The Quinnspiracy Theory, Tropes vs. Women in Video Games & #gamergate

[Guest Barung]

anita "insert surname" is a cunt, the rainbow haired one sounds like a cunt and made a shitty indie game, people obsessed over videogames are imbecile and aggressive just as much as people obsessed over "social justice" (see healthism), adieu and autopilot like to argue over worthless shit

that's what I've got from this thread, now please lock it before spooky stuff happens

[autopilot]

@Adieu

 

Perhaps if you could articulate your position in a comprehensible manner instead of just saying "don't address me directly, I'm not part of this discussion" then popping back in to spread propaganda links/images or things that make no sense in the context of the way you're using them, we could have an actual discussion. If you're not willing to do this, then I think adhering to your previous decision to bow out would be the best move toward not making yourself look even more like a clueless pawn in this campaign.

 

@Barung

 

Great contribution! Thank you for chiming in.

[poblequadrat]

anita sarkeesian isn't terribly interesting.

for example i think a critique of the gaze that different cultural artifacts use to display bodies, both male and female, would be much more interesting than a discussion of "tropes" which aren't really even particular to videogames nor this particular historical situation. really if she's going to talk about tropes she should talk about much more than what she does, more than videogames anyway. she doesn't really talk about gender nor videogames. basically she describes tropes. ok.

the fact that she doesn't mention female desire a single fucking time, at all, ever, is pretty suspect to me as well. without a discussion of female desire, feminism is not feminism but hysteria.

there's also some discussion to be made about videogames as an artform, too, because videogames aren't necessarily fable-driven (by fable i mean the "content" of the story regardless of form), nor is their gender position necessarily expressed primarily in tropes and fable. she could say what she does about videogames and about anything else, and she doesn't really say anything you didn't already know, so basically what she does doesn't qualify as criticism.

 

my opinon is she probably means well but falls short and her methodology is ridiculously inadequate/shallow for an academic.

as for all the drama, i dunno. i'm not well informed. if she doxxed someone i'm ok with that if it was really for a good purpose. a little terror is nice, but it should be guided by actual criticism and an actual statement to affirm and i don't think someone who doesn't even talk about female desire has anything to affirm, hence no virtue to enforce through terror.

[poblequadrat]

guillotining adieu's head off might be a good use of terror though

 

(i'm kidding, it was just too easy)

[Adieu]

@Adieu

 

Perhaps if you could articulate your position in a comprehensible manner instead of just saying "don't address me directly, I'm not part of this discussion" then popping back in to spread propaganda links/images or things that make no sense in the context of the way you're using them, we could have an actual discussion. If you're not willing to do this, then I think adhering to your previous decision to bow out would be the best move toward not making yourself look even more like a clueless pawn in this campaign.

 

@Barung

 

Great contribution! Thank you for chiming in.

 

That's literally what you've been doing the entire thread. Your hypocrisy is hilarious. When I actually take time to explain things you just move on to something else or deflect the discussion. I think you might just be trolling me.

[poblequadrat]

also a big problem with anita sarkeesian is that she deals with tropes in isolation, and with gender in isolation. the truth is that there are many wrong things with some of the games she cites, and they are all related on many levels. the tropes themselves aren't self-contained units, but functional elements of larger structures, both within the game and in society as a whole. just the same, the chauvinism of some of the games she talks about is part of a larger fantasy where gender only plays a role amongst other instances.

 

she's cutting the fish in an arbitrary way which might be ok if you want to eat it, but completely useless for biological discussion.

[autopilot]

Well there is no evidence that in any way suggests either of the women in question doxxed anyone. Just that ZQ, with all the attention she was getting from this controversy, mentioned a website and the traffic that website received as a result of the mention caused a DDOS. (which some are trying to paint as a targeted DDOS, but that's debateable)

 

I honestly feel exhausted even continuing to discuss this because, in my view, it was obvious what this whole mess was from the beginning and now there's evidence and documentation of 'channer conspiracy that backs it up. And here I am, ad nauseum, going to great lengths to engage this silliness when I ultimately have no vested interest in it (I do not consider myself a 'gamer' being that I only own a PC and play stuff that's years old, only a few hours a week, nor have I played/cared about Depression Quest, nor do I agree wholeheartedly with Sarkeesian's conclusions). I just feel this weird sense of obligation to point out falsehoods if I'm previously aware of them because I don't think people should be spreading disinformation that's rooted in a misogynist campaign*. GUESS I'M AN SJW AFTER ALL.

