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It turns out everyone is horrible (tw: possible GamerGate thread)

Started by Barry Admin, August 06, 2018, 11:30:15 AM

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BritishHobo

Quote from: Funcrusher on August 08, 2018, 10:26:21 PM
And on the basis of that gamers were declared to be OVER

Even you must be aware that this does not work in any way and is an absolutely nonsensical attempt to flip things round.  It doesn't make any sense as a reply.

Funcrusher

Quote from: BritishHobo on August 08, 2018, 10:30:50 PM
Even you must be aware that this does not work in any way and is an absolutely nonsensical attempt to flip things round.  It doesn't make any sense as a reply.

It does. If there was nothing to the Gamergate version, easy to simply refute it. Instead GAMERS ARE OVER

BritishHobo

It's BOLLOCKS Funcrusher mate, the whole fucking thing was BOLLOCKS. A woman maybe fucked a man who once gave her free text-based game a positive three-word mention, that was the source of everything that happened. WHO CARES, FUNCRUSHER?!

Funcrusher

Quote from: BritishHobo on August 08, 2018, 10:35:38 PM
It's BOLLOCKS Funcrusher mate, the whole fucking thing was BOLLOCKS. A woman maybe fucked a man who once gave her free text-based game a positive three-word mention, that was the source of everything that happened. WHO CARES, FUNCRUSHER?!

You, apparently.

Zetetic

I've never had sex with anyone who writes for RPS or made anything even half-way approaching a computer game. I think I must be gaming infantry - a foot-soldier in this unending war of playing video games.

BritishHobo

Quote from: Funcrusher on August 08, 2018, 10:34:33 PM
It does. If there was nothing to the Gamergate version, easy to simply refute it. Instead GAMERS ARE OVER

Yeah this defi itely works if you wilfully ignore the ENTIRE response from gamers and literally everything ever dome or said in response to Quinn, EVERYTHING, and then skip to talking about the response to the things you've entirely skated over. Thst makes sense then.

What is frustrating is you are SO CLOSE to it. You have the puzzle piece 'it was a non-scandal and so if GamerGaters stayed calm and had reasoned criticism, they should have been easy to refute' and the puzzle piece 'the response to GamerGate was to point out that gamers had roundly shown themselves to be an unreasonable and deeply hateful mob of spiteful sexists' but you are just missing that middle piece.

Funcrusher

Quote from: Zetetic on August 08, 2018, 10:40:56 PM
I've never had sex with anyone who writes for RPS or made anything even half-way approaching a computer. I think I must be gaming infantry - a foot-soldier in this unending war of playing video games.

You're definitely OVER

Zetetic


Lemming

Quote from: Funcrusher on August 08, 2018, 10:08:17 PM
'Gamers are over' doesn't really offer a great opportunity for change, as it was just the clique decreeing that rank and file gamers could just fuck off - so did anti-Gamergate win, I wonder? Are gamers over? And if there are actual issues that could be addressed, that cause isn't helped by the likes of Anita finding toxic masculinity everywhere.

I think gamers are increasingly over, in the sense that as more and more people are getting involved in videogames, the desire by most people who play games to use it as an exclusionary identity is being dissolved. I used to identify myself as a gamer (and, indeed, did so in a somewhat exclusionary way - I was a REAL GAMER, you see, I only played frustrating, buggy, decades-old janky DOS cRPGs, not like the FAKE GAMER KIDS and CONSOLETARDS having "fun" with their "enjoyable" and "accessible" new games) and the standard forums and boards I frequented - which did indeed consist mainly of straight white men, often with unchallenged misogyny, racism and homophobia - are becoming less and less reactionary, and the ones that don't welcome this change are becoming irrelevant with shrinking userbases. Of course, all types of people have always played and created video games, but we're finally at the point where these people are entering mainstream gaming forums and places like Twitch, and people are increasingly less likely to face harassment in these spaces based on their sex, race, what-have-you.

Gamers being "over", in that sense, is the best thing to happen to gaming in a long time, as it goes hand-in-hand with the rise of kickstarter indie games. Everyone is increasingly being encouraged to take an interest in playing and developing games, and development is increasingly available to everyone with a good idea thanks to fan funding, and I think the result is that we're seeing fantastic indie titles and great communities arise around them. I don't credit this to the journalists who impotently whined about bigotry, but I do credit it to an extent to the eventual backlash against gamergate that many regular video game fans had.

