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Combating Recent, Ugly Incidents of Misogyny In Gamer Culture

Posted by Soulskill on from the push-until-it-gives dept.

ideonexus writes: 2490 gamers, developers and journalists have signed an open letter supporting inclusiveness in the gaming community after indie game developer Zoe Quinn received backlash and harassment when her ex-boyfriend posted false accusations that she traded sex for favorable reviews of her game and feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian was driven from her home after receiving death and rape threats for her videos illustrating the way some mainstream games encourage the commoditization of and violence against women. The harassment has prompted geek-dating advice columnist Harris O'Malley to declare the backlash the "Extinction Burst of Gaming Culture," the last reactionary gasp before the culture shifts to become more inclusive.

50 of 1,134 comments (clear)

  1. Nobody has the right not to be offended. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's no such thing as politically correct. There's no such thing as a right not to be offended. Both of these run counter to freedom of speech.

    Nobody's going to force me to "include" people that I don't agree with, period. If you don't like it, fuck off.

    That being said, the asshole ex-boyfriend should be turned into a eunuch and ridiculed for being such a wuss for the rest of his life.

    1. Re:Nobody has the right not to be offended. by cryptizard · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What, do you think the outcome of this is that the police are going to start going around forcing you to make friends with women? You can be as much of an asshole as you want. But other people are equally free to call you out for it.

    2. Re:Nobody has the right not to be offended. by ganjadude · · Score: 4, Insightful

      because if people have a right not be be offended, then there is no freedom of speech

      --
      have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
    3. Re:Nobody has the right not to be offended. by serviscope_minor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There's no such thing as politically correct.

      What's that got to do with this?

      You certainly do have the right not to have threats of violence made against you.

      You also have the right not to have slanderous and libellous claims made against you.

      Even with the laws about freedom of speech none of those things are legal. This isn't about being offended, it's about being threatened and slandered.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    4. Re:Nobody has the right not to be offended. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Nobody's going to force me to "include" people that I don't agree with, period.

      Actually, that's exactly what will happen. There is not right not to be offended, but there is a right not to be harassed or threatened. People are starting to realize that all the "harmless" stuff is just building up to that, as it has done over and over again in the past. As such they are becoming less tolerant of it, and eventually people like you will be ostracised.

      So, maybe no-one can force you to include people you don't like (unless it's a business or government setting, in which case anti-discrimination laws apply), but I have a feeling you will when you experience the isolation that comes with being a bigot.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. Who cares. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't know anybody who has any idea who these people are, nor do they give one shit about any of this stuff. They just play games. I don't think these "cultures" and "communities" are nearly as big as people think they are. It's limited to a VERY small set of people commenting and participating in all this high-school drama. Of course, once it's on twitter and the internet in general, everyone thinks its way bigger than it actually is.

    News flash -- It's not.

    1. Re:Who cares. by war4peace · · Score: 4, Insightful

      True. I play games and never heard of those people before.
      HOWEVER.
      I also walk on the street and never got mugged or shot at, it doesn't mean it's not happening somewhere else. The fact it's not important to everyone doesn't mean it's not important at all.
      Laws are created based on events that might only have happened to a small number of people, and while the vast majority never heard of those laws, they still exist.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
  3. One bad apple spoils the barrel by Frobnicator · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It doesn't seem to be pervasive. We've all seen the recent stats on similar stories. Over half of all gamers are female. Less than 1/5 are under the age 18. The stereotypical teenage boy gamer is a small component of the "gamer" culture.

    I doubt this is "Misogyny In Gamer Culture". I think instead this is just a few vocal idiots.

    --
    //TODO: Think of witty sig statement
    1. Re:One bad apple spoils the barrel by rdwulfe · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's the problem though. When I was in high school, not everyone in the school abused me each day. No, the problem was the 10-20 kids who decided they had to punch someone so they could go home that day, and I was apparently an easy mark. Great fun, let me tell you.

      It never requires a huge number of people to oppress an individual or group. It takes others who are willing to do so by force. Written word can be force, too.

    2. Re:One bad apple spoils the barrel by geekoid · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, half of console players of female.
      You are missing the point, and the fact that you think women need different types of games kind of make you misogynistic in your thinking.

