what it ammounts to.

But I know that you can’t just give into someone threatening you. You call their bluff, and make them lay their cards on the table. And yeah, maybe it’s scary, because maybe they’re ACTUALLY crazy and not just a total douchebag, and they’re ACTUALLY gonna try and kill you. But you know what? If that’s the case, then their decision to kill you isn’t really going to be based on some rational assessment of your actions. It’s going to be a pretty much random act. So you midaswell just do what you want to do.

This kind of threat is no different from any other kind of terrorism. And it deserves to be ridiculed, and its perpetrators discounted as the impotent tools they are. If they want to try and step up and act on their nonsense, then let them try, and then they’ll be either killed or jailed.

3750

Ah, the community manager that declared war on her community and rolled out the ban stick on anyone who discussed her friend Zoe or GG, and then trolled the GG tags on twitter, and started blocking people from viewing the Mighty 9 account. I remember her from September. I thought she stopped because Inafune noticed all the chargebacks but she must have been trolled to hell and back as I noticed she has an Encyclopedia Dramatica page. If you have an ED page you’re fucked, basically. Some nasty folks on there.

3751

“Griefer Madness”

3752

Not just there.

3753

I don’t know. I’ve never been on the receiving end of the kind of threats Wu has gotten in the past few weeks, so I can’t really put myself in her place. I’d like to say that I’d stand up for my beliefs and throw a middle finger up at the threats, but I’m also the guy that avoids sketchy places at night because I don’t want to get robbed or assaulted. I know that the chances of getting killed in a biker bar are really low, but I don’t swagger into them acting all badass and daring someone to knife me either. At a certain point, my brain tells me to just live safely and not tempt fate.

3754

It’s not just you calling that bluff though – it’s your family, your company employees manning the booth all day, their families. Given the level of vitriol against that company you can find on the chans, even if all if it is a ‘troll’, I completely understand being nervous about having employees standing there all day.

Like this video about Brianna Wu is likely a troll: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYPC-YMdJFI. This ‘war on Brianna Wu’ tone is pretty easy to find all over the place with many other posts… that are likely just more trolls. Probably.

Yeah maybe you say fuck it and go anyway. But I can certainly understand how other people wouldn’t.

3755

I know it’s scary. But you can’t give in to them, because you are simply validating their threatening of you and your family. Then they can threaten you whenever you displease them in even the most trivial way… and since you require them to do absolutely NOTHING, they will do exactly that. You will get way more threats, not less, by caving into their demands.

And as I pointed out, if they are crazy enough to actually come and try to kill you and your family, then what makes you think that caving into their demands is going to stop them from killing you anyway?

The reality is, if someone is willing to give up their own life or freedom to kill you, then they can kill you. There is nothing you can do about it. You can’t live in fear that they may do such a thing.

When you cave into threats made by some douchebag on the internet, then you give them more power than they would ever be able to achieve through their actual actions. You have rewarded their threatening you with essentially complete control over you as a person. Despite exerting essentially zero effort, you’ve basically let them enslave you. That is pretty much the worst possible reaction.

3756

Well she’s still going to the show.

3757

Yeah, but saying that she’s not doing a booth or sending employees, because some douchebags on the internet threatened her, is going to result in way more threats. She is, in the most literal sense, giving into terrorist demands.

3758

An elephant in the room, and something that makes the anti-GG stuff sometimes take on a tinge of meanspiritedness, is that it is pretty clear a lot of the true blue #GG types are legitimately mentally ill. Like it’s funny when they don’t understand the concept of satire and write a dumb post about Colbert, but at the same time, the overwhelmingly likely reason for not being able to understand that is a developmental disability of some sort. To be specific, Rogue Star Games, for example, is obviously not well.

So yeah, 99% of internet death threats are some troll having a laff or some asshole being hyperbolic, but you never know.

3759

I think it’s important to realize that there are actually groups of people who know about #GG.

  1. Gators. LOL very few of them, Brad thinks they are the “majority” but he’s not even willing to stake out himself as a supporter. Which leaves, what, that guy who used to work for Blizzard as the most prominent dev in GG?

  2. “Anti”-GG. Not a lot of them either, a motley collection of nerds and feminists and culture writers. Anti-GG is a bit of a misnomer as it implies that there is a GG position to oppose. Of course, as this thread has repeatedly shown, actual GG supporters refuse to articulate the source of their anger. “GG observers and pundits” is more accurate.

  3. Non-GG. This is the vast majority. These are people who are aware that GG was at one point a thing, but instantly dismissed it as bullshit and went on about their day. They aren’t keeping up with the latest stupid shit KIA is angry about. They aren’t antis because they don’t keep up on it, but they fundamentally reject GG. Maybe, Brad, you might have wanted to articulate something more than the same warmed over culture war bullshit that made your Dad hate LBJ 50 years ago? Branding and outreach and all that buzzwordy shit.

3760

I’m going to have to word this carefully so that it doesn’t sound like I’m accusing Wu of either deliberately courting the abuse or - worse - “totally wanting it”… because I absolutely don’t believe that to be the case.

BUT, I think that backing out of the conference and especially posting that press release was the best thing they possibly could have done under the circumstances. As others have mentioned, if you have credible threats against you from nut-cases and the legal remedies are unwilling to provide protection, then for the sake of both your employees and the innocents at the convention, it behooves you to cancel.

As an added bonus, the press release and the fact that it’s being picked up at a low level by mainstream press means that the people threatening her and her company have accomplished exactly the opposite of what they set out to do. Yesterday I had never heard of Giant Spacekat, and if not for the threat I bet you that tomorrow and six months from now I would still never have heard of Giant Spacekat. Now I’ve heard of them, heard of Revolution 60 and visited their website. So… good job suppressing them through your threats, guy.

It’s much like Leigh Alexander and Anita Sarkesian, neither of whose names I would recognize if not for the #GG people raising a stink about them. I’ve said it before upthread, but I’m someone who would have shrugged off “Tropes vs. Women in Games” as nothing more than academic wankery, but the fact that the #GG folks were so exercised about it made me want to watch, and in watching I’ve found myself largely appreciating her points.