 

*And it most certainly is misogynist, as it all arose from the slut-shaming of Quinn, and was a campaign planned in a chatroom called #BurgersAndFries in which her ex-boyfriend was a regular contributor.

 

/lastpost

 

[edit] ...but before I go...

 

 

That's literally what you've been doing the entire thread. Your hypocrisy is hilarious. When I actually take time to explain things you just move on to something else or deflect the discussion. I think you might just be trolling me.

 

 

Posting a picture of 40 tweets with some Ms Paint red lines from Encyclopedia Dramatica is not "explaining things", nor is copy & pasting a wall of text from an outdated 2003 article. I didn't address a number of things you posted because I didn't even view them worthy of a response. You are not owed a reaction from me to every little bit of misinformation you spread.

[Adieu]

So... a completely anonymous blog post (that from what it looks like has been created entirely to hate on Sarkeesian) & an article about how childish Call of Duty fans are somehow makes all the threats & harassment okay? If anything the Call of Duty article (which is the only one I'm willing to address since it's not anonymous and written post-GamerGate) simply illustrates further how immature and unable to handle criticism/change the gaming community is.

 

On your continued labelling of me as an SJW, I don't even agree with a chunk of the points Sarkeesian brings up. However, I don't feel that she, or any female games writer ([edit] OR ANYONE OF ANY GENDER), deserves to be sent threats accompanying their home address and pictures of their house simply for voicing their view on things. If you genuinely have a problem with censorship, explain how the above is anything but an attempt to censor a dissenting voice through aggressive harassment?

 

I don't even know what you're trying to argue at this point, or why.

 

Yeah because I'm totally in support of people being harassed. I'm pointing out that the "harassment" has been used to further both their careers and in multiple cases either been falsified, not shown to exist, exaggerations, or minor shit that they then signal boosted as a way to enrich themselves financially. basically what I've been saying this entire time and using lots of evidence to support it. What's been created from that is a horribly slanted negative depiction of gamers. Even when the "gamers' decide to mobilize and clear their name supposedly their organizing at all becomes damning evidence.

 

The fact that you think something has to be posted on a major media outlet to be credible seems really weird when the facts are all outlined and as proven earlier in this thread, the major media outlets tend to favor a bias in reporting. Which is why those stories between late august early September are so weird. They have the exact same theme, but that theme has nothing to do with the story at hand, but it does have a very direct intention.

 

You continually say things aren't credible while ignoring evidence that is quite obvious.

[poblequadrat]

Well there is no evidence that in any way suggests either of the women in question doxxed anyone. Just that ZQ, with all the attention she was getting from this controversy, mentioned a website and the traffic that website received as a result of the mention caused a DDOS. (which some are trying to paint as a targeted DDOS, but that's debateable)

 

I honestly feel exhausted even continuing to discuss this because, in my view, it was obvious what this whole mess was from the beginning and now there's evidence and documentation of 'channer conspiracy that backs it up. And here I am, ad nauseum, going to great lengths to engage this silliness when I ultimately have no vested interest in it (I do not consider myself a 'gamer' being that I only own a PC and play stuff that's years old, only a few hours a week, nor have I played/cared about Depression Quest, nor do I agree wholeheartedly with Sarkeesian's conclusions). I just feel this weird sense of obligation to point out falsehoods if I'm previously aware of them because I don't think people should be spreading disinformation that's rooted in a misogynist campaign*. GUESS I'M AN SJW AFTER ALL.

 

*And it most certainly is misogynist, as it all arose from the slut-shaming of Quinn, and was a campaign planned in a chatroom called #BurgersAndFries in which her ex-boyfriend was a regular contributor.

 

/lastpost

 

[edit] ...but before I go...