      This whole thing is about attitude and attacks women get.

      Lets talk about slasher movies.

      These movies, by and large, are horrible misogynistic, and well love by women.
      When a woman points out that they are misogynistic, no one threatens to rape and kill her.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    3. Re:One bad apple spoils the barrel by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It gets even better. Marketing that panders to girls is no less misogynistic. It's actually even WORSE. Marketing for women is all about making women feel like sh*t, especially about their bodies. The stuff is more caustic then genuine porn.

      This is just more of the "nerds bad" narrative that the media has been trying to feed us lately. In truth, "gamer culture" is no worse than anything else including the women's magazines that claims to be feminist.

      Anything going on in video games is the tail end of the problem.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    4. Re:One bad apple spoils the barrel by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you have ever been on XBOX Live in a game like Call of Duty or Battlefield with a female name you will very quickly realize that it is pervasive. Similar for comment threads on a number of prominent gaming web sites.

      More over it definitely is a consistent and widespread problem in games. Almost all adult "open world" style games feature prostitutes, for example. Okay, they exist in real life so they are just being realistic, right? The reality is that they add them in as a cheap way to add "grit" and faux-realism, and then give them the same gameplay mechanics as other objects like vending machines and hotel rooms (usually restoring health in exchange for money). The player is encouraged to use them as disposable, generic tools to further their progress in the game. It's just lazy and unhelpful.

      War movies could show realistic violence and the effects of weapons, but that would give half the audience PTSD so despite it being an easy way to make them real and edgy they tone it down. It's about using the medium responsibly.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    5. Re:One bad apple spoils the barrel by hendrips · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Interesting - the more people pick on a victim, the more it becomes the victim's fault? Quite the logic there.

  4. More than the article states... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    It wasn't just "false accusations" from her ex-boyfriend. It was accusations from many of her boyfriends and other people that she slept with coupled with her story not making any sense and having plenty of holes in it. Oh, and also no proof that any of it took place.

    As for Anita Sarkeesian? Well, after seeing how lying about being a victim worked out so well for Zoe, it's not exactly a big stretch to say that maybe she did the same thing. I mean, all those tweets coming in, from only one user, faster than anyone could type them, and immediately after receiving them we're supposed to believe that Anita logged out of her account and just so happened to search for those exact tweets, then took a screenshot of them as proof that she was "stalked and driven from her home by a raid."

    There's a few things that aren't adding up here.

    1. Re:More than the article states... by Fallen+Kell · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well, unfortunately, I feel that in the case of Anita, some of it was brought on herself. Her videos she has been using to show how games are portraying women in bad ways were in most cases taken completely out of context and twisted to fit her preconceived opinions. In one case using a section of Hitman which took place in an adult entertainment club, and saying that the women in the level are there only to be beaten/killed and used as distractions, when in fact, that is absolutely not the case. You LOSE points for beating on them. You are meant to AVOID them, just like most other people in Hitman, as they are not your target, you are not to kill people who are not your target, and yet, she makes a video of her own play-through where she intentionally kills them, and then says that is the only purpose for them being there.... Its like saying TV's are bad because you can bash someone over the head with a TV and demonstrating that you can do that fact, when in reality, the only behavior that is bad is doing that specific behavior.

      And when she gets called out on that fact, she doesn't want to hear it, and disables comments so that it isn't shown what a load of crap she is spewing forth.

      --
      We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
  5. Re:"Death to Gamers and Long Live Videogames" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sad thing is that there's so much truth to the allegations against Zoe that has been drowned out by the idiots and trolls who want to offend or think that their way works. She even admitted flat out on twitter to having sex for publicity, and yet not a single time has the issue journalistic integrity of video game reporting been raised. There exist obvious and blatant conflicts of interest in several of her endeavors and the media that actually cares to report this ignores this fact. That slashdot plays along is not surprising, this website has a long reputation of pandering to that crowd and backing down on real facts cases like these. It's much easier to just play along right?

    Consider also that Zoe Quinn was outright accused of sexually harrassing a fellow dev at a wedding, whereupon she immediately began the process of what they call "victim blaming" and riled her army of fans/supporters to berate and verbally assault him. There is a huge double standard for the controversy surrounding zoe quinn, and everything she's done wrong is being swept under the carpet because "omg internet bullies".

