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

[azatoth]

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?

Video games are serious business apparently. Some take their video gaming waaay too seriously, but I guess if that's the only thing you have, then any criticism towards it feels like a personal attack on themselves.

[ascdi]

 

 

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.

 

 

This is gibberish. Anyway, I think I’ll go read some other threads now. Enjoy, everybody

[Guest A/D]

Thanks for reppin my general viewpoint Auto.

 

Basically it sounds to me like a couple of people online are making gamers mad by calling them misogynist, and they were wrong about a couple of things or they were jerks at some point, and now they're getting rape/death threats. Am I missing something? Why would anyone focus on how wrong these women are at this point? I don't give a shit about people arguing on the internet. But you can't escalate to mass death and rape threats without completely destroying your side's legitimacy. Then it's a matter of protecting those in danger, not trying to prove they deserve that somehow.

 

And how can you use "social justice warrior" as a pejorative without sounding like you're the guy who assassinated MLK? Doesn't help your argument Adieu.

[KovalainenFanBoy]

I love me some internet drama, I can't help it, sorry. Being so riled up about something so stupid is kinda soothing. Just like when people get all worked up discussing football or whatever

 

What's with all these people saying "I WON'T EVER COME BACK TO THIS THREAD" and replying 20 minutes later though? Embrace the stupidity guys.

[mcbpete]

a couple of people online are making gamers mad by calling them misogynist, and they were wrong about a couple of things or they were jerks at some point, and now they're getting rape/death threats. Am I missing something? Why would anyone focus on how wrong these women are at this point? I don't give a shit about people arguing on the internet. But you can't escalate to mass death and rape threats without completely destroying your side's legitimacy. Then it's a matter of protecting those in danger, not trying to prove they deserve that somehow.

 

S'why I can't work out why those arguing against the situation don't realise how terrible they're coming across.

[Adieu]

Thanks for reppin my general viewpoint Auto.

 

Basically it sounds to me like a couple of people online are making gamers mad by calling them misogynist, and they were wrong about a couple of things or they were jerks at some point, and now they're getting rape/death threats. Am I missing something? Why would anyone focus on how wrong these women are at this point? I don't give a shit about people arguing on the internet. But you can't escalate to mass death and rape threats without completely destroying your side's legitimacy. Then it's a matter of protecting those in danger, not trying to prove they deserve that somehow.

 

And how can you use "social justice warrior" as a pejorative without sounding like you're the guy who assassinated MLK? Doesn't help your argument Adieu.

 

There is absolutely no evidence of mass rape or death threats being presented. There are isolated incidents of threats. Anything else is vitriolic name calling mixed in with criticisms. It's not really productive for sure, but it's also not organized by anyone either. It's like me painting all feminists as dishonest hypocrites, because I identify Zoe and Anita as those things. It only works as part of a PR campaign when you can use appeal to emotion to gain support. It's especially easy to abuse as part of mediums that don't facilitate thorough debate, or are in anyway stifling debate, i.e., twitter and censoring youtube comments. There has actually been a lack of evidence from the side of Anita and Zoe throughout this entire ordeal. When asked, the reply becomes, "asking for evidence of harassment is misogynistic terrorism". I'm paraphrasing, but those terms have been used, but to any reasonable person that statement is absolutely absurd. The fact of the matter is that Zoe and Anita both took the offensive in their respective situations.

 

Zoe claimed a "raid" against her, which by the way she has yet to clarify what that means every time she says it, by wizardchan forum users as her game was being greenlit on steam. Not surprisingly, she gained a huge influx of positive support for her game following that. Yet, there is ZERO evidence show to support the claim she made. All that was shown was someone making an anonymous thread on wizardchan with a few people calling her names. That's hardly harassment or a threat.

 

Somewhere in between she entered into a game_jam, a tv show that gets shut down because of allegations of blatant misogyny on Zoe's side. She then conveniently has Nathan Grayson, a writer at Kotaku, publicize a piece as a way to present her side of the story to a large audience. This story contains nothing but quotes from her and another industry person Robin Arnott(married and her boss). Both people she has admitted to being sexually involved with and from the chat logs it looks like she had been before this story was released. Nothing particularly shady about that, but it's leaning in the direction of getting favors by using intimate relationships to your advantage. Supposedly the production dude lost his job. I don't know all the details of the situation beyond that.

 

Then you have The Fine Young Capitalists incident. She used an open forum (twitter) to direct a continuous stream of criticisms at them for their women only game jam. The results? An unintended DDOS of their site, and their indiegogo campaign being hacked, doxxed, and shut down. The former of which she openly laughs about with her PR Rep Maya Felix Kramer on Twitter. While this is not completely damning behavior it definitely isn't something a respectable professional and social equality advocate should be doing. Although, I have not seen proof of an exact timeline she has started her own game jam "Rebel Jam" that has absolutely no development behind it, but is accepting donations. Afterwards, 4chan caught wind of this, and decided to campaign for TFYC's and help raise money for their rebooted game jam. They raised thousands of dollars in a couple days and also were awarded the creation of a female rights friendly character called Vivian James. This caused a outpouring of criticisms against TFYC's merely for associating themselves with 4chan in anyway. What does the media spin these events as? 4chan trying to take down Zoe and spite SJW's. This is the part of the discussion against gaming journalism corruption. Apparently, 4chan users aren't allowed to do something good.

