Gamergate, Feminisim, and Journalistic Ethics
Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2014 5:05 amAlright NSG. Those of us who haven't been living under a rock for the past few weeks will know of Gamergate.
So what do you think NSG?On the one hand, the people sending rape and death threats clearly are in the wrong, there's no two ways about it. Most of these threats have been proven to have been falsified by Anita, as was her police report. On the other hand, there are a lot of people who are using that as an excuse to ignore the bigger problem, that is that complete lack of ethics in Gaming Journalism, and the tendency of "feminist" bloggers to blow any tiny detail in video games completely out of proportion, aka clickbait, and even worse, the massed censorship that has been a uniform reaction to these events.
Edit: I call the censorship and corruption a larger issue because in my mind, the censorship and corruption of a multi million dollar journalistic industry is far more worrying than a few (mostly fake) death threats sent by minors from /b/ with zero intention of carrying them out, and are, to use a quote "just doing it for the lulz"
Compilation of better explanations than I can give wrote:Gamergate is something that started a while back when an ex boyfriend of Zoe Quinn, developer of Depression Quest, claimed she had cheated on him, in particular with several people in the gaming journalism spheres, in order to get her game more exposure and positive reviews.
This has not been proven and most likely never will be. Obtaining evidence that would actually prove this is, realistically, something you need a court order for and even then, the agreements spoken of could have never been written down.
So you have 3 sides to this, 1 who insists people are just being sexists and misogynist and that this is just men trying to push their patriarchy agenda, 1 who insists this proves gaming journalism is corrupt to the bone and that these journalists only care about pushing their matriarchy agenda. And then there's the side that doesn't get involved because they feel there is no strong enough evidence to support either side. That it's all a bunch of "he said she said" on both sides.
One could easily make the argument though, that Zoe Quinn handled this badly. When this exploded, her response was to promptly claim that this was just the entire hating women and that's all there's to it.
A few days in, Anita Sarkeesian claimed she had been receiving death threats and had filed a police report for this and was forced to move out of her house because of it. Though when the SFPD was contacted and asked about it, they claimed they had received no such case: Sauce
Other people have promised Anita large amounts of money if she would post a copy of her report online, which she has not done to this day. While Anita now claims that the police didn't believe her. Though there should then still be a report.Sauce
Moot figures in to this after having recently purged almost all his moderators and has forbidden all conversation about GamerGate on 4chan. Here's a summary: moot makes me sad.
Then there's the Fine Young Capitalists. They're involved through Zoe Quinn having orchestrated a negative media campaign. The Fine Young Capitalists are a group of people who wanted to help female game writers and developers financially in the creation of their vision. So the idea was you present your vision for a game and they have some artists that they pay do the art and such, while you code on it. For free. The FYC took care of paying the artists.
Zoe Quinn apparently viewed this as misogynistic oppression, since the women didn't get paid for their work. And she successfully shut them down. That just fuels the fires.
But behind all this is a bigger problem. What this all comes down to is that people are taking the word "feminism" and forgetting the definition. Feminism is supposed to be about equality for women. Which is good. But there are people who call just about everything they do feminism, regardless of context. Including harassing companies and journalists in to only doing certain projects or articles. They bully people and claim it's all good because it's feminism. Why? Because they said so, that's why. And because it is feminism, whatever they did somehow helped the cause of equality for women.
It's being used as a shield to hide behind while doing bad things and a lot of people are sick and tired of it. And the size of GamerGate reflects that.
A lot of people simply don't care about the nuances anymore. They feel marginalized and want that to end. And the only solution they see is by removing that which hinders them completely.
So what do you think NSG?
Edit: I call the censorship and corruption a larger issue because in my mind, the censorship and corruption of a multi million dollar journalistic industry is far more worrying than a few (mostly fake) death threats sent by minors from /b/ with zero intention of carrying them out, and are, to use a quote "just doing it for the lulz"