    I don't care if she had sex with fucking 10,000 guys; that's not the issue at heart here. The 'allegations' are actually facts, and what I care about is that she slept with those people for publicity she did not deserve, that was taken from more deserving games. AAA devs don't care because money, but for indie devs this is extremely important because if it becomes a good ol' boy system in video game journalism then good games that deserve the spotlight will miss out even more than they do. And, also, bad games that don't deserve shit will continue to flood steam and make the front page. Stop supporting videogame-political machines.

  6. Re:I predict by Squiddie · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's ridiculous, and you're a troll. The reason people hate Anita Sarkeezian is not because she is a woman, but because she purposefully misrepresents facts in games and posed as someone that enjoys games when there is video evidence of the contrary. She lied to the people that financed her videos and then did not even deliver, not to mention that it's such poorly made crap that a high school student could have done better. Zoe Quinn got backlash because she is a morally bankrupt scumbag that slept with other people in her industry and journalists that promoted her game. She also made up the Wizardchan incident and basically got a bunch of lonely virgins to take the heat for something they did not do. In both cases the hate they received is due to their actions and character, not because they are women. Oh, by the way check out that list of "developers" most of them aren't developers themselves and are only tangentially connected to those companies. These people are actively trying to ruin gaming as a hobby. They politicize everything and try to make an issue over the smallest things. They deserve all the hate they get.

  7. Accusations by Whorhay · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So TFS says that the accusations regarding Zoe Quinn were false. I hadn't heard this bit yet, is the article linked to actually confirmation of that? Sorry, I'd read the articles for myself but work filters are a PITA. The last I had heard was that the guy who writes for RPS and Kotaku had confirmed their sexual relationship.

    I honestly don't care about her sex life or lack there of. The only thing of interest to me is a "journalist" possibly sleeping with a person with whom he should have a more professional relation ship with, and not disclosing that fact when making mention of her work, whether positive or negative.

    1. Re:Accusations by serviscope_minor · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Besides the fact Zoe herself admitted to being a whore publicly

      Really? I don't remember reading anything about her admitting to taking payment for sex.

      Or do you mean that she merely has a lot of sex? In which case take your sexist (I'll recant that accusation if you've ever levelled similar insults at man who has done comparable things), puritanical attitudes somewhere where you might find fellow people who are jealous of others sex lives.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    2. Re:Accusations by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Informative

      TFA points out that the journalist in question never actually wrote a review of Depression Quest. If you can find one send them a link so they can add a correction to their article. Google doesn't turn up anything.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  8. Re:Astroturfing for Hillary Clinton by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Interesting

    First articles here, then a new policy on Fark, and now yet another story about misogyny. It's a constant, subtle pressure in the background for Millenials that women are oppressed

    Or, you know, there's a lot of men who are childish assholes and misogynists.

    Because, really, death threats? Threats to rape her? The crap I've seen in the coverage about this pretty much means this isn't hand-wringing and moralizing ... this is a sign of some pretty terrible (if not criminal) behavior.

    Some people get online and become complete and utter sociopaths. Others don't seem to need to be online.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  9. Re:I predict by StikyPad · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The hypocrisy of third wave feminism should, at the very least, be pointed out, and it's a straw man to call doing that misogynistic.

    --
    https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
  10. Re:I predict by cryptizard · · Score: 5, Funny

    How can there be video evidence that she doesn't enjoy games? Does it show a video game killing her parents?

  11. Re:"Death to Gamers and Long Live Videogames" by Khyber · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Reference-less accusations seem to prove the article's point."

    What, have you had your head buried in the sand this entire time? Plenty of references down to the one being accused admitting it publicly.

    Imbecile.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  12. Slashdot is Dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I knew it was going downhill for a long time, now it's dead, because it's been taken over by the Social Justice Warriors.

  13. False accusations? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That's pretty laughable given the amount of evidence. Her ex-boyfriend didn't post false accusations. Among the things that were posted were Zoe's own words, tweets, facebook message, ok cupid posts, etc. Is Slashdot also ran by SJW's that refuse to see things for what they really are?

    The author of the Vice article also has connections to Zoe Quinn, Anita, and the other white knight/SJW "journalists." Did you not even bother doing research on this before making a crap slashdot post?