 

Vivian James is a character masquerading as a feminist icon for the express purpose of spiting feminists—yes, that’s feminists, plural. It’s not just Zoe Quinn that /v/ wants to take down—it’s the entirety of what they derogatorily call “SJWs,” or “social justice warriors.”

 

Somewhere around the same time the Exbf blog posts come out explaining using admissions from Zoe that she has been involved sexually with a number different people including her PR rep Maya Felix Kramer. Again, not exactly damning behavior but definitely dishonest, and not really something that you would associate with a social justice advocate. I don't like to entertain these types of hypotheticals normally, but I can only imagine if Zoe was a male and did these exacts things how little support would be coming from SJW's. Immediately this information is labeled as slut shaming even though people are only really interested in its relevance to corruption, and not so much that she is a cheating manipulative liar.

 

So, that information coming for her exbf leads people into all these different avenues of possible collusion and corruption leading to their involvement in Indiecade, the IGF, and Silverstring Media. As well as recently Phil Fish, Polytron, Fez, and their connections to Indiecade and the IGF. Silverstring media's connection being that they work with a lot of different games media outlets. It's more complicated than this, but I would have to review the information again. Basically, there are connections between all of them, and most of the major games media outlets.

 

Anita is merely associated with the entire situation by being involved in Silverstring media and associated with Maya Felix Kramer who works for them, is Zoe's PR rep, and has close relationships to the manager of the IGF, Brandon Boyer.

 

But the criticisms of Anita are mainly that her videos blow ass as proper criticism and merely inflame the relationship between gamers and gaming media. She has benefited financially by gaining about her conveniently being harassed and threatened. But, really the threats have been pretty much isolated incidents with some questionable origins. She has also had her credibility damaged multiple times; things including her not actually being a gamer while claiming to be, using other people's video game footage as her own without crediting them, stifling open discussion by disabling comments on her videos, and dishonestly skewing games to support her arguments.

 

 

As far as SJW is concerned:

 

Because social justice warrior is a pejorative aimed at overzealous, hypocritical, anti-intellectual, and foolish people. Like I said, the name itself is ironic. I'm pretty sure everyone in this thread supports equality. I'm also quite certain that the majority of people involving themselves in this support equality. That's why the misogynist slant is so infuriating to the people critical of Zoe and Anita.

 

Anyway, I touched a lot of the high points, and probably missed some things as well, but I've included a lot of examples in this thread if anyone cares to examine the evidence at hand.

[whylessness]

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

 

decent video

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM_Z5YTop7g

 

I don't give a shit about people arguing on the internet. But you can't escalate to mass death and rape threats without completely destroying your side's legitimacy.

 

no shit

[whylessness]

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

 

lucid article: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/09/gamergate_explodes_gaming_journalists_declare_the_gamers_are_over_but_they.html

 

exhaustive summary: http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/09/04/gamergate-a-closer-look-at-the-controversy-sweeping-video-games/

[KovalainenFanBoy]

Great video Whylessness

 

I was gonna best-answer it but I think it's better this thread remains neutral, I can see people getting mad for it

[whylessness]

i forgive you for talking shit about twin peaks :)

[Alcofribas]

in this thread I learned that posting statistics about how men do a shit ton of raping is somehow construed as men are victims. lol. fuck you adieu.

[Adieu]

in this thread I learned that posting statistics about how men do a shit ton of raping is somehow construed as men are victims. lol. fuck you adieu.

 

That's your criticism? Out of everything in this thread? One statistic I posted illustrating a fact intended to show that men are victims too?

[Guest A/D]

 

Thanks for reppin my general viewpoint Auto.

 

Basically it sounds to me like a couple of people online are making gamers mad by calling them misogynist, and they were wrong about a couple of things or they were jerks at some point, and now they're getting rape/death threats. Am I missing something? Why would anyone focus on how wrong these women are at this point? I don't give a shit about people arguing on the internet. But you can't escalate to mass death and rape threats without completely destroying your side's legitimacy. Then it's a matter of protecting those in danger, not trying to prove they deserve that somehow.

 

And how can you use "social justice warrior" as a pejorative without sounding like you're the guy who assassinated MLK? Doesn't help your argument Adieu.

 

There is absolutely no evidence of mass rape or death threats being presented. There are isolated incidents of threats. Anything else is vitriolic name calling mixed in with criticisms. It's not really productive for sure, but it's also not organized by anyone either. It's like me painting all feminists as dishonest hypocrites, because I identify Zoe and Anita as those things. It only works as part of a PR campaign when you can use appeal to emotion to gain support. It's especially easy to abuse as part of mediums that don't facilitate thorough debate, or are in anyway stifling debate, i.e., twitter and censoring youtube comments. There has actually been a lack of evidence from the side of Anita and Zoe throughout this entire ordeal. When asked, the reply becomes, "asking for evidence of harassment is misogynistic terrorism". I'm paraphrasing, but those terms have been used, but to any reasonable person that statement is absolutely absurd. The fact of the matter is that Zoe and Anita both took the offensive in their respective situations.