 

 

That's literally what you've been doing the entire thread. Your hypocrisy is hilarious. When I actually take time to explain things you just move on to something else or deflect the discussion. I think you might just be trolling me.

 

 

Posting a picture of 40 tweets with some Ms Paint red lines from Encyclopedia Dramatica is not "explaining things", nor is copy & pasting a wall of text from an outdated 2003 article. I didn't address a number of things you posted because I didn't even view them worthy of a response. You are not owed a reaction from me to every little bit of misinformation you spread.

 

you look like a sound bloke, auto.

[Adieu]

Well there is no evidence that in any way suggests either of the women in question doxxed anyone. Just that ZQ, with all the attention she was getting from this controversy, mentioned a website and the traffic that website received as a result of the mention caused a DDOS. (which some are trying to paint as a targeted DDOS, but that's debateable)

 

I honestly feel exhausted even continuing to discuss this because, in my view, it was obvious what this whole mess was from the beginning and now there's evidence and documentation of 'channer conspiracy that backs it up. And here I am, ad nauseum, going to great lengths to engage this silliness when I ultimately have no vested interest in it (I do not consider myself a 'gamer' being that I only own a PC and play stuff that's years old, only a few hours a week, nor have I played/cared about Depression Quest, nor do I agree wholeheartedly with Sarkeesian's conclusions). I just feel this weird sense of obligation to point out falsehoods if I'm previously aware of them because I don't think people should be spreading disinformation that's rooted in a misogynist campaign*. GUESS I'M AN SJW AFTER ALL.

 

*And it most certainly is misogynist, as it all arose from the slut-shaming of Quinn, and was a campaign planned in a chatroom called #BurgersAndFries in which her ex-boyfriend was a regular contributor.

 

/lastpost

 

 

Well, she used twitter to continually speak negatively about TFYC. and then laughed about the fact that she caused it to be DDOS'd intentional or not. Then their Indiegogo campaign was hacked and made to look like it was shut down when it wasn't.

 

 

 

 

In response to TFYC's issue 4chan v lobbied to raise thousands of dollars to bring the project back online and then organized to create a female character representative of women.

 

 

Back in December 2013 when her game was on greenlight needing votes she claimed to have been "raided" and harassed by wizardchan users except there is no proof whatsoever that it happened. Immediately after her game received a huge surge in positive votes with people even commenting "i don't like this game but you have my support anyway"

 

Recently she claimed to have her twitter account and tumblr account hacked except that she provided no proof and the methods for doing this seemed sketchy. She has supposedly also deleted any tweets related to this claim. I can't even find record of the tweets by her claiming this happened. Anyway I'm busy so I can't outline this further. I've presented earlier in the thread instances where Anita has behaved in a dishonest way. Even so much as possibly falsifying threats in order to gain press and money.

[Adieu]

Well there is no evidence that in any way suggests either of the women in question doxxed anyone. Just that ZQ, with all the attention she was getting from this controversy, mentioned a website and the traffic that website received as a result of the mention caused a DDOS. (which some are trying to paint as a targeted DDOS, but that's debateable)

 

I honestly feel exhausted even continuing to discuss this because, in my view, it was obvious what this whole mess was from the beginning and now there's evidence and documentation of 'channer conspiracy that backs it up. And here I am, ad nauseum, going to great lengths to engage this silliness when I ultimately have no vested interest in it (I do not consider myself a 'gamer' being that I only own a PC and play stuff that's years old, only a few hours a week, nor have I played/cared about Depression Quest, nor do I agree wholeheartedly with Sarkeesian's conclusions). I just feel this weird sense of obligation to point out falsehoods if I'm previously aware of them because I don't think people should be spreading disinformation that's rooted in a misogynist campaign*. GUESS I'M AN SJW AFTER ALL.

 

*And it most certainly is misogynist, as it all arose from the slut-shaming of Quinn, and was a campaign planned in a chatroom called #BurgersAndFries in which her ex-boyfriend was a regular contributor.

 

/lastpost

 

[edit] ...but before I go...