On that topic, I don't agree that "rank and file gamers" - many of whom are not straight, white, or male - are the people who were called misogynistic racists. I don't think most gamers - as in, people who play video games as a hobby - were particularly interested in gamergate, if they even knew or cared it was happening at all. I think the majority of people in the movement (after most of the people genuinely arguing for journalistic integrity disowned the movement) increasingly represented the type of people the journalists were talking about, and gathered in places like 8chan and KotakuInAction and proceeded to make themselves an easy example for people wanting to complain about bigotry in gaming.

QuoteI would argue, as I did at the time, that with the immediate doubling down, the constant misogynerd narrative, the one-sided reporting by the liberal media basically handed Gamergate to the likes of Milo. Stupid, preachy SJWism is turning people off the left, which alarms me no end. I've never known a time when the right were cool to people under 30 to any extent. I don't really see Sargon as much of an ideologue - he's a bit of a windbag who's high on the size of his Patreon and full of his own 'commonsensical objectivity' and has become defined as the mirror image of Sarkeesian et al. He's no Steve Bannon.

There's a difference between being turned off current mainstream liberal-left politics, and becoming a right-wing bigot (I don't feel like bigot is an unfair word to describe many of these people).
Again, I am someone who called himself a gamer during the first half of this decade and used the identity to define himself in a big way. I never felt like I was being personally attacked when people accused gamers of bigotry. At best, I agreed that the problems being identified deserved attention. At worst, I felt like the criticisms were tone-deaf, simplistic and in some cases demonstrated an incredibly annoying lack of familiarity with gaming communities and were clearly written just for circlejerking and preachiness, but I never reacted by thinking I, Lemming, was personally being targeted and called a misogynist. I didn't then go on to send rape/death threats to people and/or support quasi-fascist politics, and neither did any of my friends who were equally invested in gaming.

I would call Sargon a reactionary ideologue, but the specific reason I chose him as an example is because he's someone who's so clearly and cynically courted people who identify themselves as gamers and tried to recruit them to his crap incoherent right-wing politics. Steve Bannon might be further right and hold more power, but Sargon plays a crucial role in introducing people to reactionary rightist politics. Richard Spencer himself described Sargon as a "great entry point" for neo-Nazism. That's not Sargon's fault directly, but when a leading neo-nazi says that someone's politics are helping people reach Nazism and when someone's comments section tends to be packed with people calling for racial purity and talking about the fall of Western civilisation, it might be fair to call that someone a key player in the rise of the populist right.

QuoteEveryone wants to say I'm some bad hat for hating on Anita, and yet no one has much good to say about her. Like you say, she's a liberal feminist - her analysis is all about identity, with zero structural critique of the fundamentals of class and money.

You don't have a high opinion of either Anita or Zoe - so why must the low opinions of Gamergaters be misogyny and 'fear of feminists '?

That's the thing. Zoe is a total stranger to me and I've never been sure why I'm supposed to care about her or even know who she is, given that I'm not interested in her games, and Anita doesn't appeal to me because her criticism is so boring and toothless. My reaction, and I assume the reaction of most people who aren't interested in their work, is to just forget about them. Why did a significant number of gamergaters become infuriated enough with either of them to send death and rape threats to them? Why do they continue to talk about them in 2018, years after either of them had their brief moment of relevance? Why are either of them brought up at all? Why does anyone care that Zoe Quinn, a woman with no relevance who has no impact on their life, cheated on her boyfriend, another person with no relevance and no impact on their life, enough to still get worked up about it so long after it happened? Why did his post become such a big, widespread deal in the first place?

I can't see any answers to these questions that suggest anything other than an absolutely hysterical reaction on the part of many gamergaters, and I don't know what could motivate such a reaction other than misogyny and fear of (Anita's brand of extremely pointless, toothless, scared-to-actually-criticise-anything) feminism.

FredNurke

Quote from: Zetetic on August 08, 2018, 10:40:56 PM
I've never had sex with anyone who writes for RPS or made anything even half-way approaching a computer game. I think I must be gaming infantry - a foot-soldier in this unending war of playing video games.

Puts Planescape:Torment in a new light.

Moribunderast

Quote from: Funcrusher on August 08, 2018, 10:26:21 PM
And on the basis of that gamers were declared to be OVER
Which is worse? Poor journalists making a lazy claim that gamers are over or torrents of people sending a couple of women waves of death and rape threats? Because you seem to be neglecting one while obsessing over the other. Like, if you really did follow Gamergate at the time you'd be blind not to have seen the level of hideous damage done in it's name.

Hecate

Quote from: Funcrusher on August 08, 2018, 10:26:21 PM
And on the basis of that gamers were declared to be OVER

By sensationalist journalists writing something intentionally divisive that would get shared as much as possible on the internet and generate the most amount of hits and ad revenue.
Honestly, I wouldn't take it seriously.