    That's the beauty of facts. They still remain facts even if you disagree with them.

    1. Re:False accusations? by Aardpig · · Score: 5, Informative

      Mod parent up big time. Her boyfriend has posted significant amounts of evidence supporting his claims, and Zoe has not refuted them.

      --
      Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
  14. Re:I predict by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    That's the problem. Both women lied about events, they created their own hate campaign and claimed it was against them. You'll notice there are no police complaints for any of the things they claim. The massive conflict of interest between these two women and having sex with a number of prominent people in the gaming "review" industry is never addressed by the rags, just the fake stuff these women created. They're playing the industry to make their millions. They've openly discussed it, clearly thinking twitter to individuals is private.

    The problem is many people think they're white knights and go all out to protect these fair damsels. Personally, I'd hope someone reports the death threats to the police, they perform an investigation and once the truth comes out, we'll never hear from these two again, or their champions.

  15. Re:Again?! by Aardpig · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Are we talking about the same Zoe Quinn? The Zoe Quinn who shut down a gamejam specifically targetted at helping women coders, because she perceived it as in competition with her own fundraising efforts?

    --
    Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
  16. Catchup for those outside of the circle by Karganeth · · Score: 4, Informative

    A YouTuber by the name of InternetAristocrat has 3 videos on this matter. It's worth watching these to fully understand the details of this situation. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

  17. Re:I predict by Squiddie · · Score: 4, Insightful
    http://youtu.be/gqJCCnued6c?li...

    I'm not a fan of video games.

    B-but she never said that! She did. She doesn't like games, and she isn't a gamer. It must be nice to be such a deluded idiot.

  18. Re:So, where is ... by Kohlrabi82 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So you argue that some men in shining white armor should come to the aid of the damsels in distress? Isn't it ironic how the harassed women are now used as a damsel-in-distress plot device in some gamer misogyny story?

  19. Why "SJW"? by Daetrin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Question, why do you (generally speaking) feel the need to lump all the people who disagree with you together into one group, give that group a sarcastic name, and then abbreviate that name into an acronym which you can then use as a accusatory label whenever the subject comes up for discussion?

    It sounds like the kind of thing my old paranoid-schizophrenic girlfriend would do when talking about "them", but i presume you are not mentally ill, so there must be some other reason for it. Is it some kind of bonding thing between people who feel threatened by others? Or do you believe that by creating the appearance of some kind of organized opposition that you will sway "neutral" parties toward your side? It just sounds dumb to me, but maybe i'm not the intended audience?

    --
    This Space Intentionally Left Blank
    1. Re:Why "SJW"? by kruach+aum · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Let me answer your question with a question: why do you feel the need to psychoanalyze someone you know nothing about other than his use of the abbreviation "SJW"? Surely YOU would not engage in thinking all people who use those three letters in a sequence are the same, would you?

    2. Re:Why "SJW"? by GameboyRMH · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I love when people use the acronym "SJW," it's even more efficient than "misandry." It says "I am unapologetically backwards as fuck on a wide variety of issues, to the point that I am upset at the existence of people who are opposed to my backwardness."

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    3. Re:Why "SJW"? by Kielistic · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Fictional stereotypes? This is a story about feminists labeling an entire group of people misogynists. They clearly don't have a problem with using the paint brush set to "wide".

      Additionally there have been and still are feminists that claim that all heterosexual sex is rape. Which would make pretty much all men rapist. So again, not fictional.

  20. Re:Astroturfing for Hillary Clinton by entrigant · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, but just about "every last women who picks up a controller" will be threatened with violence or rape by a gamer.

    http://fatuglyorslutty.com/category/death-threats/

    That ^^ ... is a fucking problem. I sure as shit don't have to deal with crap like that when I'm online.

    Even if not a single person ever followed through on their threats, it creates an incredibly hostile atmosphere that few would want to endure therefore creating a cultural divide and effectively excluding women from the activity.

    And, somehow, even if that was deemed acceptable, even if we all said "ok fine gaming is to be a sausage fest for all time", do you really think the attitudes given voice by these in game messages somehow vanish once the sender puts down the controller and joins the rest of us in the real world?

