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March 29, 2024, 09:28:44 AM

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GamerGate is one!

Started by madhair60, August 26, 2015, 02:16:53 PM

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madhair60

Quote from: Hollow on August 27, 2015, 02:28:26 PM
This is so depressing, I think I'll stick to playing the games and not giving a solitary shit about this nonsense.

Definitely the best approach.  It's absolutely soul-sucking.

MojoJojo

So hang on, the issue isn't that she hasn't produced enough video, it's that the number of videos isn't enough? Like if she had split them all into part 1/2, that would be fine?

Does anyone who actually contributed to the kickstarter actually feel scammed?

It also needs repeating, apparently, that backing a kickstarter project is backing a project - it's not pre-ordering something.

The fact this all gets so much attention and hate when there is blatent, massive corruption in videogames journalism and has been for decades (Amiga Power used to whinge about it) and there kickstarted games that break their promises in far worse ways than being late.

Quote from: Eis Nein on August 27, 2015, 02:14:21 PM
"And such small portions!"

Brilliant rebuttal, 10/10, debating college degree.

Quote from: MojoJojo on August 27, 2015, 02:32:33 PM
So hang on, the issue isn't that she hasn't produced enough video, it's that the number of videos isn't enough? Like if she had split them all into part 1/2, that would be fine?

No, the issue is that she hasn't produced all the videos she promised in the Kickstarter. Thought I made that pretty clear.

QuoteDoes anyone who actually contributed to the kickstarter actually feel scammed?

Doubtful, but that doesn't mean they aren't being.

Pit-Pat

So are you attacking Sarkeesian or defending Gamergate?

BritishHobo

Just want to point out nobody yet seems to have been able to explain to me how she is scamming people by continuing to produce videos, which I have shown evidence for. 'Taking a while to make something' is not a scam, and she's demonstrably still producing videos.

The only response I've had is Funcrusher and The Region Legion saying she 'doesn't' continue to make videos. Even though, uh, I've pointed out she does. And continues to. And has added more to the slate. And has already put out more than double the content she originally promised.

Pit-Pat

Quote from: BritishHobo on August 27, 2015, 02:50:24 PM
Just want to point out nobody yet seems to have been able to explain to me how she is scamming people by continuing to produce videos, which I have shown evidence for. 'Taking a while to make something' is not a scam, and she's demonstrably still producing videos.

Too inconvenient a question to answer.

But even if Sarkeesian isn't very good at what she's doing, even if she's actually a scammer,[nb]I have genuinely no idea, but from what BritishHobo says it doesn't sound like she is[/nb] that doesn't justify the actions, activities and attitudes of Gamergate in any way shape or form.

madhair60

Sarkeesian being such a hot button issue seems to be pretty damning in and of itself, given that she's, uh, not a games journalist.

Totally open to criticism though.  I have plenty.  I don't care for her, I don't care for Brianna Wu, I don't care for most of the "anti"* figureheads.  Doesn't mean I support GG.

*I know.

Eis Nein

Quote from: The Region Legion on August 27, 2015, 02:33:44 PM
Brilliant rebuttal, 10/10, debating college degree.

Thanks. It's a pretty efficient summation of your argument, with the bonus anger generated by comparing you to a Jew. You lot hate that.

Quote from: The Region Legion on August 27, 2015, 01:56:28 PM
I really don't think I need to point you to YouTube and the piles of videos debunking her videos do I? Not that you're interested because you've already decided what your opinion is, and that's that.

I 'd like to see such links.

Pit-Pat

Quote from: madhair60 on August 27, 2015, 02:55:29 PM
Totally open to criticism though.  I have plenty.  I don't care for her, I don't care for Brianna Wu, I don't care for most of the "anti"* figureheads.  Doesn't mean I support GG.

It's like criticising American foreign policy or the war on drugs. It doesn't mean you're pro-Al Qaeda or pro-cartels.

BritishHobo

Quote from: Pit-Pat on August 27, 2015, 02:53:56 PM
Too inconvenient a question to answer.

But even if Sarkeesian isn't very good at what she's doing, even if she's actually a scammer, that doesn't justify the actions, activities and attitudes of Gamergate in any way shape or form.