 

 

That's literally what you've been doing the entire thread. Your hypocrisy is hilarious. When I actually take time to explain things you just move on to something else or deflect the discussion. I think you might just be trolling me.

 

 

Posting a picture of 40 tweets with some Ms Paint red lines from Encyclopedia Dramatica is not "explaining things", nor is copy & pasting a wall of text from an outdated 2003 article. I didn't address a number of things you posted because I didn't even view them worthy of a response. You are not owed a reaction from me to every little bit of misinformation you spread.

 

They don't originate there and can be found other places. You're just using that shit to deny facts. Look into yourself if you don't believe it and show evidence that indicates its false. What you're doing is saying it is false because you don't want to believe it without backing anything up. All you are is one big fucking co-op man.

 

Not all of it was from #burgerandfries a lot of it is screen capped from a room called #quinnspiracy it was public and available to anyone. The purpose being to organize themselves in way that would make them be able to present their argument and point of view. It's a public chat. Of course there are people their saying retarded things. That's literally every place on the internet.

[Adieu]

 

 

That's literally what you've been doing the entire thread. Your hypocrisy is hilarious. When I actually take time to explain things you just move on to something else or deflect the discussion. I think you might just be trolling me.

 

 

Posting a picture of 40 tweets with some Ms Paint red lines from Encyclopedia Dramatica is not "explaining things", nor is copy & pasting a wall of text from an outdated 2003 article. I didn't address a number of things you posted because I didn't even view them worthy of a response. You are not owed a reaction from me to every little bit of misinformation you spread.

 

Such an extremely dishonest depiction of what I've been doing and so self-serving that it's ridiculous. You use appeal to emotion so frequently to support or position with very very very very little evidence to support anything. If you don't believe something to be true then show why. Show part of the 4chan IRC conversations that show negative intent. Show why the people who've gotten behind #notyourshield aren't doing so legitimately. Framing something so it's digestible from a PR standpoint is literally what everyone does. It's what Zoe is doing. It's what Anita is doing. and It's what everyone related to the public does. Just because the 4chan conversations were available to public doesn't make them less legitimate.

 

I love the "misinformation" part the best. I've posted a lot of stuff. a good deal I've fact checked myself.

 

Posting biased puff pieces doesn't support your position. Especially when I've shown that some of them have direct financial relationships to the people they are supporting.

Zoe Quinn False Flag.

 

https://archive.moe/v/thread/261371267/#261372435

 

Thread isn't even about her, and the post is inserted anyway.

 

Zoe screen grabs it and posts it on twitter.

 

https://twitter.com/TheQuinnspiracy/status/507097470854131713

 

The only thing she shows is the one post. She does not include a link to the thread, and she does show that all the replies literally say "fuck off"

 

This is really the behavior of a totally innocent person. False flag or not the approach is dishonest.

But I mean don't comment on that at all. Or maybe say it's somehow not relevant. That is your modus operandi.

[Adieu]

Personally, I think your cherry picking style of responding to the Morgan Webb interview is evidence enough. I mean the interviewee was trying so hard to make it about gender and paint it negatively and that's just obviously not what the industry is like. Or don't comment on the fact that Jade Raymond has been working in games at a high level since the 1990's, is currently managing director of ubisoft Toronto, is a board of director of WIFT-F(women in film and television Toronto), and no one seems to be upset with her.

 

 

But I guess the idea that gamers hate girls and want to keep them out of games somehow makes sense still...

[ascdi]

If you genuinely have a problem with censorship, explain how the above is anything but an attempt to censor a dissenting voice through aggressive harassment?

 

This is what I came here to post. I can only speak for myself, but I think a large majority of people on the “feminist” side of this debate feel the same way too. And that is I am totally against censorship. Make and buy all the sexist games you want!

 

But writers and cultural critics are, FOR THE EXACT SAME REASON, allowed to write and critique those same games, if they so choose. It is ONE AND THE SAME PRINCIPLE that ought to guide both sides’ actions in this debate. If you do not support censorship of games and view the production of potentially offensive material as some kind of “free speech” issue, then you absolutely should ALSO SUPPORT the rights of video game writers and critics to write and say what they think without repercussions. It is THE EXACT SAME THING.