 

Zoe claimed a "raid" against her, which by the way she has yet to clarify what that means every time she says it, by wizardchan forum users as her game was being greenlit on steam. Not surprisingly, she gained a huge influx of positive support for her game following that. Yet, there is ZERO evidence show to support the claim she made. All that was shown was someone making an anonymous thread on wizardchan with a few people calling her names. That's hardly harassment or a threat.

 

Somewhere in between she entered into a game_jam, a tv show that gets shut down because of allegations of blatant misogyny on Zoe's side. She then conveniently has Nathan Grayson, a writer at Kotaku, publicize a piece as a way to present her side of the story to a large audience. This story contains nothing but quotes from her and another industry person Robin Arnott(married and her boss). Both people she has admitted to being sexually involved with and from the chat logs it looks like she had been before this story was released. Nothing particularly shady about that, but it's leaning in the direction of getting favors by using intimate relationships to your advantage. Supposedly the production dude lost his job. I don't know all the details of the situation beyond that.

 

Then you have The Fine Young Capitalists incident. She used an open forum (twitter) to direct a continuous stream of criticisms at them for their women only game jam. The results? An unintended DDOS of their site, and their indiegogo campaign being hacked, doxxed, and shut down. The former of which she openly laughs about with her PR Rep Maya Felix Kramer on Twitter. While this is not completely damning behavior it definitely isn't something a respectable professional and social equality advocate should be doing. Although, I have not seen proof of an exact timeline she has started her own game jam "Rebel Jam" that has absolutely no development behind it, but is accepting donations. Afterwards, 4chan caught wind of this, and decided to campaign for TFYC's and help raise money for their rebooted game jam. They raised thousands of dollars in a couple days and also were awarded the creation of a female rights friendly character called Vivian James. This caused a outpouring of criticisms against TFYC's merely for associating themselves with 4chan in anyway. What does the media spin these events as? 4chan trying to take down Zoe and spite SJW's. This is the part of the discussion against gaming journalism corruption. Apparently, 4chan users aren't allowed to do something good.

 

Vivian James is a character masquerading as a feminist icon for the express purpose of spiting feminists—yes, that’s feminists, plural. It’s not just Zoe Quinn that /v/ wants to take down—it’s the entirety of what they derogatorily call “SJWs,” or “social justice warriors.”

 

Somewhere around the same time the Exbf blog posts come out explaining using admissions from Zoe that she has been involved sexually with a number different people including her PR rep Maya Felix Kramer. Again, not exactly damning behavior but definitely dishonest, and not really something that you would associate with a social justice advocate. I don't like to entertain these types of hypotheticals normally, but I can only imagine if Zoe was a male and did these exacts things how little support would be coming from SJW's. Immediately this information is labeled as slut shaming even though people are only really interested in its relevance to corruption, and not so much that she is a cheating manipulative liar.

 

So, that information coming for her exbf leads people into all these different avenues of possible collusion and corruption leading to their involvement in Indiecade, the IGF, and Silverstring Media. As well as recently Phil Fish, Polytron, Fez, and their connections to Indiecade and the IGF. Silverstring media's connection being that they work with a lot of different games media outlets. It's more complicated than this, but I would have to review the information again. Basically, there are connections between all of them, and most of the major games media outlets.

 

Anita is merely associated with the entire situation by being involved in Silverstring media and associated with Maya Felix Kramer who works for them, is Zoe's PR rep, and has close relationships to the manager of the IGF, Brandon Boyer.

 

But the criticisms of Anita are mainly that her videos blow ass as proper criticism and merely inflame the relationship between gamers and gaming media. She has benefited financially by gaining about her conveniently being harassed and threatened. But, really the threats have been pretty much isolated incidents with some questionable origins. She has also had her credibility damaged multiple times; things including her not actually being a gamer while claiming to be, using other people's video game footage as her own without crediting them, stifling open discussion by disabling comments on her videos, and dishonestly skewing games to support her arguments.

 

 

As far as SJW is concerned:

 

Because social justice warrior is a pejorative aimed at overzealous, hypocritical, anti-intellectual, and foolish people. Like I said, the name itself is ironic. I'm pretty sure everyone in this thread supports equality. I'm also quite certain that the majority of people involving themselves in this support equality. That's why the misogynist slant is so infuriating to the people critical of Zoe and Anita.

 

Anyway, I touched a lot of the high points, and probably missed some things as well, but I've included a lot of examples in this thread if anyone cares to examine the evidence at hand.

 

 

I'm sort of impressed that you typed this all out. You obviously care a lot. It sounds like you're mad at the way she criticized games and gamers, and maybe men in general? Is that right?

 

"Isolated incidents" of rape and death threats are serious business. Way more serious than anything that could possibly have come out of any woman's mouth. Don't gloss over this because "mass" is too big of a word. And to claim that these women "took the offensive" in situation where they are getting threatened is pretty gross, dude. You're saying that there's a threshold where people should be expected to be threatened with rape or death for exercising their right to free speech. Is that the world you want to live in?

