3981

I really can’t sympathize with a viewpoint based on bogus information and half-baked conspiracy theory that turned out to simply be a smear campaign.

3982

So you’re still accusing Zoe Quinn of getting undeserved coverage for sleeping with someone?

Nice.

3983

http://www.zenofdesign.com/on-mark-kerns-petition-thingy/

First off, let’s make one thing clear. Polygon, Kotaku and the other gaming sites have not been feeding this fire – they’ve actively been trying to ignore it. I documented this clearly in this article here where I noted there was far more coverage of the topic on Verge, Breitbart, Forbes and motherfucking CRACKED than on any major games website – despite many commentators and activists (including myself) actively shaming them for it. It wasn’t until the major media (MSNBC, New York Times, CBS, NPR) actually caught on to the story that the gaming press picked up on the thread again, presumably because it seems pretty shitty when a game-themed story hits the New York Times and your top five gaming site is pretending that shit doesn’t exist. Here’s a great example of IGN explaining why they choose not to feed the trolls. A week later, all these sites would drop that shit like it was a hot potato.

3984

Before we get into that you don’t know what hypocritical means, and also you threw a fit about Thor being a woman, you threw a fit about asking for a black avatar in KC:D…

I’m not Don Quixote. I’m a different poster on this here board. I asked how THAT guy was a hypocrite about racism.

while others here, including myself, find that sort of race-based thinking anathema, because it perpetuates rather than addresses bigotry in any constructive way by failing to treat people as individuals.

He says, after fucking eagerly posting BREITBART links. “The real racists are the people complaining about racism, the real not racists are the people posting about how Mike Brown had it coming”, oh, wow, what a civil and nuanced take. I can see those years of legal education did not go to waste.

You’ve made 600 posts on a gaming message board that you don’t otherwise frequent calling strangers racial supremacists and misogynists in almost every single post, for fuck’s sake. You’re like a homeless person shouting about non-organic food at everyone crossing the street to go to see a movie, while gorging yourself on nothing but Hostess Twinkees.

I really thought that duck Pond Higgins boat metaphor would be the most tortured I’d see today.

3985

If your first draft of a consensus was “I will grudgingly admit that racism in theory is bad if EVERYONE ELSE admits racism doesn’t exist”, well, that is rejected, Desslock.

3986

GamerGate showed up to voice their opinion in the comments:

I had to google Mark Kern To be reminded he’s responsible for Firefall.

3987

Lol. I am repeating the specific charge that was made against her and the media that started all this. Have you been following this thread at all?

3988

No one is asking you to sympathize with it or not. It is what it is. You choosing to characterize it as a “smear campaign” is no more relevant than you characterizing gamergate as a temper tantrum.

3989

Maybe “sympathize” is the wrong word, I think it’s more that your point of view has no real world credibility because it is based on falsehoods and debunked conspiracies. e.g. Zoe Quinn sleeping around in order to get positive coverage and the “gamers are dead” journalist conspiracy, both fully debunked but still repeated by GG.

i don’t really understand WHY they are repeated, since it really undermines any legitimate gripe about ethics in game journalism when all you can talk about are things that didn’t happen and about how terrible a person a non-journalist is, as if it were in any way relevant.

3990

I don’t know what kind of conspiracy folks are talking about regarding the gamers are dead article.

For me, it was just a crappy article. But it didn’t make me suddenly support the gamer gate movement.

And i think a bunch of folks are in the same place, where they didn’t like that article, but don’t support any of the violence, that of violence, or misogyny that seems to now be the focal point of the gamer gate thing. But then there seems to be this “if you aren’t with us, you’re against us” idea that if you don’t like Alexander’s article, you must hate women and support threatening their lives, which seems silly.

3991

This thread is a parody of a parody of a parody.

Soapy - In several senses, yes. (Amazing how they managed to…oh well ><)

3992

The GG position is that the “gamers are dead” article(s) were part of a coordinated media blitz attacking gamers in general. Probably the reason why you don’t know what the fuss is about is because the media blitz didn’t actually happen. The other conspiracy theory they like to go on about is that journalists collude to give low scores to games that are politically incorrect.

But then there seems to be this “if you aren’t with us, you’re against us” idea that if you don’t like Alexander’s article, you must hate women and support threatening their lives, which seems silly.

That would be silly… Can you point to an example of that?

3993

Virgil seemed convinced that i hate women and support gamergate, despite the fact that i believe i specifically said it wasn’t true.

In reality, i don’t believe there is really anyone posting in this thread who actually identifies with gamergate, is there? It seems that the folks who are arguing against seem to be people who aren’t actually supporting of gamergate, but rather in opposition to subsets of the anti gamergate crusaders.