  21. Re:Zoe Quinn, wait what? by i+kan+reed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No one thinks she is. But unless she's committing murder, this reaction is overblown. We think the people attacking her are scum for making something that would be a small deal for any male in a similar position into one of the biggest conspiracies ever.

    And that their actions reinforce the notion that misogynistic beliefs have become endemic to the "culture" of gaming, inasmuch as it has one.

    And that actually ties back to Sarkeesian's work, because science has shown that objectified media leads to this kind of hostility and discrimination against women.

    People are objecting not because Quinn and Sarkeesian are angels, on a pedestal and beyond reproach, but because there are elements of culture that are causing this problem and standing up against it is the only thing that's going to see change.

  22. Slashdot enjoying the clickbait... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Posting anon because I enjoy my job.

    For some reason, slashdot has mostly ignored this topic for the past couple weeks, and now we get an article that revels in moralistic naysaying while ignoring what keeps this going.

    The recent "ugliness" is not just a product of sexism and misogyny. To be fair, women have been harassed. To be even more fair, not all women who have been harassed have been harassed by "gamers".

    The fiasco that has now grown into "Gamergate" (not my term) is not easy to relate in few words, but I will summarize that it is a reaction by enthusiast gamers against a clique of prominent video games journalists, writers, and indie developers who have been using their personal connections to promote each other's works and political ideology, as well as exclude those who do not toe the line.

    It began when the ex-boyfriend of indie developer Zoe Quinn made a blog post detailing with evidence how Ms Quinn cheated on him with at least five other people, as well as perceived attempts by her to emotionally manipulate him. (http://thezoepost.wordpress.com/) Among individuals named in the post were Nathan Grayson (a writer for Gawker Media's Kotaku and former writer at Rock, Paper, Shotgun) and Robin Arnott (a judge at the Indiecade independent games competition that later went on to give Ms Quinn's game an award). Initially, this post was ignored by games journalists, and was circulated in online gaming forums. However, many forums deleted any and all topics concerning the matter, including the largest reddit thread deletion in history (with over 20K comments deleted; http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/2dz0gs/totalbiscuit_discusses_the_state_of_games/) concerning youtube commentator TotalBiscuit's response to Ms Quinn allegedly using a false DMCA request to take down one of the first videos discussing the subject (http://themundanematt.tumblr.com/post/95428752119/dmca-notice-and-removal).

    Investigation by redditors and members of various boards on 4chan soon uncovered that Ms Quinn allegedly pointed her twitter followers to critique a new game charity designed to help female game designers have their ideas actualized because she felt the charity's profit-motivated goals and its policy towards transwomen (biological males who identify as women) were oppressive (http://static.fjcdn.com/large/pictures/60/24/6024fb_5271447.jpg). When the creator of the charity attempted to seek promotion from major gaming journalist sites, he was told that since Ms Quinn had issues with the charity, no promotion would be possible (knowyourmeme.com/photos/814183-quinnspiracy).

    While specific written pieces promoting Ms Quinn's work were actually short in supply, further investigations showed that the relationships of other journalists to their subjects were less tenuous. Patricia Hernandez of Kotaku was shown through previous twitter conversations to have lived with and possibly had a romantic relationship with Anne Anthropy, an indie developer she directly promoted in several articles. Ben Kuchera of Polygon, among others, was shown to be a supporter of Ms Quinn on Patreon, a site designed to crowd-fund stipends to content-creators. In response to these issues, the two above mentioned games journalism sites posted clarifications and/or updates to their positions on conflicts of interest, noting that they would attempt more honest journalism in the future, as well as in the case of Kotaku disallowing writers to contribute to subjects' Patreon accounts.

    This is when hell started breaking loose. Prominent games journalists and indie developers cried out on twitter that Kotaku and Polygon

  23. Re:"Death to Gamers and Long Live Videogames" by stdarg · · Score: 5, Informative

    In this thread, the "accusation" is that the accusations against Zoe have truth to them. The accusation takes the form of a comment, not an article in its own right. Your "[citation needed]" post is out of place.

    If you're curious about it, look it up. If you dispute it, dispute it. This is a website where people comment about the article, and often about things completely unrelated to the article. Some work on your part is required, the comment thread isn't a place for you to whine about not being spoon-fed. For your [citation needed] comment to be taken at all seriously, you have to at least add that you searched for it and couldn't find it, so you don't believe it's true without more work on OP's part, thus [citation needed].

