You are completely wrong about this. not only does the term terrorism substantially predate the appearance of mass media, I would argue the places it has been used most successfully are places with basically no media, let alone mass media. Pol Pot’s Cambodia e.g.
In the US there are some legal definitions to consider too, though they can sometimes get muddy. The guy who called in the bomb threat that caused Sarkeesian to cancel her speaking gig in Utah would have been charged with making a “terroristic threat” if he or she had been caught; a “second degree felony” since he threatened use of a bomb.
I’m pretty sure people will withdraw the charge of “terrorism” and replace it with “an attempt to terrorize someone into silence because of their political views” if that would suddenly get misogynists to admit gaming culture has fucked up depictions of gender
Personally, I have no problem with Sarkeesian at all. I was interviewed for that “Sarkeesian effect” series and said as much. It’s one of the reasons why I dislike, very much, the hysterics and energy that go into trying to address her videos.
My problem is with the way some in the gaming media chose to use her as a prop to further their own agendas. There’s many high quality, thoughtful videos on YouTube that covers a lot of interesting issues in the game industry, the nature of cultural depictions in art, etc. There’s nothing really special or particularly offensive about Sarkeesian’s videos in themselves.
There are interesting conversations to be had in game development that could have been discussed in a much less melodramatic way.
For example, in Fallen Enchantress, the player goes out and kills bandits. But why? We debated on whether we needed to provide some sort of interactive mini-story to explain why you were just going out randomly murdering bears and “bandits” (ultimately we didn’t but I wrote code that brought up a dialog to explain why you were going around murdering people randomly). 10 years ago, wouldn’t have even considered that.
Enidigm
3926
Bandits killed my father. Which bandits, and which father, are the burning questions.
I actually had this very discussion with my son while playing your game. We were mostly joking about it, but that would have been pretty awesome to see.
I’d never seen that site before - it was making the rounds on twitter (i saw it from Total Bisquit) so I just googled for her twitter post and that was the first page to come up. But it contains her twitter post, which is as direct evidence as it gets, so sadly BW is that damaged.
Quaro
3929
You must have seen the site before, we were talking Ralph Retort earlier in the thread, they wrote the article basically accusing Raph Koster of being a drug addict.
Other memorable headlines from them: “NeoGAF Has a Pedophile Problem #GamerGate #PedoGAF” “BOOM: MASTER MILO 100% RIGHT TO UNLOAD ON BRIANNA WU (Referring to an article the supposedly outs Brianna Wu as transgender)”. And they still host the hacked Polyton internal documents.
I really recommend reading Raph’s patient responses to the endless hostility: http://theralphretort.com/drunken-and-drugged-gdc-seems-like-its-only-for-the-cool-kids-20715/
What the hell is happening in gaming that these people think of themselves as defenders of gaming, on one of the very top sites for a movement supposedly representing quality journalism.
Naw, I stay away from places where people are crappy to one another, generally because they’re just kids who are too young to drink yet - this is where I saw the story: https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/status/569212270032658432
RickH
3931
That is far from ironic. That was the POINT of AS’s activity. She is an activist and a provocateur, that’s how she makes her living. Without attention, no money, no reason for being, no way to use her degree in social and political thought.
That you think this is ironic makes you seem unduly credulous.
Breitbart being a notoriously tolerant and chill establishment?
This weird “oh no I’ve never heard of this organization, but I just agree with this particular article” trick hasn’t worked yet, for you, for any gators. It’s pretty transparent. It’s also pretty telling that all your hot pro-GG takes seem to be on otherwise low credibility websites. Considering the mainstream hates AS and ZQ just as much, you’d think you’d be able to find some actual real journalistic outlet.
“the fact they are all 350lbs in throwing off the LD50 calculations”
I laughed.
On the real (rather than imagined) gamergate front, I see Mark Kern and Ken Levine have approaching this from a more productive angle to try and calm the thing down, and a couple of the more prominent voices from the hashtags were offered to pitch some freelancer articles on The Escapist, so I guess the Escapist is making good on this;
Moving forward, The Escapist is eschewing the ‘curmudgeon’ mentality that is so pervasive these days in favour of the ‘enthusiast’ mentality that we want to foster among our community, and geek culture at large,” he said. “We want to focus on finding the good in the geekspace, rather than focusing on the bad.
by purging the SJWs and employing NotYourShield members? I don’t know who else they’ve reached out to, and just know of Oliver and Liane, perhaps they’ve enticed Brianna “calm, rational and sensible” Wu out of her safe room.
Teiman
3934
Please tell me you don’t call terrorism the nazi concentration camps and the extermination of the jew. That will be too dumb!.
Busbecq
3935
I am waiting for the assertion that gamergate, the Nazis, al-Qaeda, and date rapists are the same on some level and should be condemned with the same vehemence.
Alstein
3936
Those comparisons are out there, I’ve seen them other places.
It’s almost as bad as when white people eat Mexican food.
The holocaust was not terrorism. The objective was extermination, not control.
Stalinist purges & gulags were terrorism in it’s more formal & narrow original sense, the imprisonment, torture and execution of innocents with the objective of having a population controlled by fear.
Desslock
3939
Good thing I’ve never tried that ‘trick’, then. You’ve long past the point where you started believing your own lies. You concoct entirely imaginary exchanges, and then bring up fictional quotes your dementia created and attributed to someone (or the teddy bear in your room) and chuckle to yourself at how your retort outwitted your stuffed ursine companion.
Meanwhile, another one of your laudable human rights organization buddies turns out to be a far bigger racist than the people he “polices”: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31575913.
Seriously? A random nobody in a human rights organization no one has ever heard of turns out to be a racist and that’s it? That’s your moral victory?