3994

Timex has tried that “I don’t have any idea what GamerGate is doing, or claims to be mad about, or really anything that anyone is talking about, but I’m still pretty sure GG has a point” line like 5 times. When it is explained, slowly, so he can follow, he’ll immediately disclaim it as being beyond his comprehension, but sooner or later he’ll be back at it.

Dude is constantly, and I mean constantly, lobbying for an imaginary majority of people who want to fuck Leigh Alexander in the face for her article* but also don’t support GamerGate. What do they support? Well, mostly, it seems they support that other people should be nice to them on the internet, NO MATTER WHAT.

*That’s a direct quote from a guy who has NO PROBLEMS with women, no sir. Also a bigtime supporter of Darren Wilson, but anyone so much as hints at the existence of white privilege, well, here come the waterworks.

3995

There’s two issues here.

First, no, they’re not “debunked”. Saying they’re debunked doesn’t mean they’re debunked. The “gamers are dead” articles aren’t myth nor debunked. Ten articles appearing within a 24 hour period with titles including “The end of Gamers” and “The death of gamers and the women who killed them” are not someone’s imagination.

You can choose to believe that there was no coordination and that 10 articles spontaneously appeared on a single day on roughly the same subject.

Secondly, I’ve been publishing games for two decades. Depression Quest did not merit the level of attention it received leading up to its release. I do not think she got that attention because she was sleeping with journalists. I do think she got coverage because she got buddy buddy with journalists. And I have zero problem with that. She’s doing nothing more or less than what a good PR rep does.

That some gamers somehow think that item two is “wrong” is their business. I think the gamergaters are totally wrong on item 2. Many of them have an idealized vision of how journalism should work. But there is no question in my mind that ZQ has gotten coverage far beyond what talent and merit would have dictated.

The question isn’t whether I (or we in this case) agree with them for objecting to the coverage. I have no objection to the coverage she’s gotten. But she most certainly got coverage beyond what her get would normally get.

NOW, that said, I was responding to your statement that GamerGate is the group throwing the temper tantrum. Whereas, what I saw, first hand, was that a tiny group of indie gamers got mad at the way indie games were being covered because they imagine there’s some “objective” measurement that should determine coverage. Rather than ignoring that, the gaming press cranked out, in a single day, a dozen or so ridiculous articles. Those articles sure looked like a temper tantrum to me.

3996

Here are the articles. http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=132616610&postcount=7856

The one that most resonates with me is this one. I agree wholeheartedly. I felt exactly the same way after the horrible week that preceded this article.

Maybe I should give up immedietely and get back to the purported point of this ding dang post – the importance of the term “gamer”. I know a lot of people who don’t want to use it anymore. They don’t want to be associated with it anymore in any way. It’s because a lot of people who take pride in being “gamers”, be they game developers, jouranlists, or players, use the term as a way to elevate themselves above others. Gamer used to mean “a former nerd who is now proud of their love of games”, but now a lot of people take it to mean “I’m cooler than you other try-hards, because videogames”.

“Gamer” was a way to to take back “videogame nerd” and remove the social stigma, and now it’s being used as a pedestal to stigmitize others. So we’re going to have to take it back again, this time from the bullies that use it to devalue other people for not having the same type of interests, priorities, and goals as they do.

I don’t want the term “gamer” to start meaning “jerk” to everyone who uses it. If we don’t accept that definition, if we don’t define our inevitable jerky behaviors as “just part of being a gamer”, then maybe we can prevent that from happening.

3997

When I was a kid long ago, nerds stuck together and supported each other from the jocks, bullies, potheads, preppies and so on.

Today however the days of nerd solidarity are long gone. On one side you have the misanthropist, racist and misogynist nerds, and on the other side you have the white knighting, preachy, social justice nerds. Both polar opposites; both equally annoying. In the middle you have the regular nerds, mouths agape saying WTF? Really?

Gamergate can be summed up in 4 words: “Nerds devouring their own”. All fueled by the blessed anonymity of the Internet. C’mon nerds get along with each other, as this is really embarrassing.

3998

On the one hand, there are racists and misogynists, but on the other there are some people who use swears when talking about the racist misogynists. A pox on both houses!

#Gamers

There is no way to distill white male privilege any more perfectly than to use “annoying” as the description of that dichotomy. Gosh, so annoying. Hating gays is like bad breath, a total faux pas.

3999

“I don’t personally hate women, but you know, I’m not preachy about it, so if you wanna hate women go ahead” is not really as cool and above-it-all as you might imagine.

4000

I am really impressed how you managed to include all the major south polar talking points in just 2 posts. My apparent white privilege is very amused. You really are the most amazing troll Mr. Hilts.