    As it turns out I was curious about the accusation as well so I searched for some more information. Took me about 10 seconds to find some interesting things:

    http://www.escapistmagazine.co...
    http://thezoepost.wordpress.co...
    http://imgur.com/a/4VOcx
    http://pastebin.com/Ph22THkJ

  24. Re:Zoe Quinn, wait what? by Kielistic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    People are objecting not because Quinn and Sarkeesian are angels,

    No, you are standing up for them because they are women. Women that, as you have admitted, have done bad things. But it's everyone else that are the sexists.

  25. Re:Zoe Quinn, wait what? by LordLimecat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Nonsense. My exposure to this issue has been entirely through articles like this one attempting to demonize the ex-boyfriend, who by all accounts was treated in a way that would have been absolutely blasted if it had been towards a woman. She was cheating on him with the people who were supposed to be reviewing her work, all the while manipulating him into thinking he was crazy for suspecting that she was cheating. She claimed that it would be "rape" to have an intimate relationship with someone while cheating behind their back, and then did exactly that. And shes apparently a chronic liar.

    The "huge conspiracy" I simply havent seen; I literally had not heard of this issue until I saw an article on ArsTechnica on what a scumbag guys are for demonizing Zoe Quinn (What? Who?). Apparently shes so notorious that the most white knighting article on Ars and Slashdot cannot have her looking good at the end; theres just too much dirt out there for even the most heavily spun article to hide.

  26. Re:"Death to Gamers and Long Live Videogames" by rasmusbr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It shows the account was specifically created for this, posted everything in 3 minutes, and was discovered and screencapped 12 seconds later without being logged in or doing a search. In other words: whosoever took the screencap knew about this the moment it was done.

    Or maybe Anita Sarkeesian saw the first tweet from that account in her mentions, navigated to the tweeter's Twitter stream, decided to take a screencap, copied the URL, opened up a private tab and took the screen cap. She would have had 3 minutes to do that, and it only takes a few seconds to do.

    (The reason why one should always take screen caps in private tabs or private windows is that it minimizes the risk that your screencap will inadvertently reveal any personal information about you.)

  27. Re:"Death to Gamers and Long Live Videogames" by Bob9113 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Then and now when the geek speaks about women, I can't escape the feeling that I have been teleported back to the high school locker rooms of 1964. The only pandering on this site is to the geek's own adolescent sense of manhood,

    I am a geek, and I am not a misogynist. It is wrong for you to engage in prejudicial stereotyping.

    --
    Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
  28. Re:Not a lot, just a lot of trolls. by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Asshole or misogynist, it doesn't matter. The behavior should be viewed as unacceptable. Fuck, do you go around telling people on the street that you're going to kill or rape them? And trying to shade the issue because someone used one negative term rather than the other, when no one will know what the actual motivation was, just gives cover for this obnoxious behavior. You just shouldn't fucking do that shit, mmmkay?

    Plus, idiots like these are driving us towards the day when anonymity on the internet goes away. Do you want that? Because that's what it's coming to, boys and girls. So either act like adults and figure out a way to police yourselves in a reasonable way, or get locked down - the internet is now too important to the "normal" function of our society to allow a bunch of misogynists, assholes, or whatever to disrupt it. And the powers that be certainly won't let that happen. Defense of anyone who acts like this for any reason only makes things worse.

    --
    That is all.
  29. Re:I predict by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    She didn't say she doesn't like games, she said that she wasn't a "fan", i.e. just a casual player. I wouldn't say I'm a fan of modern games because I haven't played many, but that doesn't mean if someone invites me to try one I won't enjoy it.

    Instead of making ad-hominem attacks why not address the points she makes in her videos directly? Can you point to specific examples of where her research and conclusions were incorrect and undermine her wider argument?

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  30. Re:Feminism by Iamthecheese · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When they're abusing statistics with the goal of spreading hate, when many mainstream feminists have rabidly man-hating quotes strung behind them, and when they don't collectively struggle for equal responsibility that definition sounds pretty damn hollow.