It's the problem with the whole thing, and it's why I need to stop engaging. They're always fucked on two levels: first, their anger is based on nonsense reactionary bullshit, exaggerated high-school gossip, and an infuriating concept (which I can't remember the name of at this point) where essentially the internet gets so flooded with tiny shreds of information used to make big accusations that it stops being possible to able to keep refuting them. Second, the way they go about acting on all of this is utterly childish and pathetic and totally disproportionate to what would be reasonable even if it were all true.

BritishHobo

See, what a scammer does is promise to do something in exchange for money, and then not do it. What Sarkeesian is doing is that she's promised to do something in exchange for money, and she is doing it. The difference may seem small, but it is crucial.

Pit-Pat

Quote from: mobias on August 27, 2015, 08:45:15 AM
This is one of the best articles on Gamergate out there. It makes for a pretty horrible, depressing read and you certainly won't want to side with the gamergate guys after reading it http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2015/04/28/gamergate/

That article is fucking grim reading, but there was one moment of unintentional comedy:

Quote"We'll stop at nothing to bring back the way it used to be in the 1950s [when] there weren't any bitches in video games," the man, wielding a hammer, said, calling for "the death of Brianna Wu."

What a hilarious moron.

madhair60

Didn't that guy claim to be a performance artist or something?

Quote from: Eis Nein on August 27, 2015, 02:57:43 PM
Thanks. It's a pretty efficient summation of your argument, with the bonus anger generated by comparing you to a Jew. You lot hate that.

What? Jew? What are you on about? It must be nice to be anti-semitic and then say the other person is! Quality cognitive dissonance on display there, thanks for the contribution.

Also, "you lot" is bullshit. I'm not involved in GamerGate, it seems like the truth of it is somewhere in the middle of both sides. That RationalWiki page is fucking laugh-out-loud bias and yet it's actually been presented like some kind of clever rebuttal. Fuck off please.


Here's reality - Anita Sarkeesian makes a fuck ton of money doing nothing and saying nothing. She's 3 years into this little odyssey and she's focused her time on promoting the Sarkeesian brand over the initial project. Tropes Vs. Women isn't even finished. 3 years. Over $1 million in donations, to her "non-profit" organisation (read: so she doesn't have to pay tax on all the delicious free money she's handed by idiots). God damn you people are fucking saps of the highest order.

kittens


madhair60

Quote from: The Region Legion on August 27, 2015, 03:17:57 PMThat RationalWiki page is fucking laugh-out-loud bias and yet it's actually been presented like some kind of clever rebuttal. Fuck off please.

It's very biased and poorly-written, that's why I didn't post it until I was asked.  That doesn't necessarily make it wrong, though.

BritishHobo

Region Legion mate, I can't help but notice you just said Anita Sarkeesian 'does nothing' after two posts where I pointed out that she demonstrably is still making videos.

MojoJojo

Quote from: The Region Legion on August 27, 2015, 02:47:01 PM
Doubtful, but that doesn't mean they aren't being.

Actually, it does mean they're not being scammed. They paid for something, and feel what they are getting is worth what they paid. The fact it hasn't met your timetable is really not here or there.

Yeah, the backers might be idiots, what of it?

Pit-Pat

Quote from: madhair60 on August 27, 2015, 03:21:54 PM
It's very biased and poorly-written, that's why I didn't post it until I was asked.  That doesn't necessarily make it wrong, though.

Describing something as biased heavily implies that there is a hidden reason for you supporting something. Someone who's read the evidence and chooses a side doesn't become biased in a way that means they're not worth listening to.

For example, I'm biased against Pol Pot and I'm fairly sure he didn't kill anyone I was related to.

madhair60

It doesn't really matter whether Sarkeesian is delivering or not.  It doesn't justify the abuse.

And nobody here is saying it does.  I get that.  So why does it always comes up?  She's not a games journalist.

garbed_attic

I can't understand why people get so riled over Sarkeesian. She makes reasonable, albeit limited points about trends in gaming, with specific examples - the player has often had to rescue a damsel in distress; violence against women in games is sometimes sexualised in a way that it isn't against male characters; scanty-clad CGI girls are often used to move products etc. It's not ground-breaking stuff, but it's generally pretty reasonable IMO. The argument she always faces of 'But what about all the games that don't do that shit???' is nonsense because there's always going to be examples that fall outside of a given trend. Plus, that's simply not the focus of her project. If I was making a project on the demonisation of the poor on British television, it would be pretty daft to focus on Jimmy McGovern's work instead of Benefits Street, Little Britain etc. etc. Obviously it's not something that characterises all television ever, but it's clearly an issue in some programmes that should be talked about more.