 

Then there's your fixation on her sex life. Some people sleep with a lot of people. That is fine. It's a personal thing and for you to extrapolate meaning from it is gross. Anyone she may or may not have slept with is perfectly capable of making their own decisions. Don't ascribe some kind of magical manipulative power to her vagina. That's anti-masculine actually - you're saying guys would lose their integrity over the chance to have sex with her. Instead of, maybe, they share a viewpoint and that's why they're sexually compatible? This is such a weird line of thinking and it's gross.

 

Maybe she's not a "respectable equality advocate". Maybe her videos do "blow ass". Who gives a flying fuck? What are you trying to prove here? Is 4chan mad at her because she's successfully used their smear/DDOS tactics against them? Who cares. Let people fight on the internet. That's practically what it's for.

 

Again. What are you trying to prove? Crappy people deserve to have their lives/safety threatened?

[Hoodie]

 

 

Again. What are you trying to prove? Crappy people deserve to have their lives/safety threatened?

 

 

more like sham journalists* making wide generalizations about certain groups to sell their video projects shouldn't be surprised at aggressive backlash, especially when the culture of the group regularly uses exaggerated insults and threats to make a point. telling people to fuck off and die on online games, telling them that their team is going to get raped, and other really aggressive, mean comments are pretty common. i think it probably comes from the mixture of anonymity and macho culture.

 

let's focus on that anonymity for a second. in most places where gamers communicate between each other, they usually do it through anonymous avatars. yes, you can have a username, but there's nothing that ties you to your identity in real life. so, there are less inhibitions and, combined with that, less dangerous consequences for behavior that would be considered aggressive in real life and probably end up in an arrest. in this way, you can see how threatening comments are usually just displays of power and machismo. in public you can't taunt a person without risking some serious danger to your reputation and possibly your well-being. on the internet you can do it pretty mercilessly, because of the physical distance and "mask" of using an alternate identity. so, more aggressive forms of communication developed that you wouldn't usually find in face-to-face contact. they even become common and somewhat acceptable to a certain point, especially because people who dislike them can "block" or "ignore" users from chat, message board, etc. (a feature that has been present in most forms of online communication for a while).

 

the problem arrives when someone that's not using a mask, someone that's putting their real identity out there, crosses paths with someone who is posting anonymously. it can be really scary to see that someone out there says they want to rape and kill you and they know your name, location, job, etc. but, i hope i'm not going too far in saying that, as a journalist, putting yourself out there in the public eye is just one part of the job. so, when you combine that with a scathing critique of a community where verbal threats are seen as a common display of power, anita's situation is what happens and it's not incredibly surprising.

 

it's shitty that she got threatened. i'm not denying that. however, that does not mean that gamer culture is overall sexist, misogynistic, violent and generally fucked up. these reactions are rooted in their culture and heavily facilitated by social pressures; they do not stem primarily from misogyny (she'd be getting threats if she was a man, too), even though i'm sure there's some of that involved considering that there are misogynists to some extent in all groups of people. i also do not believe they stem from a desire to harm because you see comments like this all over the place. people like to go over the top with displays of dominance, they have for centuries whether it's been bigger spears, bigger codpieces, or bigger ascii cocks and meaner insults.

 

*anita said she hasn't played video games since she was a kid, yet she is trying to write some serious meta shit about video games that would require a deep knowledge of the culture to be correct. not doing your research = shitty journalism.

[usagi]

*anita said she hasn't played video games since she was a kid, yet she is trying to write some serious meta shit about video games that would require a deep knowledge of the culture to be correct. not doing your research = shitty journalism.

 

this was my problem with her, essentially. her tabloid-level analysis on the subject can't be taken seriously. doesn't mean I want to see her get harassed and intimidated by /b/tards or whoever, but at the same time it seems like she is wilfully attracting this kind of attention to make a big deal about herself. she should've been ignored from the start as just another internet mentalist.

 

as for the deeper underlying issue of girls and games, I've already posted my remarks on that. I think it's something that will progressively become a non-issue provided more females continue to be involved in this sphere.

 

and as for Adieu compson'ing himself itt and all the other pointless smacktalk:

 

[Adieu]

 

*anita said she hasn't played video games since she was a kid, yet she is trying to write some serious meta shit about video games that would require a deep knowledge of the culture to be correct. not doing your research = shitty journalism.

 

this was my problem with her, essentially. her tabloid-level analysis on the subject can't be taken seriously. doesn't mean I want to see her get harassed and intimidated by /b/tards or whoever, but at the same time it seems like she is wilfully attracting this kind of attention to make a big deal about herself. she should've been ignored from the start as just another internet mentalist.

 

as for the deeper underlying issue of girls and games, I've already posted my remarks on that. I think it's something that will progressively become a non-issue provided more females continue to be involved in this sphere.

 

and as for Adieu compson'ing himself itt and all the other pointless smacktalk:

 

 

 

Collecting and examining data that seems to indicate possible instances of corruption and foul play is hardly going off the deep end, but I recognize that it's easy ammunition for you and many others who prefer to withhold critical analysis and instead single people out using insults. It is much easier and less time consuming to wait for other people to come to conclusions for you.

 

I would like add that children literally say antagonizing things to induce negative reactions out of people for the sheer joy of causing said reaction on the internet. See, "edgy".