    --
    If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
  31. Re:Get a life! by Windwraith · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You don't get it, do you?
    Zoe and Anita do not harm us in any way. People like Ben Kuchera, K.Thor Jensen and such, do.
    You haven't paid attention in class. And as far as I know, Ben Kuchera is a guy, not a woman, so I am not misogynist for calling him on his insults and doxxing threats. Look them up.

    Not to mention Phil Fish producing a massive internet meltdown calling everyone a rapist (including YOU) and telling aspiring developers to quit. I think Phil Fish is also not a woman. Also, he didn't do almost any work on Fez, look at the credits. He was just an idiot hogging fame from a team you'll never hear about.

    I am a developer. I was attacked by the people claiming to be on my side for suggesting that bias shouldn't exist. For supporting equality. But you know what? They don't want equality. They want to be few and rare so they can maintain their "special" status.

  32. Re:Not you too slashdot by epyT-R · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well, here's the other side..

    zoe's then-boyfriend's account
    http://thezoepost.wordpress.co...

    wizardchan's experience with zoe
    http://imgur.com/a/4VOcx

    the birth of 4chan's 'vivian james' and zoe's attack on the fine young capitalists
    http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/...

    david jaffe vs kotaku
    http://kotaku.com/5883107/does...
    https://soundcloud.com/ben-kuc...

    anita sarkeesian is not a gamer
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    anita sarkeesian misrepresents the subject material. 'thunderf00t's analysis
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    This is an issue of journalistic integrity and quite possibly attempts at reculturing a community to conform to specific political values. The charge of 'misogyny' is just an attempt to muddy the waters and/or poison the well of any would-be critics.

  33. Because SJWs are not Feminists/Progressives by ObsessiveMathsFreak · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Question, why do you (generally speaking) feel the need to lump all the people who disagree with you together into one group, give that group a sarcastic name,

    I call the people involved in this scandal "Social Justice Warriors (SJWs)" principally because I refuse to insult the feminist or progressive movements by calling these people with feminists or progressives. Genuine second-wave feminists have publicly criticised their behaviour.

    If you want to understand the difference, look up the #Gamergate and #NotYourShield hashtags on twitter. The Social Justice Warriors are hateful, disingenuous, at times sociopathic bigots. They are adult, internet-empowered versions of the bullies and tormentors which many gamers remember from secondary school.

    Gamers are the victims here. The modus-operandi of the SJWs is to cast themselves in the cloth of underprivileged groups -- most SJWs are in fact white, upper middle class, college aged -- then proceed to level accusations of privilege, bigotry, and misogyny against just about anyone involved in gaming for even the slightest perceived infractions. A climate of fear has developed, first in the indie and later wider gaming industry as a result of the "social justice" witchhunts which these people regularly engage in. Worse, this has resulted in SJW-aligned developers and journalists rising to positions of power and being first in line for awards and increasingly development funding, with cronyism trumping competence.

    For Gaming, so often a hobby of last resort for the excluded and isolated in society, this is an awful and tragic outcome. For gamers, male, female, straight, gay or trans, it is a frightening development. Their hobby, their refuge, is being taken over by bullies.

    Because their rhetoric and especially actions come across as so farcically disingenuous, I don't believe for a second that SJWs actually believe in or support the causes of homosexuals or transgender people in video games. Their support for women is also largely forced, and disturbingly biased towards the conservative view of women as a weaker sex who must be protected/defended (A view consistently challenged by the games industry over the years).

    My honest opinion of SJWs is that they are privileged Neo-liberals, who adopt a forced social justice persona both to project their own (increasingly obvious) bigotry onto others, and ultimately to benefit themselves socially and financially. They are disingenuous, extremist bullies, and the gaming community is under co-ordinated PR attack, and has been almost completely censored on gaming websites.

    The Social Justice Warriors are right about one thing though; this is a historical moment. Whether they win or lose, the GamerGate scandal will be seen as a watershed moment in the history of online-communities, and who controls them. Two weeks ago, I would never have believed that a clique so small could all but take-over a community so large, but it is becoming clear that this is precisely what (almost?) happened to gaming. There are lessons to be learned here, unrelated to the immediate issues, and I only hope the right people will take note and heed them.

    --
    May the Maths Be with you!