Plus, Sarkeesian isn't even a 2nd wave radical! She doesn't call for games to be boycotted or banned! She often even says that she enjoyed games that she found otherwise problematic. It's just about awareness and trying to make the culture more open and less awful for female players, which strikes me as a laudable goal. Sure, she's a bit slow with her updates, but she's had a lot of shit to deal with. Frankly, I'm just impressed she's still soldiering on with it.

That said... (!)

Quotehttp://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2015/04/28/gamergate/

I hate that article! Partly because it landed me on the receiving end of a lot of bile on the Achewood FB group after arguing that I didn't think it was useful or particularly accurate to state that gamergamers were 'sub-human' and 'monsters', vile misogynists though they mostly are. The argument from the group was that those involved with gamergate have divested themselves of their right to be labelled as human beings due to their failure to act "humanely" and as such there feelings / concerns / rights etc. are irrelevant and they should be regarded as sub-humans, both metaphorically and literally. I believe that humanity encompasses all sorts of shittiness and it's not up to one human being or another to insist that another group are no longer humans - basically the same argument that Camus makes against capital punishment. This led to lots of people very angrily insisting that I was framing the gamergaters as the "real victims", victim blaming etc. even after I tried to make it very clear that I think they're a bunch of wankers. Bah!

Anyway, the reason I don't like that article is because it strikes me as very reliant upon the idea that Joe Quinn's ex is some kind of literal monster quite unlike an actual human being...

QuoteThe process he described to me sounded as if he were gathering the pieces of a horrible machine, with each component designed to be as damaging to Quinn as possible. Eventually, the machine would have a name.

QuoteBenjamin Hitov, a childhood friend and fellow programmer, told me he once beat Gjoni in the ninja fighter game Dead or Alive "100 times in a row, and he didn't change his expression once."

QuoteIn fact, he already had the goods to destroy Quinn if he wished. But it wasn't enough. He wanted more.



whereas actually I think he's more:



a pretty common-a-garden entitled jerk

P.S. Depression Quest isn't very good.

Eis Nein

Quote from: The Region Legion on August 27, 2015, 03:17:57 PM
What? Jew? What are you on about? It must be nice to be anti-semitic and then say the other person is! Quality cognitive dissonance on display there, thanks for the contribution.
The Catch 22 with clever putdowns of chumps.


Quote from: The Region Legion on August 27, 2015, 03:17:57 PMit seems like the truth of it is somewhere in the middle of both sides.
Bitches should be terrorised on alternate weekdays and Sundays only.

I'm still waiting for your helpful links. I want to be able to play Hitman again.

madhair60

Incidentally I do apologise for starting this thread.  I was going to post something more in-depth and try and get some thoughts on my personal feelings toward the whole thing, one year on, and how I feel about online social justice in general.  It was going to be quite a balanced thing, not total dismissal of GG, because I've come to understand what it's like to be subjected to what they call an "SJW", where basic empathy actually vanishes to be replaced with hectoring over trivial semantic issues.  So, a mixed bag really.  But, I don't really want to post it - and I know nobody gives a fuck anyway - because of how this one's gone.

Hank Venture

Look, I'm sorry I called her a scam artist, as it implies criminal intent. After reading up a bit on her it seems she's less of a scam artist and more a QVC salesperson - shitty and irresponsible business practices. I don't like it as I'm a stickler for the consumer. I don't understand why anyone would defend her business practice, it's absurd.

BritishHobo looks like he's trying his best to throw basic fucking arithmetic out the window due to ideology. 

Dr Rock

I read the first sentence of the rationalWiki and didn't bother reading the rest: it may be right or wrong but it is so poorly written I had to stop. The wikipedia entry seems to be equally written by whichever side has managed to delete the opposing ones version the most recently. I think I'll go back to not caring. I don't like Sarkeesian's opinion/actions from what I've seen/read, though she's amiable enough as a person and I would read happily about sexist tropes in videogames from someone else, I think there is some truth to this version of events (tell me if I'm wrong, I don't know:

Some 'social justice warriors' (I don't think this term is that pejorative, I probably support 'SJW's on many issues) turned their attention to video games and said they were all sexist but they weren't that sexist and when they tried to make games aimed at what they thought women would want  - possibly involving some 'unethical' arrangements but that was never going to interest people outside the industry - they found women quite like the games already on offer not ones about depression much, and they really like ones with no meaning where you rearrange candy patterns. I can vouch for this from real life.  This truth was inconvenient so they carried on saying gamers were sexist until predictably they got piled on, attracting much  abuse and probably a vastly exaggerated number of actual threats, that probably did come from misogyny in some quarters, and it was this that really got the press. Ultimately the story became 'very horrible sexist gamer losers threaten women cos they are all horrible and hate women', which is probably not fair.