[usagi]

"collecting and examining data" is a very polite and scholarly way of saying you were copy-pasting massive amounts of pointless shite from terrible sources (Encyclopedia Dramatica? come on) nobody wanted to trawl through to support an unreasonable point-of-view. it's exactly what compson did. but when it comes to your crazy-switch (and practically everyone has one), it's hard to cut through the cognitive dissonance and see that what you're doing is really not constructive at all.

[Adieu]

 

 

Thanks for reppin my general viewpoint Auto.

 

Basically it sounds to me like a couple of people online are making gamers mad by calling them misogynist, and they were wrong about a couple of things or they were jerks at some point, and now they're getting rape/death threats. Am I missing something? Why would anyone focus on how wrong these women are at this point? I don't give a shit about people arguing on the internet. But you can't escalate to mass death and rape threats without completely destroying your side's legitimacy. Then it's a matter of protecting those in danger, not trying to prove they deserve that somehow.

 

And how can you use "social justice warrior" as a pejorative without sounding like you're the guy who assassinated MLK? Doesn't help your argument Adieu.

 

There is absolutely no evidence of mass rape or death threats being presented. There are isolated incidents of threats. Anything else is vitriolic name calling mixed in with criticisms. It's not really productive for sure, but it's also not organized by anyone either. It's like me painting all feminists as dishonest hypocrites, because I identify Zoe and Anita as those things. It only works as part of a PR campaign when you can use appeal to emotion to gain support. It's especially easy to abuse as part of mediums that don't facilitate thorough debate, or are in anyway stifling debate, i.e., twitter and censoring youtube comments. There has actually been a lack of evidence from the side of Anita and Zoe throughout this entire ordeal. When asked, the reply becomes, "asking for evidence of harassment is misogynistic terrorism". I'm paraphrasing, but those terms have been used, but to any reasonable person that statement is absolutely absurd. The fact of the matter is that Zoe and Anita both took the offensive in their respective situations.

 

Zoe claimed a "raid" against her, which by the way she has yet to clarify what that means every time she says it, by wizardchan forum users as her game was being greenlit on steam. Not surprisingly, she gained a huge influx of positive support for her game following that. Yet, there is ZERO evidence show to support the claim she made. All that was shown was someone making an anonymous thread on wizardchan with a few people calling her names. That's hardly harassment or a threat.

 

Somewhere in between she entered into a game_jam, a tv show that gets shut down because of allegations of blatant misogyny on Zoe's side. She then conveniently has Nathan Grayson, a writer at Kotaku, publicize a piece as a way to present her side of the story to a large audience. This story contains nothing but quotes from her and another industry person Robin Arnott(married and her boss). Both people she has admitted to being sexually involved with and from the chat logs it looks like she had been before this story was released. Nothing particularly shady about that, but it's leaning in the direction of getting favors by using intimate relationships to your advantage. Supposedly the production dude lost his job. I don't know all the details of the situation beyond that.

 

Then you have The Fine Young Capitalists incident. She used an open forum (twitter) to direct a continuous stream of criticisms at them for their women only game jam. The results? An unintended DDOS of their site, and their indiegogo campaign being hacked, doxxed, and shut down. The former of which she openly laughs about with her PR Rep Maya Felix Kramer on Twitter. While this is not completely damning behavior it definitely isn't something a respectable professional and social equality advocate should be doing. Although, I have not seen proof of an exact timeline she has started her own game jam "Rebel Jam" that has absolutely no development behind it, but is accepting donations. Afterwards, 4chan caught wind of this, and decided to campaign for TFYC's and help raise money for their rebooted game jam. They raised thousands of dollars in a couple days and also were awarded the creation of a female rights friendly character called Vivian James. This caused a outpouring of criticisms against TFYC's merely for associating themselves with 4chan in anyway. What does the media spin these events as? 4chan trying to take down Zoe and spite SJW's. This is the part of the discussion against gaming journalism corruption. Apparently, 4chan users aren't allowed to do something good.

 

Vivian James is a character masquerading as a feminist icon for the express purpose of spiting feminists—yes, that’s feminists, plural. It’s not just Zoe Quinn that /v/ wants to take down—it’s the entirety of what they derogatorily call “SJWs,” or “social justice warriors.”

 

Somewhere around the same time the Exbf blog posts come out explaining using admissions from Zoe that she has been involved sexually with a number different people including her PR rep Maya Felix Kramer. Again, not exactly damning behavior but definitely dishonest, and not really something that you would associate with a social justice advocate. I don't like to entertain these types of hypotheticals normally, but I can only imagine if Zoe was a male and did these exacts things how little support would be coming from SJW's. Immediately this information is labeled as slut shaming even though people are only really interested in its relevance to corruption, and not so much that she is a cheating manipulative liar.

 

So, that information coming for her exbf leads people into all these different avenues of possible collusion and corruption leading to their involvement in Indiecade, the IGF, and Silverstring Media. As well as recently Phil Fish, Polytron, Fez, and their connections to Indiecade and the IGF. Silverstring media's connection being that they work with a lot of different games media outlets. It's more complicated than this, but I would have to review the information again. Basically, there are connections between all of them, and most of the major games media outlets.