 

the fact that she doesn't mention female desire a single fucking time, at all, ever, is pretty suspect to me as well. without a discussion of female desire, feminism is not feminism but hysteria.

 

Whoa, what?!?!?!

[whylessness]

I honestly feel exhausted even continuing to discuss this because, in my view, it was obvious what this whole mess was from the beginning and now there's evidence and documentation of 'channer conspiracy that backs it up.

 

Why would thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of "gamers" be interested in slut shaming Zoe Quinn? That is not what this issue is about; that was never the "goal" of 4chan, if I may speak on their behalf. There are multiple issues. Anita Sarkeesian; Zoe Quinn; #GamerGate. I ignore Anita Sarkeesian; I watched her videos. I am only interested in Zoe Quinn insofar as I am interested in corruption in games journalism and journalistic ethics.

 

Phil Fish isn't a woman. Do you defend how he reacted when someone came forward, saying he'd been sexually harrassed by Zoe? Saying he crashed the wedding and calling him a little shit?

 

I'm interested in the truth. I think you're out of your depth here, because you don't follow videogames, know less about their past than I do, and care less about their future. My uncle had a gamespot premium account when I was younger, probably about ten years ago. After Jeff Gerstmann was fired for giving a negative review to a game (Kane & Lynch: Dead Men) whose studio (Eidos Interactive) had "heavy and diverse advertisement of the game on the site [Gamespot]." Jeff Gerstmann was the face of gamespot to me, so I stopped visiting the site. Then I noticed his co-workers, namely Brad Shoemaker, Ryan Davis and Vinny Caravella etc. all left Gamespot.

 

So right around the time I lost my virginity, I lost faith and interest in games journalism.

 

ZQ is a liar. Or maybe she's turned over a new leaf. Or maybe, like anyone in her situation, she's scared, and she'll do anything in her power to survive. And she has a lot of important, powerful friends.

 

Any press is good press, the saying goes. Well not in this case.

 

Also, lel at your use of the word "'channer." You have never been to 4chan, and if you have, it was for an insignificant amount of time and you absorbed none of the culture.

 

chat logs: http://archive.today/Ler4O

[Adieu]

I just want to note that I apologized privately to Ascdi for my insulting reply to him earlier.

[poblequadrat]

 

If you genuinely have a problem with censorship, explain how the above is anything but an attempt to censor a dissenting voice through aggressive harassment?

 

This is what I came here to post. I can only speak for myself, but I think a large majority of people on the “feminist” side of this debate feel the same way too. And that is I am totally against censorship. Make and buy all the sexist games you want!

 

But writers and cultural critics are, FOR THE EXACT SAME REASON, allowed to write and critique those same games, if they so choose. It is ONE AND THE SAME PRINCIPLE that ought to guide both sides’ actions in this debate. If you do not support censorship of games and view the production of potentially offensive material as some kind of “free speech” issue, then you absolutely should ALSO SUPPORT the rights of video game writers and critics to write and say what they think without repercussions. It is THE EXACT SAME THING.

 

the fact that she doesn't mention female desire a single fucking time, at all, ever, is pretty suspect to me as well. without a discussion of female desire, feminism is not feminism but hysteria.

 

Whoa, what?!?!?!

 

 

what's so shocking? let me give you another example: without a discussion about the affirmation of proletarian subjectivity, socialism isn't socialism but hysteria (which is why the nietzschean remarks about "resentment" completely miss the point, and this also applies to feminism, to anticolonialism, and to any sort of struggle really.)

 

you can't pretend to be a feminist critic of videogames when you don't engage with the particularity of games (not "of videogames"), when you only describe tropes rather than arriving at any sort of statement (not "a critic") and when you only talk about the female gender in its negation and not in what can or could be affirmed about it (again not "a critic", and not "feminist").

 

sarkeesian means well but basically she's either very conservative or very misguided.

[poblequadrat]

another, more general, way of putting it: without affirmation, or at least without negation of negation, negation remains abstract. this is intimately linked to the topic of terror without virtue.

[Blir]

This thread is just another example of the rape culture that's rampant around IDM forums.