Cloud

They're everywherrrre

Against my better judgement I clicked on some comments (just that, always a bad idea) from fans under a video about the future of My Little Pony.  One of the highest rated comment threads decrying that they're turning it into an "SJW" show because for the upcoming gen 5 reboot they want to rebrand the southern country character as an 'urban/street' character and are daring to cast a black voice actress in the role.  "MUH ENFORCED DIVERSITY AND WHITE GENOCIDE" comments abound because it has one token black in it.  (If there's any common ground we may have it's that tokenism isn't great.  Let's have a proper diverse cast)

I really don't want to know how badly they're harassing the staff over it on Twitter and the like.  I do know that people harass the current showrunner to the point he has to take breaks from the platform on a regular basis, so yeah...

Quite why the gamergater-y alt-right-y kind of people want to watch a feminist show full of diverse multi-coloured female characters living under a matriarchy, created by a feminist, that frequently espouses tolerance and appreciation of differences in the first place I have NO idea, but they do.  A lot of them.  But then for some reason they also like to complain about nonexistent changes in the ideologies of Star Trek and Star Wars (both of which have been very "SJW" from day one) so.... I don't know, there's some logic I'm missing or just no logic at all.

BritishHobo

I mean the fucking nerve of that, given how they always bang on about how comics and games are for boys. Now they're whining about it happening in an entertainnent franchise literally designed for little girls? How can anyone deny that these are just overgrown boys who never learned to share?

Cloud

Pretty much. They've been successfully pestered into making the marketing gender neutral now but woe betide they use an actress of colour.  They don't even have to see her, but would be triggered by her voice I guess (mind, best not tell them the pearly white Queen Novo in the big movie was voiced by Uzo Aduba or Capper by Taye Diggs, can't be having any of that Forced Diversity - tho I imagine they avoided the movie for that reason)

Strangely they don't seem all that bothered about the fact it's all girls living under a matriarchy, maybe the feminism is a bit too subtle, I'm just surprised as usually the racism seems to go hand in hand with sexism

Moribunderast


Cloud

#notallbronies, and most of the UK fanbase seems sane thank goodness, but a disappointing number of them in the States.

Here's a fun rabbit hole https://mlpol.net/mlpol/

Z

I thought a sizeable chunk of the brony contingent were autistic dudes? It'd hardly be surprising that they'd have some totally fucked up reading of any kind of nuance within the show.

Not all bronies obviously, but it does seem like the kind of thing that would reel them in.

Cloud

Quite a few yeah, along with the 4chan crowd in general (which is where it originated from)... it's probably a factor with some.  Obviously "not all autistic people" either with it being such a wide spectrum with different effects


If a rambling anecdote about MLP interests anyone there was this one episode featuring a dictator pony who'd used a "staff of sameness" to remove the 'cutie marks' from her villager's flanks - these marks signify a pony's talent/specialisation, for example you'd have one with a picture of a cake on its arse that's good at baking.  They appear when they're young and realise what they're good at.

Upon her enforced replacement of the marks with equals signs (rather awkwardly broadcast at the exact time the red equals sign was being used for LGBT, unfortunately - to the best of my knowledge this wasn't intentional!) they were decreed to all be equally as good at everything and assigned jobs at random so you have the one who was meant to be a baker ending up a carpenter or whatever.  All brainwashed to love the village and the leader and put a big fake smile on, but sometimes one of them showed a hint of individualism and memory of their true talent and maybe showed some dissatisfaction, would be ratted out by a neighbour (as they all lived in fear of punishment) and sent to a re-education room where the leader's voice would talk the rebellious pony back down to compliance.  All very 1984-ish and stupidly dark and adult for a kids show. 

Ultimately of course the heroes broke the cycle, complete with a scene straight out of the 1984 Apple advert far as I remember, and liberated the village.

Anyway the right wing of the fandom loved that one, given that people of that persuasion often conflate things like the USSR with democratic socialism and a bit of mild third wave feminism and so thought it was a critique of the latter.  Videos like "My Little Pony: Marxism is NOT magic" were churned out, "finally the show speaks out against SJWs" etc.

One thing they completely missed or refused to acknowledge: the whole point of the episode was diversity (that thing they're allergic to).  A big point was made of the fact that some of the main characters are polar opposites but they love and tolerate each other and play off each other's strengths to become greater than the sum of themselves.  That all being identical (be it of talent, interest, race, whatever) is a huge weakness.  Throw that in with people who hate "forced diversity" while at the same time celebrating "the anti SJW episode" and you have some serious mental gymnastics going on :)

It was I'd say a bit of a bizarre, questionable episode but it's created some fascinating discussions.