 

Anita is merely associated with the entire situation by being involved in Silverstring media and associated with Maya Felix Kramer who works for them, is Zoe's PR rep, and has close relationships to the manager of the IGF, Brandon Boyer.

 

But the criticisms of Anita are mainly that her videos blow ass as proper criticism and merely inflame the relationship between gamers and gaming media. She has benefited financially by gaining about her conveniently being harassed and threatened. But, really the threats have been pretty much isolated incidents with some questionable origins. She has also had her credibility damaged multiple times; things including her not actually being a gamer while claiming to be, using other people's video game footage as her own without crediting them, stifling open discussion by disabling comments on her videos, and dishonestly skewing games to support her arguments.

 

 

As far as SJW is concerned:

 

Because social justice warrior is a pejorative aimed at overzealous, hypocritical, anti-intellectual, and foolish people. Like I said, the name itself is ironic. I'm pretty sure everyone in this thread supports equality. I'm also quite certain that the majority of people involving themselves in this support equality. That's why the misogynist slant is so infuriating to the people critical of Zoe and Anita.

 

Anyway, I touched a lot of the high points, and probably missed some things as well, but I've included a lot of examples in this thread if anyone cares to examine the evidence at hand.

 

 

I'm sort of impressed that you typed this all out. You obviously care a lot. It sounds like you're mad at the way she criticized games and gamers, and maybe men in general? Is that right?

 

"Isolated incidents" of rape and death threats are serious business. Way more serious than anything that could possibly have come out of any woman's mouth. Don't gloss over this because "mass" is too big of a word. And to claim that these women "took the offensive" in situation where they are getting threatened is pretty gross, dude. You're saying that there's a threshold where people should be expected to be threatened with rape or death for exercising their right to free speech. Is that the world you want to live in?

 

Then there's your fixation on her sex life. Some people sleep with a lot of people. That is fine. It's a personal thing and for you to extrapolate meaning from it is gross. Anyone she may or may not have slept with is perfectly capable of making their own decisions. Don't ascribe some kind of magical manipulative power to her vagina. That's anti-masculine actually - you're saying guys would lose their integrity over the chance to have sex with her. Instead of, maybe, they share a viewpoint and that's why they're sexually compatible? This is such a weird line of thinking and it's gross.

 

Maybe she's not a "respectable equality advocate". Maybe her videos do "blow ass". Who gives a flying fuck? What are you trying to prove here? Is 4chan mad at her because she's successfully used their smear/DDOS tactics against them? Who cares. Let people fight on the internet. That's practically what it's for.

 

Again. What are you trying to prove? Crappy people deserve to have their lives/safety threatened?

 

 

Well, I took an adderall and drank a big cup of coffee so it pretty much wrote itself, but thank you.

 

I would argue that internet threats are, one of, if not, the least serious ways to be threatened. I know that's an unpopular statement, because it can be construed as diminishing the culpability of people making threats towards other people, but I assure you that isn't the intent. But if one were to attempt to quantify threats on a level of seriousness I would say that being in person and telling someone you're going to rape and murder them is about 1,000,000x more serious than sending someone an anonymous tweet saying something mean or threatening. Another point to be made is identifying an actual threat vs someone merely saying something rude. For instance, "I'm going to kill you" is a threat, but "I hope you die in a fire", "you are a cunt", or "get cancer and die" are not threats. The subtle difference being that one is a promise to action while the other is merely a venting of frustration that communicates support for negative circumstances for the person said venting is directed towards. Now, you could paint the latter example as harassment if it's aimed directly at a target in a continuous and organized way. But there is are limitations to this as well. You can, in almost all instances of online communication simply silence those people with whom you do not desire to communicate. There is another option as well, which is to make all of your communications private, and to not allow any kind of unsolicited communications reach you. On my earlier point about the seriousness of online threats versus other threats I think that the ease of which an internet threat can be made is a huge reason why it is less serious. A person has to move only their fingers and hands to do such a thing, and they are required to make no real contact with another person to do so. Also important to be noted is that directing a rude statement towards someone is not considered harassment in a public arena, and the internet is a public environment. I don't think you can even validly take legal action for someone yelling an insult directed towards you in public. Especially considering making a one off comment doesn't meet grounds for harassment, because harassment is characterized as being repetitive. So, even if you are receiving comment after comment of nasty messages it still isn't harassment unless it can be proven to be organized and intended to be repetitious or continuous. Without meeting those criteria it simply isn't harassment.

 

Way more serious than anything that could possibly have come out of any woman's mouth.

 

No offense man/woman/thing(joke), but that is a seriously sexist and downright false comment.

 

Taking the offensive would be openly putting yourself into the public sphere. Both have done this. Then openly criticizing large groups of people, and even entire industries. Both have done this. The amount of backlash is due to their perceived dishonesty and manipulation as well as their continuously inserting themselves into the middle of said controversy and fanning the flames. Their chromosomes are actually the least relevant part of the discussion. While the harassment and or threats may be characterized as misogynistic in nature merely by having a gender one stipulates that threats and harassment towards them will have relevance to their gender. This is not outright misogyny. This is reality dictating itself. Some of these people might be misogynists others may not be at all. But a rape threat towards a woman does not directly indicate misogyny just as a rape threat towards a man does not directly indicate misandry. (as a side note google chrome doesn't recognize misandry as being a word even though it has been in use since the 1600's and in the dictionary since 1952 so does that mean that google chrome is sexist?)