[KovalainenFanBoy]

*And it most certainly is misogynist, as it all arose from the slut-shaming of Quinn, and was a campaign planned in a chatroom called #BurgersAndFries in which her ex-boyfriend was a regular contributor.

 

Well, if you actually read the ex's posts, you would see that Zoe Quinn herself said to his boyfriend that having sex with your partner without telling him you've cheated on him qualifies as rape. Not to mention 5 different guys. So it's not as simple as "slut-shaming". This social rights, feminist activism leader has, by her own standards, repeteadly raped her boyfriend; and with people in the media nonetheless. I mean, the problem here is that both sides are so fixated on what's wrong with the other side they refuse to see what's wrong with theirs. There's a misogyny issue. And there's also a manipulation/corruption issue on the SJW's side. And if you guys can't separate both of them you are not going nowhere

 

 

This thread is just another example of the rape culture that's rampant around IDM forums.

 

Please use trigger warnings when using such words, thanks

 

 

 

just kidding

[mcbpete]

you can't pretend to be a feminist critic of videogames when you don't engage with the particularity of games (not "of videogames"), when you only describe tropes rather than arriving at any sort of statement (not "a critic") and when you only talk about the female gender in its negation and not in what can or could be affirmed about it (again not "a critic", and not "feminist").

To be fair to her though, the whole premise of the videos is that of the title - 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games' so it's kinda akin to someone making a video all about red things and getting a complaint that "yes that's all well and good, but some things are blue"

[poblequadrat]

 

you can't pretend to be a feminist critic of videogames when you don't engage with the particularity of games (not "of videogames"), when you only describe tropes rather than arriving at any sort of statement (not "a critic") and when you only talk about the female gender in its negation and not in what can or could be affirmed about it (again not "a critic", and not "feminist").

To be fair to her though, the whole premise of the videos is that of the title - 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games' so it's kinda akin to someone making a video all about red things and getting a complaint that "yes that's all well and good, but some things are blue"

 

 

Fair enough. But when you only present the female gender as the subject of misrepresentation by tropes, you're, on the one hand, objectifying women, and on the other, presenting feminist struggle as benevolently making sure that victims don't get too mistreated. It's like all the talk about "rape": it amounts to saying that the desire of women is the responsability of men, and that women are fundamentally victims that should be protected. That's not a feminist stance, at all. Substracting women from abusive gender relations is meaningless if you leave it at this substraction and you've got nothing to affirm, because then what you're saying is that women have no capacity to desire on their own. It's pretty fucked up and I think everyone should be very wary of this sort of rhetoric (which also pops up elsewhere: for example in applied ethics, the working class is represented as "users affected by possible negligence and shady practices", leaving all agency to "professionals" and big companies, with the working class reduced to protesting against wrongdoings without being conceded the capacity to take things in their hands.) The purpose of feminism is not to create a set of ethical standards for men so that they can graciously depict women in a fair way, or so they can graciously manage women's desire in a way that doesn't constitute rape. That's just hypocritical liberalism.

[Friendly Foil]

I'm trying really hard to understand why people are up in arms about this. It's about these Anita Serkessaashaain and Zoe-something people, correct? Because, unless I missed something, all those two ever did was make boring videos about a subject no sane person could possibly care much about and some artsy-fartsy indie game no sane person could possibly enjoy. Of all the things in the entire would to care about, these two chose gender roles in video games? And that's what has made all these neckbeard-y basement dwellers so mad?

 

Sorry for being so ignorant about this whole exciting situation, but I honestly never paid much attention to it. I do love vidja game culture and the colorful people that are part of it a lot, so if someone could post (or link) a brief summary that'd be cool. 2lazy2search

[Blir]

Excellent post poblequadrat. Couldn't have put it better.

 

Foil, yeah you're pretty much on the money. I feel bad being so dismissive of this whole thing, but it just seems like such a joke. There's serious movement happening around the world regarding equality, but video games are the things people are getting so riled up about? Are you fucking kidding me?

[pcock]

Ive read this entire thread almost and i still dont think i have any idea whats going on.