Eis Nein

I really can't see where your problem lies, Hank. She kickstarted for a small scope video series, was inundated by grateful and frustrated backers, and expanded the remit.

I'm surprised to see someone I rate using this argument.

BritishHobo

Quote from: Hank Venture on August 27, 2015, 03:43:11 PMBritishHobo looks like he's trying his best to throw basic fucking arithmetic out the window due to ideology.

How? You just conceded she's not a scam artist, which is the only thing I've been arguing.

Hank Venture

#88
Alright, my problem is this: expanding your remit/mission statement; fine. Completely above board, all for it. But she has seemingly raised an amount of money completely disproportionate to her output, and put that whole thing on the backburner as the more lucrative offers started rolling in.

I'll say this, disregarding ideology completely - I don't care for what I've read about the GamerGate crowd, not in this thread nor ever - but her excuses, explanations (whatever you want to call it) sounds like bullshit. It sounds like bullshit from someone who has lost interest in doing something people paid for as her profile was raised enough to get better work. And I think that's a shitty thing to do. It's especially grating when it's a Kickstarter, which means you can hide behind these sorts of arguments (except I don't think they hold up at all, and I agree with what The Region Legion wrote about her usage of money specifically). I mean, by all intents and purposes she is the good guy in all of these, and it annoys me when I can't get behind her fully.

I wrote about Zach Braff earlier. If his shit movie fundraiser got the equivalent sum that Sarkeesian got (in percentages over the initial goal), and he expanded and hummed and hawed, and frankly, pissed everyone's money up the wall, and then hid behind the same excuses Sarkeesian has, no one would defend him. And rightly so.

Add ideology to the mix, and the ends justify the means in terms of arguments; people agree with her conclusion so it doesn't matter if the means she uses are below par. You can be Nelson Mandela, it doesn't absolve you from criticism when you do something that's not on. Being that late with what she promised is not on - especially considering what it is she offers and how much money she raised. It just isn't. Acting like she's done absolutely nothing wrong is weird. *She's raised half a million dollars (?) to produce videos of herself looking into a camera and talking about video game footage*

garbed_attic

Quote from: Hank Venture on August 27, 2015, 03:59:25 PM
Alright, my problem is this: expanding your remit/mission statement; fine. Completely above board, all for it. But she has seemingly raised an amount of money completely disproportionate to her output, and put that whole thing on the backburner as the more lucrative offers started rolling in.

I'll say this, disregarding ideology completely - I don't care for what I've read about the GamerGate crowd, not in this thread nor ever - but her excuses, explanations (whatever you want to call it) sounds like bullshit. It sounds like bullshit from someone who has lost interest in doing something people paid for as her profile was raised enough to get better work. And I think that's a shitty thing to do. It's especially grating when it's a Kickstarter, which means you can hide behind these sorts of arguments (except I don't think they hold up at all, and I agree with what The Region Legion wrote about her usage of money specifically). I mean, by all intents and purposes she is the good guy in all of these, and it annoys me when I can't get behind her fully.

I wrote about Zach Braff earlier. If his shit movie fundraiser got the equivalent sum that Sarkeesian got (in percentages over the initial goal), and he expanded and hummed and hawed, and frankly, pissed everyone's money up the wall, and then hid behind the same excuses Sarkeesian has, no one would defend him. And rightly so.

Add ideology to the mix, and the ends justify the means in terms of arguments; people agree with her conclusion so it doesn't matter if the means she uses are below par. You can be Nelson Mandela, it doesn't absolve you from criticism when you do something that's not on. Being that late with what she promised is not on.

Sure... but being late with work < < < < < rape & death threats; stalking; abuse

It just seems like such a small issue that it's not worth devoting more than a couple of sentences to.