 

For someone to take all these instances of threats and harassment and categorize them as an organized misogynistic assault on women they have to prove that it was an organized goal. That has not been done. As much as you would you like to believe that is what the IRC chat logs show it isn't. It may be spun that way by supporters of Anita and Zoe, but it is fundamentally convenient cherry picking intended to sway public opinion. There will always be misogynists among every group just as there will always be racists and other types of prejudice people. The existence of some of those types of people within your PUBLIC IRC CHATROOM does not indicate an orchestrated misogynistic assault, or at the very least portraying it as such is dishonest.

 

Some of you surely will be offended by this position. I understand that, and while I think closing yourself off from quantifying circumstances under the pretense that "all harassment is harassment etc" is an oversimplification of human interaction and the role of the internet with those interactions.

You're conflating my desires with my determinations of what is reality. It is a reality that you are going to receive backlash when inserting yourself into public controversy, as part of your job, and as a way to bolster your career. Both of which these two persons we are discussing have done. I don't receive threats or harassment when I'm isolated from the public nor does anyone else. Because receiving both things requires one first put themselves in the public. For this discussion, being in the public means to have a virtual identity tied to your actual identity. It is your public real estate within the internet.

 

No, questioning someone's integrity in regards to the nature of their personal and business relationships is not out of line. It is in fact very much a standard process. Conflict of interest is a big deal. It's a big deal in the public sphere, and it's strictly enforced in business. This not new, and it is not something that can accurately be portrayed as a crutch for slut shaming.

 

Personal relationships, especially ones that are intimate in nature, skew fairness and objective criticism. Historically a proven personal connection is a great way of discrediting someone's opinions, statements, etc. This is most notable in trials and in police work. Ever heard the old cop show line, "I'm pulling you off the case. You're too close too close to this one Jack." We all have.This is why you cannot sit on a jury during a case you have a personal connection to. This is why, for example, you aren't allowed as manager, in most cases, to hire your son as your assistant manager. This is why nepotism is frowned upon. This is why people make the cliche statement, "It isn't what you know. It is who you know." Because you can very easily take advantage of personal relationships to enrich yourself unfairly. And people get away with this all the time. Sometimes it's not really a big deal, and other times it is. It really has to be judged on a case by case basis.

 

But beyond mere personal intimate relationships, it is continually being suggested by freshly discovered relevant information that there are improper business practices being enacted as a result of complicated monetary agreements and personal relationships that the revelations about Zoe's relationships were just a catalyst into discovering. That's why no one cares about Zoe anymore. Because she's a small fish. A lot of people don't like her, and think that she is a bad person. That's about it. But really only time will tell if these accusations and this information are valid.

 

And to clarify, you're imposing a label of "fixation" on her sex life upon me, and making sexist comments while you deride me for supporting the standard practices of full disclosure and conflict of interest, and altogether denying the existence of those standards and their legitimacy. It's funny too, because in this situation the gender of the people is just circumstantial yet YOU are the one apply meaning to it, and attempting to use it against me?

 

 

As for the point of all this, well my first post on the subject was merely to provide a counter position towards Autopilot's first post after some cursory information gathering.

 

Basically a bunch of lonely misogynist neckbeards who are butthurt that Zoe Quinn & Anita Sarkeesian point out the blatant sexism in the gaming industry got all excited when they found out that she slept with some people in games press, and are having a field day dragging her through the mud under the guise of 'exposing corruption in games journalism'. The fact of the matter is that their "evidence" comes from a scorned ex-boyfriend (obv not a reliable source). Also, gaming is such an insular community that they're glossing over the fact that quite a large number of people working in games have sex with other people working in games. It's kind of sad, really, and yet more fuel for the "gamers are immature teenagers & manchildren" stereotype.

 

 

 

I'll respond with my desires/goals whatever tomorrow morning because I'm getting tired and thinking is becoming more difficult, but I wanted to propose a question I had about the perspective of anita and zoe, their position in this, how it relates to PR, and the consequences thereof. And what the answers these questions might reveal.

 

I am interested in what the consequence for Zoe would be if she isn't painted as a victim in this situation. If she is instead seen as a manipulative, dishonest, hypocrite, with a tendency towards malicious behavior. Because if she is not the total victim in this situation then those are the ideas at the forefront of association with her. If she can't convince everyone to sympathize with her then she is seen as the bad person in all this. Because, like it or not, airing out your dirty laundry is not worse than being the perpetrator of a bunch of really shitty damaging behavior. In fact, you have no real obligation to be quiet about someone causing you harm, and I actually characterize it as victim silencing behavior to promote the idea that Eron should have stayed silent. The pain that he has experienced and the damage it has likely done to is intimate relationships in the future haven't even been acknowledged, but I guarantee you there are very deep wounds. Many with which he has not even realized he will need to come to terms. And the answers I've gathered from proposing the original question here, What happens if Zoe isn't the victim?, seem to indicate a lot of motivation for Zoe to do whatever she can to ensure that she is viewed as such. And my personal opinion is that the dishonest nature of her presenting information is part of this, and a reasonable explanation for her doing so.. Because now everyone in the industry knows who she is, and she is locked into a PR war the could make or her break ability to be successful from here forward. She likely knows this, and it seems interestingly that it's benefiting her in the short term. But as volatile as PR battles can be it remains to be seen what the conclusions of these events will be.