Bonus content: commie march song from the ep, which sets the scene.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g_GgbICsZI
Warning: Youtube's algorithms might give you a lot of pony, so use incognito if that's not your bag


ASFTSN

Quote from: Lemming on August 08, 2018, 10:49:16 PM
I think gamers are increasingly over, in the sense that as more and more people are getting involved in videogames, the desire by most people who play games to use it as an exclusionary identity is being dissolved. I used to identify myself as a gamer (and, indeed, did so in a somewhat exclusionary way - I was a REAL GAMER, you see, I only played frustrating, buggy, decades-old janky DOS cRPGs, not like the FAKE GAMER KIDS and CONSOLETARDS having "fun" with their "enjoyable" and "accessible" new games) and the standard forums and boards I frequented - which did indeed consist mainly of straight white men, often with unchallenged misogyny, racism and homophobia - are becoming less and less reactionary, and the ones that don't welcome this change are becoming irrelevant with shrinking userbases.

Do you/did you frequent therpgcodex by any chance?

MojoJojo

Quote from: Funcrusher on August 08, 2018, 09:35:25 AM
There appear to be some women at this Gamergate meetup, but I'm sure they were quickly hounded out.

https://supernerdland.com/gamergate-goes-to-birmingham-gginbrum-from-the-inside/

And they meet up at Five Guys. Stay classy, Gamergate.

They do address that in the article a bit:
QuoteThen it was time for the now slightly infamous rush to "Five Guys Burgers and Fries" that caused some on social media to subsequently get their knickers in a twist.  If you can't handle Gamers having a burger and making an irreverent nod to past events I would suggest investing in a sense of perspective and humour.

The misogyny is just bants.

I do think one aspect is that a lot of Gamergate actually was just people stoking the fires for the hell of it, much like Pizzagate.

For example:
Quote from: Barry Admin on August 06, 2018, 10:55:19 PM
Was (b) actually a problem? All I remember along those lines were the complaints about games journalists funding the patreons of indie devs, not disclosing relationships etc.

Seemed to indicate a complete lack of critical thinking. Journalists saying they like something and paying for it is not ethically bad. Kermode buying the Exorcist on Bluray is not a scandal. If anything it shows the review was genuine.

Obviously patreon isn't the same as buying a product, and you can probably make an argument it's inappropriate for a journalist to fund and review a dev, but it's a subtle, minor breach at worst. It's not as clear cut as if the dev was funding the journalist, which is what a lot of gamergaters seemed to confuse it for.

On the games journalism front, there does seem to be a misunderstanding. Games journalism is set up, run by, and paid for by publishers. It's part of the games publishing industry.

Lemming

Quote from: ASFTSN on August 10, 2018, 08:43:16 AM
Do you/did you frequent therpgcodex by any chance?

Oh boy, yeah, that was one of them. Took me a while to realize that the Nazi stuff from a lot of members wasn't actually ironic, and longer still for it to eventually wear on me to the point where I just stopped reading the site.

Another one I used to go to infrequently that seemed to get very suddenly taken over by actual Nazis was 4chan's /v/ board. I managed to ignore all the gamergate shit (and was pretty happy when discussion of it was outlawed) and general 4chan stuff, but one day I opened the catalog to be greeted with a swastika and just thought, "hmm, what is the fucking point of being on this board anymore"?


bgmnts


falafel

Hey Funcrusher, interested in your response to my point about why the gamergaters' collective argument was so self-damning - you seem to have skimmed over it or missed it.



Quote from: falafel on August 08, 2018, 10:28:21 PM
Because rather than a gentle lapping wave of indifference or criticism it was a tsunami of  disproprtionate outrage and unpleasant personal attacks?

Yeah, that.

madhair60

Quote from: bgmnts on August 10, 2018, 12:18:19 PM
I have genuinely wanked to a Dead or Alive character.

Darkstalkers and Soul Calibur for me. Shameful.

Cuellar

Gamergate was a movement founded entirely on sexual jealousy and male insecurity.

THE END.

Funcrusher

Quote from: Cuellar on August 10, 2018, 12:50:38 PM
Gamergate was a movement founded entirely on sexual jealousy and male insecurity.

THE END.

Hat tip m'lady

Funcrusher

Quote from: falafel on August 10, 2018, 12:38:57 PM
Hey Funcrusher, interested in your response to my point about why the gamergaters' collective argument was so self-damning - you seem to have skimmed over it or missed it.

Is calling something 'a tsunami of disproportional outrage and unpleasant personal attacks' a point as such?