[zlemflolia]

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

These fucktards influence political policies all over the world

 

Maybe not Anita Sarkeesian but other feminists.

 

Look at all this "preponderance of the evidence" shit in ridiculously series areas like divorce court and rape accusations on college campuses

[Adieu]

"collecting and examining data" is a very polite and scholarly way of saying you were copy-pasting massive amounts of pointless shite from terrible sources (Encyclopedia Dramatica? come on) nobody wanted to trawl through to support an unreasonable point-of-view. it's exactly what compson did. but when it comes to your crazy-switch (and practically everyone has one), it's hard to cut through the cognitive dissonance and see that what you're doing is really not constructive at all.

 

Well, pointless shite would be your interpretation of the data, but I've also spent time making massive posts about said data, because people clearly won't accept when someone copy and pastes data so, I am forced at my expense I might add, to discontinue engaging in said discussion using the time saving method of copying data that has already been collected which I've reviewed, and attempted some fact checking on, or my other option is to summarize all the data I've collected myself. So, basically you're forcing me to waste my time in order to present my point.

 

You're implying that I've only been looking at ED? And that the only information I've collected is from ED? Because this thread and the 7 or so pages before now very clearly prove that to be false. As well as the other sources that even other members have cited that are information also shown on ED. Because, well, just because something is organized on ED does't mean that is where it originates. And your inability to ignore things you don't like in order to see instances of fact isn't my problem. But I went out of my way to fact check most of the information I've used in my argument as much as is reasonably possible, and a lot of it checks out beyond a reasonable doubt. I even reposted some examples only including the direct sources of the information for people to see. The cognitive dissonance claim seems unfounded. I've asked people to present contradictory information, help me confirm or deny certain things, and openly supported the idea that we should deal in facts. And I continue to do so while also interjecting reasonable interpretations and proposing things I think are valid. Maybe, just maybe, it's the style with which people engage others attempting to discern truth, and not just parroting the major media headlines that causes, even forces, anyone that wants to engage with you to make a fucking page long post just to ensure that they cannot be cherry picked by bullshit debaters.

 

 

And please explain to me what is constructive about what you're doing right this very second with this post?

[usagi]

you post stuff from ED, you lose all credibility. simple as that. ain't nothing socratic about it.

 

I'm being constructive by pointing out that you're not being constructive

[Adieu]

you post stuff from ED, you lose all credibility. simple as that. ain't nothing socratic about it.

 

I'm being constructive by pointing out that you're not being constructive

 

Well, that's a willful confession of total bias towards facts, and an implication that you might not be worthy of debate. It's basically a fucking straight up ad hominem, and it doesn't acknowledge the response I just made wherein I laid out examples of why your position is completely unfounded. But you can assert your own personal unfounded beliefs as facts if you would like to.

 

Once again your interpretation of what is going on is my not being constructive, but you are blatantly posting criticisms that are obviously invalid that distract from the collective information that has been gathered and discussed in this thread. I could go even further and give you a point by point line item of each piece of information provided by me in this thread that disproves your claims, but then you're just forcing me to waste more time. Something that I've already accused people of regularly doing in this forum.

 

I'm not going to continually explain why I pulled things from ED when I've already used multiple posts to explain it on previous pages. I'm not going to go further into it and explain how I even landed there to begin with. Because it's a bullshit point. A distraction. And it's not relevant no matter how much you assert that it is.

[Blir]

[chenGOD]

 

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

These fucktards influence political policies all over the world

 

Maybe not Anita Sarkeesian but other feminists.

 

Look at all this "preponderance of the evidence" shit in ridiculously series areas like divorce court and rape accusations on college campuses

 

 

Trust me, anyone who matters in global politics gives zero fucks about online flamefests, even when they escalate to this level of stupidity. No one cares that some shitty subreddit was closed, people who make policy barely even know reddit exists.

Corporations only care that reddit exists when people are violating copyright on there.

 

 

Whoever said this was like high school drama is pretty much spot on, this is just bullshit. This thread. It makes the baby jesus cry.

[zlemflolia]

 

 

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

These fucktards influence political policies all over the world

 

Maybe not Anita Sarkeesian but other feminists.

 

Look at all this "preponderance of the evidence" shit in ridiculously series areas like divorce court and rape accusations on college campuses

 

 

Trust me, anyone who matters in global politics gives zero fucks about online flamefests, even when they escalate to this level of stupidity. No one cares that some shitty subreddit was closed, people who make policy barely even know reddit exists.

Corporations only care that reddit exists when people are violating copyright on there.

 

 

Whoever said this was like high school drama is pretty much spot on, this is just bullshit. This thread. It makes the baby jesus cry.

 

So you deny the existence of feminist politicians. Lols